From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Homophobia
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 18:44:10 GMT

                                      Monday, the 11th of January, 1993

Roger Lustig wrote:
  So they have the right to punish employees for freedom of association, 
  punishment that, if carried out generally enough, leads to starvation.

I responded:
  Yes, and musicology, if carried out generally enough, leads to starvation,
  too. 

To which he responds:
  More evidence of interest in serious discussion, eh?  

Umm, well, my first reaction is to say that it is exactly the same
kind of evidence you have shown in your own instantiation of Godwin's
Rule. But, I think that's not being fair. To me. Your debating tactic
was to imply either that I am a Nazi, or that my laissez-faire politics
would necessarily breed them. Mine was to suggest by way of a joke
(a joke that I certainly hope would not have been all that
personally provoking, since it's clear the same could be applied
to about most behaviours other than farming or hunting) that you
have way overblown the coercive danger of companies practising
discriminatory employment policies. 

I clarified this by saying:
  There is precisely zero reason to believe that either will, in fact,
  be carried out generally enough at all. 

Roger says:
  Horseshit.  I have already given the example of the Japanese caste
  system.  In the US, voluntary institutional discrimination is still
  widespread.  Ask black friends of mine who recently tried to get a 
  mortgage.

Ask *most* people who have recently tried to get a mortgage.

Voluntary institutional discrimination widespread? No doubt there
are ``studies''. Exactly how do you go out and measure this
discrimination? A better question would be: What evidence would
convince you there were no such discrimination?

Perhaps you will consider analyzing a case dear to *my* heart:
academic physics. I think there are almost exactly zero black physicists
(well, I've met one, and know of another). I also think there are damn
few female physicists (maybe one or two per department). Why do you think
this is, Roger? What sort of institutional discrimination goes on to cause
this? Am I supposed to believe that physics faculties are filled with
closet racists and sexists? I don't think so. I think rather that
most of the people I have met on physics faculties have been liberal
(or to the left of that---I would call you to the left of that, social
agendist, though not necessarily socialist) politically, and would be all
too happy to hire women or blacks. The problem is that there are none.
Now in relativity, there are maybe a couple of tenure-track jobs a year.
There might be a hundred or two postdocs like me who'd be competing for
these jobs. OK, so from my angle that's wellnigh hopeless. Or, I can also
try to get a teaching position at a liberal-arts school. There are
more of those jobs, maybe in the tens. But, then there are more hundreds
of applicants one is competing against, as well.

All right, now consider that when I was a postdoc at Milwaukee, I watched
them sift through hundreds of applications for a faculty research
position in relativity, finally interviewing 6 whose research and
whose academic pedigree were simply stellar. The final decision I'm
sure had more to do with matching nuances of personality and
of research direction rather than anything else. About that same
time, there was a black physicist who was being offered federal
grant money for starting an extra (minority) position. His research did
not exactly fit in with what anybody else in the department was doing,
but, hey, this was extra money from outside to create a new position,
so the department tried to court him. Unfortunately (for UWM, that
is), three or four other schools were also courting him, and he
chose one of the others. I also know of examples of women hired
into permament positions, where their publication lists are a
fraction the length of mine. Now, I agree that the skin off my nose is
tiny in each of these cases (if the special privileges were not
there, there would be only a marginal increase in my own job
prospects). But don't tell me that these privileges are intrinsically
just, or that they are ``corrective of widespread institutional
discrimination'', at least in any transparent way, or that they are
not special privileges and sanctioned exactly by the kinds of
laws that otherwise restrict the hiring choices of private employers.

Perhaps while you're addressing this case, you can explain what
you think the common misconception about affirmative action is.

I said:
  Or that even a sizable
  number of them are out to fire gay nightwatchmen.

Roger replies:
  How many must there be before the hurt is real?  

I should say enough for you to demonstrate that there is a real
coercive threat to people's Right to Life.

I do not buy your ``thousands of children, at least'' (see below).
The fact is, even with a very widespread institutional apartheid
(of a kind, that is, practised *only* by the private sector, but
far worse than anything that actually would happen today), employment
(and life) would go on in the minority community that is being
discriminated against.

I think the only protection your laws are providing is protection
against hurt feelings (albeit legitimately hurt feelings).
 
