Should Businesses Be Allowed to Discriminate?

[brimstoneSalad]

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?

If you search things like "simple laws", you'll find a little. Unfortunately, most of what you find is extremist libertarian garbage:

http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/15/c ... imple-laws

The author makes a few good points, but he also takes it much too far.

Government needs to be powerful, but it also needs to be transparent and comprehensible. When it isn't, you empower only lawyers and huge corporations that can afford to hire them, and your disempower regular people.

If all of law was simple enough you could read it over the weekend with some commitment, there would be virtually no need for lawyers, and these big companies and powerful people couldn't hope to trample the little guy. Knowledge is power, and setting an even playing field where everybody can afford to know the rules equalizes things.

As it stands now, lawmakers can barely make time to read the laws they're passing; massive tomes. And case-law builds up faster than anybody can keep up with court opinions.
And it's happening on multiple levels; federal, state, county, municipal.
No human being could possibly read or understand all of the laws that exist for any given jurisdiction, and even if you disregarded all past laws and devoted 24 hours a day to nothing but reading law, you couldn't even keep up with the rate this stuff is churned out.

It's a problem.
Libertarians are offering the wrong solution, mistaking "small government" for simple government, and imagining a lack of regulation fixes the problem (In many regards, it makes it worse).

[EquALLity]

^How do you think that the problem could be solved? What can we do to make the laws simpler?

I'll check that out now.

[brimstoneSalad]

^How do you think that the problem could be solved? What can we do to make the laws simpler?

In programming, this is called a hack, not to be confused with a crack.

It usually occurs when the program becomes so bloated and incomprehensible that rather than chasing down a bug and fixing it at its root, the programmer writes another function to squash the bug (or the bug's apparent manifestation), which then makes the program even more bloated and incomprehensible.
The solution, for software, is to refactor the code and basically start over with the structure and underlying rules, rebuilding everything (often from scratch) in a much cleaner and more organized way.

The article I linked to touches on one of the issues of why this is not so in politics. Lawmakers often campaign and are elected to do a particular thing, and their efficacy is measured by laws passed. They do what they came to do, as quickly and easily as possible, and the mess they make in doing so is somebody else's problem. They neither understand nor have any interest in refactoring existing law.

FOR EXAMPLE:

If there was a law making homosexuality and rape illegal, lawmakers might pass ANOTHER law that makes homosexuality legal. Why? Because that's one change instead of two.
The proper way to do it is to remove the original law, and replace it with a simpler law that just makes rape illegal (two things to do, too much trouble).

Refactoring does not mean changing the ultimate function, or user experience created, but in streamlining the rules that get there (and sometimes removing bugs while they're at it).
In refactoring, if you originally had two laws -- one making homosexuality and rape illegal, and one making homosexuality legal -- you'd just write one law to begin with: Rape is illegal.

How would the law be refactored?
At this point, it would probably cost billions of dollars, hiring tens of thousands of legal professionals, and even computer scientists to create software to help optimize the process and cross-reference laws and find redundancies and contradictions with text analysis, as well as economists, psychologists, etc. A new agency or governmental branch would have to be created to do it, and keep doing it to keep things clean over time (because law makers aren't going to).
You'd also have to NOT have political gridlock, or have to give the agency authority to overcome said gridlock, so that the legislature could actually pass obvious needed amendments and approve the refactoring as it was ongoing.
You'd probably need a constitutional amendment.

Just a guess, though. I don't like to speculate.
It probably won't happen.

But my point is, we probably shouldn't be going out of our way to make the problem worse than it is.

[knot]

I voted "yes", but hear me out before you call me the spawn of lucifer
If I was gay I would never wanna buy a cake from homophobes and support their business. If there was some law forcing homophobes to sell me cakes, I wouldnt be able to tell the arseholes from the good guys and I`d end up accidentally buying a cake from some hateful individual who would in all likelihood piss on the frosting or take a dump in the chocolate mix at the first opportunity

I`ll admit this attitude might not fly everywhere. Some places, like the Southern US are too FUBAR with conservative christian idiocy

[brimstoneSalad]

You should really read the whole thread.

If I was gay I would never wanna buy a cake from homophobes and support their business.

You have no idea.
It's not a matter of WANT. Often, there's little choice. What this law does is turn little choice into NO choice. What LGBT want is to be treated like human beings.

When LGBT and their allies go shopping, they intentionally shop at friendly businesses when they have the ability to do so. And NO, it's not a big secret when a business owner is a bigot. Business owners still have the right to plaster up hateful propaganda all over their stores. If they don't want business from the gay community, they have the ability to dissuade that business.
All this is, is a question of the patron having the right to choose to shop there anyway, and not be denied service.
There's a substantial network that helps LGBT identify these businesses (It's even easier now, thanks to the internet). Just like there's a network that helps vegans find vegan friendly places to eat.

If there was some law forcing homophobes to sell me cakes, I wouldnt be able to tell the arseholes from the good guys and I`d end up accidentally buying a cake from some hateful individual who would in all likelihood piss on the frosting or take a dump in the chocolate mix at the first opportunity

1. Bullshit.
2. If they did that, they would go to jail, along with probably losing everything they owned to a civil suit. Businesses are still obligated to serve safe food. Stirring shit into your chocolate would be potentially lethal. To the same ends, they aren't allowed to put rat poison in your cake either.
3. Even if the business owner is gay friendly, or a bigot, employees will not necessarily think the same way. Most employees, even working for a bigot, will be professional and respectful. The hateful employees, even working for a gay friendly boss, will still spit/jizz on/in your food. This is overwhelmingly common for servers at restaurants, regardless of the owners.

I`ll admit this attitude might not fly everywhere. Some places, like the Southern US are too FUBAR with conservative christian idiocy

Do you, or do you not, support discrimination? You can't pick and choose where you allow it, and only allow it in liberal areas where the conservatives suffer from it.

[knot]

ok, I read all pages and can see your point. I`ll revert my vote. Maybe I`ve been drinking too much Sam Harris sponsored libertarian kool-aid on this.
All i want is just the homophobia to be fully visible so I`d know what places to dodge (and where to hold gay parades : ) )

However isn`t your line of thinking analogous to saying people shouldn`t be allowed to deny the holocaust or is this different?

[brimstoneSalad]

However isn`t your line of thinking analogous to saying people shouldn`t be allowed to deny the holocaust or is this different?

They can put up propaganda saying the holocaust never happened, they just can't deny service to Jews (or Nazis).
One is what you can say or express, the other is what you can do to those you hate (beyond free and non-personally directed expression of an idea).

Has Harris said he supports this kind of discrimination? I'd like to see a link. That would surprise me a bit. Even Penn (famous libertarian) is against that bullshit.

[knot]

It's buried somewhere in this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm8xFaM-raY

The quote is something like, "I tend to take a libertarian stance on this, that is people should be free to ruin their reputation and business if they want"