Should Businesses Be Allowed to Discriminate?

[Jebus]

Would be great if Penn started identifying himself as a vegan. However, it seems he is on a vegan diet purely for selfish reasons.

[brimstoneSalad]

Would be great if Penn started identifying himself as a vegan. However, it seems he is on a vegan diet purely for selfish reasons.

One thing that can happen is, once diet changes and people are no longer biased to rationalize meat eating, they can be more open to the ethical and environmental arguments.
As long as somebody is actively eating meat and identifies as a meat eater through habit, cognitive dissonance makes being rational about the practice of meat-eating almost impossible.

[Jebus]

Would be great if Penn started identifying himself as a vegan. However, it seems he is on a vegan diet purely for selfish reasons.

One thing that can happen is, once diet changes and people are no longer biased to rationalize meat eating, they can be more open to the ethical and environmental arguments.
As long as somebody is actively eating meat and identifies as a meat eater through habit, cognitive dissonance makes being rational about the practice of meat-eating almost impossible.

As a vegan he would have to address some of the awful things he has said in the past regarding non-human animals. This makes it more unlikely.

[Lightningman_42]

As a vegan he would have to address some of the awful things he has said in the past regarding non-human animals. This makes it more unlikely.

I'm not familiar with this "Penn" guy, but from what I've read about him so far in this discussion thread, he seems to be a well-known and/or influential person. What awful things has he said about non-human animals?

[brimstoneSalad]

As a vegan he would have to address some of the awful things he has said in the past regarding non-human animals. This makes it more unlikely.

I'm not familiar with this "Penn" guy, but from what I've read about him so far in this discussion thread, he seems to be a well-known and/or influential person. What awful things has he said about non-human animals?

It's probably worth making a thread about it.
Maybe in the Vegan discussion section? Not sure.

Jebus, can you do that, or should I?

[EquALLity]

This is almost a month old, but I thought I should post it:

This discussion will be that old soon, so here we go:

Well, again, it's not just about cakes.

Yes, it's about unnecessary goods in general. I'm unconvinced that that system has more bad than good involved in it.

You have to ask:
What's worse? A law that needs one sentence to understand, or one that needs twenty chapters?

It don't think it makes a significant difference.

There can be easily understood immoral laws and complicated good ones.

All laws are not that way. They are long to the extent that they need to be "clarified" and have special exemptions and exceptions.

Hm, ok, I see that. But I don't see how it is relevant.

ultimately arbitrary

How is it arbitrary?

Go ahead. Try to write this law.

Alright. It would go something like this:

Business owners are allowed to discriminate on who is to be their customer by not providing service, unless dealing with a customer whose health would be negatively impacted if they did not get the service, and they could not avoid the negative health benefits if they did not get the service.

Causing more harm than good is.

I agree with that, but we were talking about siding with bullies vs. siding with the victims. It doesn't always produce more good to side with the victims.

It's very repetitive. People who do that kind of thing don't just do it once in their lives. The torch of insult and degradation gets passed from person to person as the oppressed and bullied go through life. From their perspective, it's very repetitive too -- just different people parroting the same line to them again and again.
It's wrong, because it's more harmful than helpful.

That's not what I meant by un-repetitive. I was saying that it's not repetitive as in someone is not insulting them over and over again. On top of that, it's not like they're being forced to do anything etc.

I think it's closer to being a jerk than actually bullying.

As for multiple people doing it to the same person in unrelated situations, I think it's more like multiple people all being jerks.

You might want to read that all again.
I said discrimination has potential good and bad points. In the world we live in, the bad massively outweighs the potential good.

It read it as, "Just because something works in the ideal world doesn't mean it works for our current world."

I was just saying that it contradicted what you said before about social norms, because that system would only work for the ideal world.

Anyway, I don't disagree with my interpretation of what you said (what works in an ideal world does not necessarily work in this one).

Ideology is not morality, it's deontological dogma. Morality is a matter of practice.

It's all well and fine to say lying is bad, but it isn't. It's a tool, which is usually used for bad. It does a lot of harm most of the time, and we generally shouldn't do it.
But when an assassin comes to you and asks the location of the target, is it wrong to lie?

Maybe ideology wasn't the right word, then?

What I was originally asking there was more like- "If there was no legitimate concern about people losing control like that, would you would still support those laws?"

Or something based a couple centuries ago in England?

Is that what was being referenced here?

The defense of provocation was first developed in English courts in the 16th and 17th centuries. During that period, a conviction of murder carried a mandatory death sentence. As such, the need for a lesser offense arose. At that time, not only was it seen as acceptable, but it was socially required that a man respond with controlled violence if his honor or dignity were insulted or threatened. It was therefore considered understandable that sometimes the violence might be excessive and end with a killing.[2]

Today, you'd need to do some research to prove that has changed.

Aren't we currently living in the most peaceful time in history? Doesn't that suggest we've might've progressed? Not that I don't think there should be studies.

But, read those links I posted for you. The issue is complex.

Yup, I did.

It depends on the law. Whoever broke it is to blame. The question is a matter of harm vs. benefit.