I said (my spelling corrected):
                                                    I think that it's exactly
  your brand of liberalism that is driving a whole bunch of decent
  people into alliance with the Pat Buchanans.

Roger responds:
  I don't know many decent people in alliance with Pat Buchanan.  I
  do know lots who respond to his race-baiting, his gay-baiting, 
  his Jew-baiting, and his fondness for Fascist approaches.

I know many decent Republicans who do not consider Pat Buchanan
half so dangerous as this legislation which extends Rights protections
into the private sector, legislation which extends the concept
of a Right from a power not given by individuals to government
to a positive warrant for government to make exercise of the Right
happen.

Now might be a good time for you to explain your interpretation
of the First Amendment---a law limiting the laws government can make---
as sanctioning positive governmental ``protection'' for these Rights
in private transactions in society.

I mean, I admit to being frankly worried about how far this line of
reasoning can go. You see, if Rights mean that government not only
can't do some things, but also that government ought to go out of
its way to protect Rights in the private sector, ensuring that they
are exercised in an equal way, then it seems to me you have a warrant,
too, for, say, outlawing hate speech, the argument being that
such speech is coercive (especially if made by an ``empowered'' person---cf.
Steve Dyer's postings on the subject), and its very coerciveness kills
(provokes beatings and killings, for how else would these things happen?)
and limits the free speech of others (after all, the coercive fear is
real). Well, come to think of it, some of those very same civil rights
laws already let the employer be blamed not only for his own hate
speech (whether or not anybody's been fired) but make him legally
responsible for controlling the hate speech of his employees.

Interesting brand of liberalism, yours.

RL:
  Sorry, but the above makes it clear to me that my "brand of
  liberalism" is a closed book to you, and will remain so as
  long as you cover your eyes whenever I discuss it.  

Sorry, but I can read your book perfectly well. I do
not happen to agree with what I read there, that's all.

  It is based on REAL problems of the CURRENT world, and takes 
  those, not an abstract political system based on simple assumptions 
  about human nature, as its basis.

Yes, well, the chess game allusion is another example from *your*
debating manual. I do not agree that you are being more realistic
than I am. I believe you have *zero* understanding of the practical
consequences of the non-discrimination legislation in question.

You can also consider, while you're at it, the case of Morris Machine
Co. (my family's business, a machine shop in Indianapolis, 'bout 30
employees). Let's see, our one big experience with a discrimination
complaint happened in the 70s. The fellow didn't show up to work a
couple of times. He was then told he had only 3 more of these, and he
would be out. When the third time came (I think it was within 2 or 3
weeks), he was fired. He was black, and complained to the employment office
that we fired him *because* he was black (bizarrely passing over
the fact that he was hired in the first place). Instead of the investigators
spending any time at all checking his story, Momac was required to show
up at a hearing, lawyers present, where it was simply assumed from the word
go that the purpose of the hearing was to discuss what compensation
Momac was going to make because this guy had clearly been fired
because of discrimination. Luckily for us, we had hired an investigator
and we had proof that this fellow had filed for unemployment
compensation, writing there that that he had been ``laid off for
lack of work''. That information, irrelevant as it was to the question
of whether Momac had fired him discriminatorily, of course closed
the hearing without so much as a thank you or an apology
or anything in writing, say, finding that we had been unfairly
charged, and we left and simply never heard another word about it
from them.

Now, the evidence is anecdotal, of course, but I would suggest to
you, Roger, (and to Mike and to Michael) that the business
world is *full* of such stories, and that seldom is there a case of real
discrimination to compare with the heavy-handed way these laws are
enforced. Or to the *feeling* of fairness about it, when it is plain
that no white guy could make the company dance a legal and expensive
jig in the same way.

RL:
  Can you say "horse and rabbit stew"?  When the employer has thousands of
  times more resources, the freedom in the negotiations is entirely his/hers.

Can you say it yourself? Don't you understand that good employees are
hard to come by these days? That Morris Machine (except that for the next
couple of years it isn't in a position to be hiring---burden of debt
created by Reagan-era greed, but that is another story...) is crying out
for skilled machinists, and cannot *afford* to pass up a good machinist
for irrelevant reasons?

