From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Homophobia
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:13:56 GMT

In article <C0pDDn.Muo@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
>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. 

Well, all I know is that they have caused untold hurt as part of a system
of legal, illegal, sanctioned, mandated, etc. descrimination over the
years.  It's not a danger--it's a history.

As for the "Sieg heil" comment, I agree that it was excessive -- but it
was only in response to your callous "acceptance" of moral evil because
it would be a terrible, terrible thing to make it illegal.

>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.

I had no trouble, and I'm self-employed.  My friend, a 45-year-old
vice-president at a major brokerage, great credit, already a homeowner,
etc., faced hurdles at the bank that none of his white friends at the
same banks ever encountered.  

It's not just an anecdote, either.  Reports of things like this are 
kept and tallied and evaluated.  Wishing won't make it go away.

>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?

The disappearance of the pervasive differences would convince me.
As for the scare quotes around "studies" -- what studies have you 
read that leads you to wish to discredit them all?  Why not 
investigate a few and find out what studies there are, and what
methods they use?

>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.

And you want me to take you seriously...

Mike, have I *claimed* that there was bias?  (Go read Carolyn Heilbrun's
recent complaints if you think there isn't any in academia.)

>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.

Well, go ahead.  What's your point?  Is physics being attacked on 
Affirmative-Action grounds?

>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.

So take a long view.  Consider how much better things will be when 
blacks and women are *encouraged* to go into physics.  Nowadays
they aren't, particularly, though things are better than before; 
and, despite everything, women in physics might feel a little more
comfortable staying in the profession if they weren't minorities at the 
freak level.

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

That it's mainly about quotas and the like.  

>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.

Surely the right to *compete* for employment is part of the right to
life.  If employers as a rule put out the word that gayness is grounds
for non-employment, then the right has been infringed upon.

But it does go further than that, because, as I've pointed out more
than once, these things don't happen on a chessboard.  Acceptance
of gays *is* a problem in our society, one that leads to lesser punishment
for those who assault or kill gays, leads to blackmail and suicide
when one is discovered, has led to the gay subculture that made the 
spread of AIDS possible.  Our culture, by threatening gays as it does,
robs them of much of their liberty, keeps them from pursuing it.

>I do not buy your ``thousands of children, at least'' (see below).

Sorry.  Infant mortality due to poverty is a fact, not a hypothesis.

>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.

At a lower level, an immiserated level.  How did life expectancies for 
blacks and whites manage to stay so far apart in the century after
slavery was abolished?  

>I think the only protection your laws are providing is protection
>against hurt feelings (albeit legitimately hurt feelings).

No, against hurt lives, lives of those least able to defend themselves.

>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.

Yup.  They see all the hypotheses, and don't mind that the people get 
trampled.  They don't care that the philosophy in question is irrelevant
to a society so far removed from the premises of that philosophy.

>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.

Government gets involved in private transactions whenever a contract
is disputed, or, for that matter, whenever one is made, as the courts
are assumed as the place for adjudication.  

It is not the First Amendment, but the Fourteenth, that makes explicit
the right to equal protection.  Contract law is law too.

>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.

Finished?  

Once again, you're way off the mark -- and putting words in my mouth.
I do not favor hate-speech or hate-crime laws, nor have such made any
headway in American jurisprudence yet.

Nor are employers required to control employees' speech; what *are*
you talking about?  

If an employer makes it impossible for an employee to work, and does 
so with means including speech, and does so with the intent of getting
rid of the employee, then that breach of the IMPLICIT EMPLOYMENT 
CONTRACT -- i.e., that employment was offered in good faith -- is 
actionable.  Why wouldn't it be?

>Interesting brand of liberalism, yours.

Interesting fantasies, yours.  You have no clue about my "brand of
liberalism."  Yours, however, stinks of disdain.

>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.

My book?  What book?  You just presumed to read about hate speech and
First Amendment jurisprudence in it, when I had not mentioned either.
What's in the pipe, Mike?

>  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.

I've seen it in action many times, and have seen how it has improved
he pool of prospective employees, how it has made it possible to air
legitimate grievances without the threat of instant firing for daring 
to request that the employer honor the good-faith intentions expressed
at the outset of employment, and I have seen how it has enabled people
to move into walks of life previously closed to them by bigotry.

I have seen excesses, too, and abhor them.  You seem to see *only* the 
excesses.  You do not recognize that these laws come, not out of some
abstract feeling that things ought to be different, but from pressing
need, the realization that things  *can't * go on without change.  They
come from an understanding of the government we have, the society we
live in, and the possibilities for change.  We do not live in the 
society, or under the goernment, that would be necessary for your 
approaches to make sense, and I know of no feasible way of getting from
where we are to your utopian vision.  Instead, we muddle through. 
That's called politics.

>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

Surprise!  There are lawyers out there.  Would there not be in your 
dream world?

>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.

Surprise!  People hate to admit they're wrong.  You might have sued
for defamation or something, but that wasn't worth it.

Or are you telling me that in Libertaria everyone will have good manners,
too?

>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. 

