Re: What should an employer be able to have an employee or potential employee submit
It's not a straw man. In fact, you literally just parroted back what I wrote...you just replaced "the market" with "the people" even though they mean exactly the same thing in this context. It's not that "the people" or "society" have determined that submission to these tests is the optimal outcome; I highly doubt many employees are beating down the doors of employers begging to have their credit checked or their DNA tested to prove their commitment to the job. Nevertheless, they might grudgingly submit to it...ESPECIALLY if, as you said, enough other people are doing it that they are SOOL if they don't do it. That is NOT a socially optimal outcome just because employers are able to coerce employees to do something they don't want to do.
No, market and the people do not mean the same thing in this context. They are totally different things in this context. The "market" would be the people who purchase, use, partake of products/services offered by the company and thus generating profit for the company. They aren't going to be the one's being directly affected by the companies hiring strategies in any way shape or form.
Which is why this
isn't about the market. It's about what people are willing to submit to in order to
work for a particular company. this isn't a case of peopel ignoring the bad **** a company does simply because they want cheap crap made in china.
This is about what a company does
to those people. If society
as a whole submits to these things, then society as a whole is saying that this is
socially optimal.
If the
people are willing to submit to averse conditions in order to attain employment, that is their prerogative. I wouldn't do something I had a fundamental disagreement with simply to get a job, regardless of it's payscale. That's why I don't think the slippery slope fallacy you presented before has any merit (aside form teh fact that it was fallacious reasoning, of course).
I beleive that people won't sbject
themselves to something that they are fundamentally opposed to. I believe enough small businesses would exist which are owned by people who have a fuindamental disagreement with these policies that they would not become universal and that options will always exist for those who have that fundamental disagreement.
Will those people who have that fundamental disagreement be SOOL when it comes to getting the jobs where these are requirements? Absolutely. And that sucks for them. But at the end of the day, if they aren't willing to deal with some discomfort in order to live by their principles, they don't really
have any principles.
So far, everything you have written has indicated that you have a Panglossian view that whatever outcome occurs is the socially optimal outcome, as long as it was decided by the free market (or "society" if that is your preferred euphemism).
So far everything you have written hass indicated you aren't interested in discussing my actual views, but instead would rather do battle with an imaginary libertarian.
If that's what you want to do, go right ahead, but please don't pretend that it is me that you are discussin gthis with. Admit that you are doing battle with an invisible libertarian.
You just stated that if they don't submit and everyone else does, then they're SOOL (and that that's OK with you). Make up your mind.
There's nothing to make my mind up about. The two statements I made are not contradictory in any way.
In the second statement, I was talking about the people who were
willing to submit.
In the previous statement, the people who were SOOL were those who were
unwilling to submit.
As we all know, someone cannot be willing to submit and unwilling to submit at the same time. They are mutually exclusive situations.
While they are unwilling to submit, their unhappiness is
not "their own fault". In that case, they
are SOOL. For them, I do have sympathy, and I respect them for taking a stand on principle.
But the moment they become willing to submit, however, their unhappiness is
entirely their own fault
and no one elses.
By becoming willing to submit, they made the
choice to be party to their own unhappiness AND to **** on their own principles. They not only are at fault for their own unhappiness, they
deserve to be unhappy because they didn't have the balls to take a stand on principle.
I believe that peopel should approach life like this more often. The fact of the matter is that most people in our society are the cause of their own unhappiness. Nowadays most people seem to have a victim mentality hwere they prefer to muddle along impotently bitching about how "unfair" everything is without ever actually
doing anything to take control of their own destiny.
Ironically, their in action is an action of it's own. Their inaction is a
choice to be unhappy.
Hopefully they some day realize that they are the primary cause of their own unhappiness.
This issue is a primary example. Instead of doing things for themselves, peopel are complacent to allow otehrs to do it for them by having the government step in and save them from themselves.
Que sera sera. Personally, I'd rather be in charge of my own destiny.