Exactly how do you determine guilt, by the way? I mean, how do
decide where the guilt lies for ``widespread, institutional
discrimination''? (It's a relevant question, don't you think,
for determining whether these non-discrimination laws are applied
fairly, *can* be applied fairly?) I mean the problem you face is
that, unless the employer poses for your videocamera at a moment of 
racist outburst, you've got nothing to go on but, say, counting
up the numbers of employees who are members of those minority groups
you are fashionably interested in and comparing those numbers
with some quota you have in mind. At Morris Machine at the moment
I think there are no black employees (there was one for a while
recently---nice chap, I've worked alongside him---but he didn't have the
seniority and his scrap rate was higher than that of others, so
when the need for a cut came, he was among those cut). I mean,
here are all the field marks, right? 30 employees, there should be
4-6 blacks, all other things being equal. But, if *anyone* is gonna
tell me Morris Machine is practicing either a conscious or a
subconscious anti-black discrimination policy in its hiring, I'll
call him a liar. As it is, there are inspectors that periodically
show up demanding an hour or two of our CEO's time, usually
starting the conversation with an open accusation against him of
such a discriminatory hiring policy, I mean in a friendly
sort of way, just to see if he's got a ready answer, or if he'll
squirm a bit, then chatting him up and giving him a pep talk about
programs the company really should be adopting to hire minority
persons. He tells me this happens every couple of months or so
and that they always part amicably.

Do *you* know anything about the real world, Roger? I mean,
if your evidence for discrimination is anecdotal, I'll trade
you story for story. In the hurling racist or homophobic epithets
department, my personal scorecard is: sinning---0, sinned against---
half a dozen or more (I don't mean Steve Dyer now, but serious times,
when I was much younger, and when I took less responsibility for
myself and my emotions, and when I still cried at that sort of
thing).

RL:
  Who would hire anyone who insisted on a long list of no-fire reasons?  
  Nobody -- unless there were some protection to bring a little equity 
  into the relationship.

But, there's a lot of equity to the relationship already, mate.
Employers have to offer competitive wage and benefit packages, or
employees move on. Or they have high turnover rates, and a
crappy job gets done, and they go out of business (<--- *except*
in the case of huge companies like Chrysler, going out of business
is a very real happening).

It need not be a long list, either, just a simple ``no firing for
reasons irrelevant to job performance'' ought to do. I suspect
most employers would agree to this one.

You have this really bizarre notion, Roger, that employers are
all robber barons out to exploit the starving masses. Another
example from Momac. They (meaning the managers) have this
policy which I think is just wonderful. In order to encourage continuing
education, they have offered to pay the cost of any course any employee
takes if the employee receives an `A' in the course, and half the
cost for a `B'. The problem now is that for the last some years
this policy has been in effect, only one person has taken advantage
of it, and that is my younger brother (also 1/3 owner), who takes
a couple of courses each term at IUPUI. The thinking now is that
because this policy in practice seems to benefit the owner only,
maybe it ought to be dropped altogether. In other words, I think this
illustrates how some fine and *spontaneous* paternalism on the
part of companies gets crushed because of the lawyerly thinking that
intrudes these days.

You'll say, well, it's a small, closely held company and maybe
this group of managers and owners just happens to be extraordinarily
munificent? No. The idea comes I think from our CEO, who had been a
career engineer at General Electric, where there was a similar
continuing ed policy.

Or bonuses---why do companies pay bonuses at all? Or health plans?
We've had no end of headaches in board meetings about that one.
Do you give the money directly to the employees, hoping they
don't spend it on beer and that they pick out the health plan of their
choice, or are you paternal and adopt a single company health plan? And
then there's a fiduciary responsibility the officers of the corporation
accept for administering that health plan---i.e. legal exposure if
something doesn't go quite right. Why should employers concern
themselves with these things at all, seeing that there are no laws
(yet) requiring them, if they don't simply have to compete for
employees with other companies? Or if at least some employers
don't simply *care* about their employees?

I think there's this terrible assumption of an
us v. them split between labour and management. I
know a recent case in which one employee got really
pissed when the health insurance rates went up, making loud
protests that management was out to mistreat him. In particular,
he dropped, against the advice of management, a few dollars
a week (or a month, I forget which) of catastrophic coverage.
Then his wife (who had had complications in previous pregnancies)
ended up delivering about two months premature. That's some
few tens of thousands of dollars in hospital costs
that he would have had if he had not refused the advice of
management. I know this guy. Luckily the baby is doing fine,
but it's a sad case, and I'll bet it's gonna be the company
that ends up loaning him the money.