I was arguing against that law, because the people who got violent really are to blame in that situation.

If there's a bad law, you don't just blame the person who broke it.

The acceptance of LGBT lifestyle is moving so fast that soon some of these backwards people are going to be worried that they'll need a law to get cake for themselves.

Hahaha! Well yeah, you can't have it both ways. If you can discriminate on S.O. you should be able to discriminate on bigotry.

[brimstoneSalad]

The acceptance of LGBT lifestyle is moving so fast that soon some of these backwards people are going to be worried that they'll need a law to get cake for themselves.

Hahaha! Well yeah, you can't have it both ways. If you can discriminate on S.O. you should be able to discriminate on bigotry.

That's my point on this:

I was just saying that it contradicted what you said before about social norms, because that system would only work for the ideal world.

It doesn't.

I said before, and I guess you missed it, I wasn't arguing that was all good, but that it was a potential argument to be made in favor. I was bringing it up as a possible set of some potentially good things, not claiming that it was, in practice, good on the balance.

There are GOOD social norms, and there are BAD social norms. Most social norms are actually good, but it's not necessary to reinforce them because they are norms, and violating most of them is illegal anyway (like rape and murder and human slavery). I was only mentioning the good social norms that it promotes as a point in favor, as an example. Not saying that all social norms were good. I could have specified "good social norms" originally, but that might have been redundant. I see now that might have reduced confusion.

When discrimination motivates people to adjust to certain social norms, you have to examine whether that's doing more good than harm.
Is it a stronger force against bad social norms, or against good ones?
If something is strongly biased in favor of the good social norms, it's probably a good thing.

This discrimination law could ultimately do some good, as well as the bad, by being able to turn it against the bigoted Christians and make it so they can't buy goods or use services.
But here's the thing: It probably won't do that. Because the decent people who don't believe in discrimination against gays WON'T for the most part turn it around against the Christians, because they also overwhelmingly don't believe in discrimination against religion, or anything.

It is not currently clear that this will be the case. When you don't know if something is true or not, the correct response is to NOT legislate on it until you have more data, not to assume it's true and start passing laws left and right and fix it later if it breaks everything.

Currently, the only sure known consequence of these laws is extremely harmful: it is causing harm to gays in the process, emotionally, and potentially physically, since it's also a law that could cause a lot more harm than just not being able to buy cake.

Yes, it's about unnecessary goods in general. I'm unconvinced that that system has more bad than good involved in it.

How is it arbitrary?

No, it's about goods in general (and services). It's not your job to decide what is or isn't "necessary"; that's largely subjective, and highly dependent on the situation (which only the person in that situation will usually understand best).

I could tell you your asthma medication isn't necessary. Just don't do any strenuous activities, and avoid dust and things you're allergic to by locking yourself in a bubble. There you go, now you can't buy medication.

You also can't buy a bubble, because it's not necessary, they'll tell you to just buy medication instead.

Understand how that's a problem?

You can't decide for people, or leave it up to them to decide for others, what is or isn't necessary on such a broad scale.

Every time there's a disagreement about what's necessary, you're talking about a court case.

This doesn't cut it to resolve these disputes:

unless dealing with a customer whose health would be negatively impacted if they did not get the service, and they could not avoid the negative health benefits if they did not get the service.

Try again if you want.

It don't think it makes a significant difference.

It makes all the difference. Study some law, and particularly the dirty tricks large firms and big companies use.

The longer and more wordy they are, the more complex the procedure, the harder it is to understand them and follow them. At a certain point, when a person can no longer know the law, that person loses power in society.

The little guy can easily be buried under paperwork and procedure so complicated that he can never dig past it, even with 16 hours a day of work while going bankrupt. You can just pile it on faster than he can ever possibly dig his way out. I'm serious.
This is how big companies use legal bureaucracy to absolutely destroy others, without them having even the slimmest chance of fighting back. Even when the companies are so obviously in the wrong to anybody who looks at the situation.
Overly complicated legal systems are anti-egalitarian. Whoever has more money to hire more lawyers and generate more paperwork wins.

Get it?
This is of paramount importance to understand for any legal system that is fair, and for the people.

There can be easily understood immoral laws and complicated good ones.

False.
Note what I explained above. All complex laws are bad, usually to the extent they are complex, because they can be used as tools of oppression, and will be used as such (some are worse than others, but even a law with good intentions can be bad if it's overly complex). They also hide corruption exceptionally well. They lag down society, they make reform profoundly difficult. The only ones they're good for are lawyers and paper pushers.

Your law would just add to the paperwork, which was part of Penn's point. ADDING new/more laws, and to do something as stupid as ensure the 'right' to discriminate.
It's just more paperwork, and it's not doing any good, just harm.

Hm, ok, I see that. But I don't see how it is relevant.

See above.

Causing more harm than good is.

I agree with that, but we were talking about siding with bullies vs. siding with the victims. It doesn't always produce more good to side with the victims.