What laws?  The guy made a false complaint.  You happened to find
easy evidence to refute it.  Otherwise, you'd have to have come up
with the written record of his attendance, the warnings, etc.  Perhaps
you'd have had to show that others were treated similarly.  

In your world, the  guy would have had no recourse, no matter what the 
reason for firing.  

Or did he ACTUALLY HAVE a contract that said he wouldn't be fired for 
non-job-related reasons?  Don't tell me Momac didn't give such contracts!!!

>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.

He could at a black-owned firm.  Not for long, in most cases, though;
what's your point?  He tried to lie his way to advantage; he failed.
Everyone has the right to try that; and in the system you envision,
all kinds of harassing suits would likely become the norm.  After all,
even *with* the clause mentioned above, he'd have a right to come
to justice -- for whatever non-job-related reason he cared to think of.
Discrimination laws would be entirely irrelevant to the matter.

>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? 

So who says that everyone is looking for good employees?  

And what do you say to the hundreds or thousands who file applications 
for manufacturing jobs?  Are all of them deadbeats with 10 years experience?

(Also, note that the term "good employee" can change in meaning depending
on the times.)

>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?

Good for them.  I know places where 50 machinists show up at the plant 
gate when one position is advertised.

>Exactly how do you determine guilt, by the way? 

Same as anywhere else.  Ever read a court proceeding in a discrimination
case?

>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. 

You've said this twice now.  It's still not true.  There are 
plenty of other ways.  Be creative -- you canm think of some.  Or
just read a few of those court reports.

>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.

Would they do that if they weren't coming up with lots of such practices
elsewhere?

Look, I don;t like this sort of thing, either, but it would seem to
be the only thing that has made a dent in the bigoted actions of some
employers.  

And it's not like the Jaycees took the lead in the past or anything...

>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. 

My evidence is from surveys, from studies, from court cases.

>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).

Who cares?  This is entirely beside the point.  

>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. 

It took a century of labor agitation to get that, too.  Not to mention
legal mandate of fair and genuine benefit packages -- quite recently.
Think of the firings-before-vesting that were common until the late 60's.
Fraud all the way -- and no protection, no sanction.

>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).

Again, remember that current improvements  and the right to collective
bargaining didn't get there by magic.

>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.

Yet none has.  Not one.  

>You have this really bizarre notion, Roger, that employers are
>all robber barons out to exploit the starving masses. Another

More fantasy.  More putting owrds in my mouth.  

On the other hand, some employers -- often a substantial majority --
have been that way in the past.

>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.

What's your point?  That all benefits are bad because some don't have 
the expected effect?  Or did I miss something in your paragraph that 
actually explained *how* "lawyerly thinking" has caused this policy
to fail?

>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.

Which fails similarly there?  What's your point?

Also, when did GM start doing that?  And under what circumstances?

>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.

They pay for health plans because the nation's workers got angry enough
to demand them.  Only a few companies moved to health plans voluntarily.

As for bonuses -- they're cheaper than raises.  

>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?

Again, what's your point?  Are you claiming that workers get whatever they
want?  The labor market is what it is, and, yes, health plans are expected
nowadays.  (Not that they're worth much; employer-funded ones, according
to a recent Court decision, may cut benefits at will.)

>I think there's this terrible assumption of an
>us v. them split between labour and management. I

Well, an assumption plus a century of history plus a good deal of 
feeling about it by both sides.  Momac isn't representative of US
industry, you know; most companies don't have enlightened people
like your family running them.

>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.

Good for them.  It's in their interest, I'm sure.  Many companies 
would have told him to take a hike.  

Still -- what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

>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

Sure you did.  You implied that they were government coercion in action,
and you made no attempt to distinguish one kind or purpose from another.

>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.

The coercion of government is there either way.  Reduce everything to
employment contracts and you'll still have the courts clogged with
cases, still have the courts enforcing.

>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.

That's why we have laws regulating things like employment and its
contracts, explicit and implicit.  You don't want courts writing new
laws every day.

>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? 

No, not thought crime.  Bigotry concerns me not in the least until
it becomes ACTION.  People may think anything they please.

>I'm giving some sort of treasonous
>aid and comfort to the enemy? I haven't said one jot against laws
>against murder, mate.

But you don't seem to be interested in practical things that will 
cut down on it, or on other kinds of everyday coercion.

>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.

Utter crap.  I have said few of these things.  Taken together this is
a misrepresentation of what I have said.

I have stated that, without controls, things WOULD  be stacked toward
employers.  This is easily observable from our history.  

Look, I don't mind the 18th-C Liberal point of view in the least -- but
I claim that it is not particularly relevant to the problems of our
current world, the one we live in, the one that has *not* been run along 
Liberal principles.  In a Liberal world all the discrimination laws would
be useless and counterproductive.  But we don't live there, and we aren't
likely to very soon.

>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

What a bloody surprise!

>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.

Again, what's your point?

>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.

How about company towns?

>**********************************

>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.

I take it you say that because you've done that study?  

Of course, that's not what I'd compare.  I'd also compare unemployment
*rates* and the reasons for unemployment.  

Roger

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