Sorry smokers: in a free market, you have no rights aparts from property rights, which makes you like everyone else in a free society. Employers can determine employee qualifications, whether it is physical appearance, religion, gender, intelligence, or, yes, lifestyle choices. If a potential employee does not like the terms of employment, then he or she has the freedom to look somewhere else. That goes for smokers too. [Full Article]
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3126/a-free-market-in-workplace-regulations/
A Free Market in Workplace Regulations
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Th government intervention into the workforse on the basis of the law allowing companies to hire of fire people means limiting the freedom of each worker. There is no right of the company to force people to do things they don’t want to do. However, the contract terms on which the employee was hired also means this person has agreed to do so. In this case,
the ‘government’ inside the company intervents into our lives. We are free to choose in our life without being forced or discriminated, in any case of the governments arguments.
I felt that Ninos Malek’s article was completely uninsightful. By his reasoning segregation would be justified, and I dare him to make the argument for that. People could indeed “go work somewhere else” if not for the fact that many people cannot afford to lose their jobs, and the inordinate amount of power that it puts in the hands of unelected private property owners (who are people with whims) fundamentally undermines the concept that all men are created equal.
To clarify,
If the market automatically corrected the injustices of discrimination by causing non-discriminating companies to gain an advantage and force discriminating companies to alter their practices, then we would never have needed employment discrimination laws. Instead it has taken centuries, and people are still discriminated against in the workplace.
Furthermore, the belief that employers have a right to discriminate in staff management based on the fully legal personal choices of the employees, even in their own time, is essentially to punish labor for not being capitalists, by making it slave to the whims of a finite number of employees. Society, you know, as do personalities, prejudices, catch 22s, and a lack of information, however much free-market capitalists wish to ignore it
Sorry for the two messages in a row, but I get physically sick when I see people arguing that individualism and human dignity are salable commodities.
iceberg:
Are you implying, by describing the position of the sages, that you agree that starting a fire that, under normal circumstances, would harm another’s property or person is damaging – it’s just not the the exact same kind of damage as a physical slap or sword thrust?
Because I can agree with that. I’d say that making smokers liable for the damage they cause (making it a civil offense) rather than banning smoking outright (making it a criminal offense) would be acceptable.
Mr. O’Connor,
The types of pollution that you described above are not good for anyone. They are bad for people’s health and theories hold that they are bad for the environment. I think that some solution to the problem of pollution must be put into place because the creation of harmful pollution is tantamount to the use of force.
The State’s solution, of smoking bans and emissions standards and subsidized development of hybrid engines and solar power, is backwards. If people were able to sue car owners for polluting the air, the car owners would demand cleaner cars and then cleaner cars would be produced, much more economically than is currently happening due to the State solution. The same goes for industry. Walter Block wrote a good article on the subject: http://mises.org/etexts/environfreedom.pdf
In terms of the spread of disease, as crazy as it sounds, might not making a contagious person liable to those he makes ill impede disease vectors much more effectively than the CDC?
“If the market automatically corrected the injustices of discrimination by causing non-discriminating companies to gain an advantage and force discriminating companies to alter their practices, then we would never have needed employment discrimination laws.” The government has been a great practitioner of discrimination in its time. Jim Crow was law, remember? Where is it that government, which has practiced all sorts of utterly repugnant discrimination with impunity, gets this magical power to make the world and the job market fair? I think the government taking away my power to negotiate my own conditions with an employer as I see fit does nothing to give me dignity; it says I’m either an idiot or a baby who needs to be looked out for by a government run by people who are no wiser than I.
“Where is it that government … gets this magical power to make the world and the job market fair?” Why do we have government? Of course it doesn’t always work right, but the only reason the market exists at all is because there is a government enforcing laws that at least attempt to make things “fair.” I doubt you question the rights of the government to defend your property, but when it comes to preventing employers from unjustifiably intruding on people’s personal lives (employees are not allowed to smoke AT ALL) it’s another story.
Governments have no rights. IF governments have any legitimate purpose, it is to protect the rights of its citizens. The question under debate is what are the rights and responsibilities between employer and employee. Once we determine that, then we can know when it is proper to intervene in employer-employee relations and when it is not proper to do so. I certainly don’t want a government interfering unless it is justified, and even then only if they seek proper recourse and restitution for wrongs committed.
After the fall of the Roman Empire came the development of the feudal system. This came about by desperate peasant farmers without the means of survival making agreements with powerful land owners such that they would be able to work the land and receive a portion of its produce, but they and their descendents were bound to work for the lord of the manor, who had complete control over their private lives, including the first night with newlywed brides, in perpetuity. A system where employers can make any demands they choose is inherently flawed, since many cannot afford the hardship of being unemployed, and thus run the risk of being exploited and intruded upon in their private life. If the market in this instance is so self-correcting, then why did we need laws in order to abolish the twelve-hour workday and other wage-slavery practices that existed in the early 1900s?
Ninos Malek quite correctly identified that the relationship between an employer and employee should be “governed” only by the contract that was signed by both parties. A third party – government specifically – should have no part except as arbitrator, and such an arbitrator would be best identified in the original contract.
Contracts are a viable tool for human interactions that are not sufficiently given recognition for their capability for making expectations of a relationship and the consequences for breach clear and understandable. Malek appears to recognize this since he included the relationship of one’s property to himself. “One’s place of business is his property; it is not a “public” place. (The distinction between commercial and private, however much it is part of our legal tradition, is wholly fallacious; because a person chooses to exchange goods for money on his property makes it no less private.)” I was very glad to see that he properly ascribed as “fallacious” the idea that a business establishment is “public”. Simple contracts for usage are a quite reasonable way of defining the services of the owner to be reviewed against the expectations of the potential customer; no reams of documentation are necessary.
Those who agreed with Malek – or at least found his essay thought provoking – will likely find the ideas in the essay, “http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html ] stimulating to their already positive views on mechanisms for improved human relationships.
**Kitty Antonik Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational – http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project – http://selfsip.org
Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting
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