Not always, but it usually does. Thus why anti-discrimination laws are good on the balance. It's the balance that matters. No law will always have good outcomes 100% of the time. Every "right" one person gets is a "right" another person loses, remember? And sometimes that won't be fair. But that's how society works, when we have to live together.
Sometimes something is illegal, but ethical, and yet it's also right for the person to be punished for doing the right thing, because if they aren't, the law has no meaning and all of the bad people will take advantage of that too and do much more evil in the process.
Think vigilantes -- maybe they're doing a lot of good, taking out drug dealers who are pushing meth on little kids... but maybe they're doing great evil in taking out interracial couples and LGBT people. You can't usually pick and choose, the law protects everybody, or it protects nobody.

That's not what I meant by un-repetitive. I was saying that it's not repetitive as in someone is not insulting them over and over again.

Irrelevant. The bigots are doing it as a group.

Let's say I, using a clean syringe, withdraw an ounce of your blood without your consent. I've committed a minor assault, but not murder. Now 100 of my closest friends do exactly the same thing, and you're dead.

And then I and my 100 friends work together to do that to 100 more people.

On the balance, we've all committed murder. And yet 'technically' we're only guilty of a few minor assaults.

You can't decentralize something and then pretend it's blameless.

The effect is the same; somebody is emotionally run into the ground by a implicitly socially coordinated effort from a bunch of bigots, and ends his or her own life under the pressure.
And they do it again, and again, to different people.

That's what social bullying is. You can't worm your way around the definition on a perceived technicality.

It's persistent intentional harmful behavior. It causes intense emotional harm, and it's evil (particularly this kind, where a person can't help what he or she is).

On top of that, it's not like they're being forced to do anything etc.

What do you think force is?

What I was originally asking there was more like- "If there was no legitimate concern about people losing control like that, would you would still support those laws?"

I might change the law, to make it only illegal to target somebody for what they can not practically change, such as race and sexual orientation, or clinical retardation and disability.
There is no possible use in pressuring people on those points other than making them feel like shit and ultimately take their own lives, or live a lie which could be just as bad.

On issues people CAN change, whether that's their religion, or being overweight, or other behavior, there may be some possible use to personal criticism, even if it's not phrased in the most polite way.
I'm not saying there IS use to it, just that there might be. You'd have to convince me it would do more good than harm.

I was arguing against that law, because the people who got violent really are to blame in that situation.

Not if the other person was trying to provoke them into violence. We may be more peaceful, on average, than we used to be, but pretty much everybody still has a breaking point if you say or do the right thing, and know which buttons to push.

With enough money, I could hire people to do research on you, and bully you for weeks (all different people, if you want), retired CIA profilers, psychologists, actors, make sure everything goes wrong so you're at your limit, gaslighting you, lots of little accidents, and then send somebody particularly obnoxious to say just the right thing at just the right time, and you'd hit them -- and off to jail you go. And enough lawyers to skirt the law and avoid any successful challenge of wrongdoing on my part.
If you put enough effort into it, you could provoke Gandhi to clock somebody.
You fail to appreciate how ultimately easy it is to screw with somebody's mind and drive them to the breaking point if you're really trying.

[EquALLity]

Ok, you've convinced me on the general idea of it again.

I don't see a point in arguing that that law is possible when I don't want it to exist anymore, but there are still a few things I am iffy about. I'm not on a computer right now and can't copy or paste, so I'm just going to list things.

1) The discrimination wouldn't be against them for their religion, it would be against them for their bigotry.
2) What are you getting at with the force question? Are you saying they're being forced to listen when they don't necessarily want to? If yes, I just remembered/realized. Or were you saying something else?

Hm, I guess that's it.

[brimstoneSalad]

1) The discrimination wouldn't be against them for their religion, it would be against them for their bigotry.

Tell them that, they're the ones who insist that their religions require them to be bigots.

2) What are you getting at with the force question? Are you saying they're being forced to listen when they don't necessarily want to? If yes, I just remembered/realized. Or were you saying something else?

I was asking what you were getting at. How do you think they aren't being forced to do anything?

Yes, they're being made to listen to insults. They're also being forcefully prohibited from doing something anybody else can do -- buy cake -- they're made to leave the store. If they try to buy it anyway (e.g. take the cake and leave the money), the owners will call the police and the cops will come and electrocute them to death.
Pretty much everything in life is force in one way or another. Either you're forcefully prohibited from action, or forcefully made to do an action, or forcefully acted upon. In this case, it's all three in many different ways.


As to laws: It's not a question of IF you can write it, given enough pages and chapters dealing with every detail. You can make any kind of law, if you make it long and complicated enough.

Did you understand my point about how and why that's a problem?

[EquALLity]

Tell them that, they're the ones who insist that their religions require them to be bigots.

Hahaha!

But then there are some people apart of their religions who aren't bigots.

Oh, but they're not REAL Christians!

They're also being forcefully prohibited from doing something anybody else can do -- buy cake -- they're made to leave the store.

I was just talking about the free speech issue there, actually.

Did you understand my point about how and why that's a problem?

I think so. It lets big companies win cases that they shouldn't against ordinary people.

I should probably still look into it more though. I can't find anything for, "why complex laws are bad". What should I type in the bar?