RL:
  Go on all you want about guns, but you will never convince me that 
  public education is the Gulag, or that the tax-supported library is 
  another Auschwitz.

I didn't say, or even come near to implying, that they were. What I
did say, however, is that *whenever* you legislate a law, however
tiny in impact, you wield a coercive power that is far more palpable
than your notions about economic coercion of employers.

I think *this* coercion means you damn well better *not* legislate
laws lightly or countenance the extension of law into places where
it was never contracted to go.

Roger said:
  Sieg heil to you too, pal.

I responded:
  I believe you owe me for that one, Roger.

Roger replies:
 Nope, sorry.  Your attitude is comforting to all those who look for
 reasons to impose bigotry, bigotry even unto murder.

More thought crime, is it, Roger? I'm giving some sort of treasonous
aid and comfort to the enemy? I haven't said one jot against laws
against murder, mate.

RL:
                                                      And, as the 
 above amply shows, you have no interest even in finding out what my position
 is.

I understand your position quite clearly, Roger: You think there
is widespread discrimination. You think it is morally unfair to
hire or fire anyone on grounds other than those relating to
to the job. You not only think that, but you consider that such
a discriminatory hiring or firing practice constitutes a violation
of a human Right to Life, *because*, you say, the employer-employee
relationship is so very coercive, all power being stacked thousands of
times to the advantage of the employer, that if the practice were carried
out at some level of generality then discriminated-against persons
would starve to death. You think this warrants using government
positively to protect this Right to Life in this instance. You do not
think the violation of the employer's own Right to free association
of persons and conscience of sufficient importance to stop
this legislative program of positive protection. And you have 
not yet conceded my point that your liberalism is a departure
in the extreme from the political philosophy developed in
the eighteenth century that I wish to call liberalism.

The problem is not that I don't know what your position is.
The problem is only that I do not agree with what your
position is. On grounds of moral theory, *and observation
of reality*, I do not agree with a single one of the
sentences I have ascribed to your position here, except for
the one beginning ``You think it is morally unfair'', where
I would agree, but would suggest that we haven't even begun
to consider all the special cases and reasons where seemingly
discriminatory employment policies might well ``have to do
with the job'' and where contravention thereof might well be at
the expense of contravention, perhaps say, of the religious
conscience of the employer.

RL:
  In case you'd never thought about it, absence of government can lead 
  to a replacement government -- say, some employers getting together.
  That is, too little government creates a vacuum, and allows the legitimate
  regime to be overrun or ignored.  Government happens, in other words.  
  I fear the governments that your puritanical refusal to enforce the
  protection of liberty will lead to.

I have thought about it, and you'll please note that I haven't advocated
repeal of laws against lynchings or beatings, Roger.


**********************************

Just one response from out of this other post (I am finding this
all a little bit repetitious, Roger). I had said:
  Well, I understand how the police and the military power of many
  governments has often killed many people, but that many managers,
  banding together not to hire people, have often killed I seem to have
  missed in my study of history. I suppose you could provide some
  examples of this, say, regarding blacks and Jews in the U.S. in the period
  since the Civil War up until effective non-discrimination legislation
  was first enacted? In round numbers, about how many were killed because
  of unemployment resulting from such discrimination?

Roger responds:
  Among children alone, thousands.

All right, *I don't believe you*. Go away and do some work, if
you already haven't and tell me a) by what means you estimate
this number (a few tens of child mortalities per year, I note),
and b) your source for it. I understand that blacks and Jews have
died in the U.S. over the years. I also understand that some have
been unemployed. So I can well imagine that some of these might be
said to have died specifically because of the poverty resulting
from unemployment (this I'd bet'd be overwhelmingly children). But
the same may be said for non-Jewish whites as well. How in the heck
you're going to estimate the fraction of deaths resulting from
unemployment which resulted *because* of discriminatory employment
practices is a whole 'nother ballgame. If you're simply going to
compare mortality rates between unemployed groups, you're going to
be up a creek.

                Mike Morris
         (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)



Newsgroups: rec.arts.books