Meh, making people hire (or not fire) those they don't like is evil. If I don't want to spend my money on this guy, I shouldn't have to. If the reason I don't want to is that I'm ageist -- well, so what? Yeah that sucks for both of us, but making ageists spend tons of money to hire old people they don't want to be around, or making racists spend tons of money to hire black people, or whatever, is no solution.
1) hurts ageists, racists, etc (that's quite a lot of people, counting mild cases)
2) discourages ageists from starting businesses
3) discourages ageists from hiring anyone
4) makes old people feel entitled to work at ageist businesses, when perhaps it'd be better if they didn't expect to be able to work anywhere and put more effort into finding a better fit
5) harms productivity and therefore the economy (via making some people uncomfortable at their own business)
6) makes it hard to fire old, black, gay, female, etc, persons for vague but legitimate reasons, or reasons one doesn't want to tell them
On the other hand, if an ageist doesn't hire an old guy who was best for the job then the harm done is roughly:
1) the old guy gets the second best job available to him
2) the company gets the second best employee available to them
1) hurts ageists, racists, etc (that's quite a lot of people, counting mild cases)
2) discourages ageists from starting businesses
3) discourages ageists from hiring anyone
Well, they can not apply their ageist, racist views in the workplace. It's not a basic civil right to be an ageist or racist.
4) makes old people feel entitled to work at ageist businesses, when perhaps it'd be better if they didn't expect to be able to work anywhere and put more effort into finding a better fit
Why? The case in question will be decided (I assume) on whether the employee was fired due to his age or productivity.
5) harms productivity and therefore the economy (via making some people uncomfortable at their own business)
Productivity is harmed when people like the guy in this story can't get a job, too. Seems to me if you don't exclude people from certain jobs based on irrelevant parameters, economy usually benefits.
6) makes it hard to fire old, black, gay, female, etc, persons for vague but legitimate reasons, or reasons one doesn't want to tell them
I doubt old, black, gay, female employees are particularly hard to fire, at least in the US.
1) the old guy gets the second best job available to him
These issues usually rise when it's not the rare case but the common case. So, the old guy will not get the second best job but perhaps the twentieth best job, or none at all. Take a look around you (assuming you work in software) and count how many people over 50 you see.
There is not a simple answer to the conundrum, but I agree with xenophanes in my preference: I would rather working relationships remained totally voluntary, however stupid people's reasoning may be.
You are right that when unfair discrimination (or any stupid opinion in general) is widespread, the result is unjust--and can even cross the line from annoyance to injury. Small affronts can add up to oppression; death by a thousand cuts. I wish there were a form of redress beyond making papercuts illegal (something I'd rather not do).
The main consolation I see is that making the action illegal may not help much except in marginal cases. If the law says one thing and society widely believes another, the latter is going to rule what actually happens--either through legislative change or jury selection or selective reporting or something. I believe the only real secure refuge from widespread discrimination is victory in the court of public opinion. One must rely on the natural justice of the cause and prove naysayers wrong.
It is not complete protection, but I think it more just than the alternative: making a particular motivation for hiring or firing illegal. It is important to me that economic transactions be totally voluntary for both parties. And it is very important to me that private people be able to hold and act upon stupid beliefs. The invasion becomes particularly evident if I turn the situation around: Would I want to defend my actions before a court? Would I want a lawyer examining my motivation behind hiring this plumber, quitting that job, or buying a third car, to ensure they are not tainted by some vestige of racism? Heaven forbid!
I don't have a great answer for it. But I think, weighing the two harms, I would rather suffer under misguided, widespread discrimination than permit the courts to question the beliefs and motivations that go into a private transaction. The former is an evil that I think I am willing to consciously accept as the price of the latter freedom.
More realistically the "inefficiency" item #1 is that the "old guy" doesn't get any of the available jobs in his preferred industry and has to settle for a job well outside or below his area of expertise at significantly less pay. This is not a small inefficiency for him.
If there is no correlation between productivity and age/race/whatever then it is a massive inefficiency in the labor market for there to be such arbitrary discrimination.
I would be surprised if there is no correlation between age or race (or gender, and others) and productivity.
For age, it's hard to guess if the productivity is more or less for older people (the extra wisdom and experience helps a lot!). It must vary by field. It'd be pretty shocking if no fields at all have significant correlations between productivity and age.
Beliefs That Hurt People != Beliefs That Are False
File that under "things you're not allowed to say." But it's worth asking what you think it would be just for society to do if it turned out, on some topic, that the ageists/racists/sexists/religionists/orientationists?/etc. . . . were right.
What should society do in that case? Absolutely nothing. Or more precisely: eliminate any remaining anti-voluntary laws. In a fully voluntary society, what "society should do" is a non-issue.
As for individuals, they should do what they think is best. So some will think it's bad to hire X persons b/c they are, in fact, 3% worse at their jobs. And others will think it's bad if no X persons can get jobs, and will hire them at full salary to be nice, or to use in marketing literature. And others will be happy to hire X persons, but at 3.1% less than the market rate would be for non-Xs with the same skill set. etc. shrug.
A clarifying example: Suppose the sexists are right, and women are poor programmers. They're okay students and can fight their way through an undergrad program, but give them a year or two in the workforce to come up to speed, and they never really develop an ability to attack hard problems. They just kind of flail at problems unproductively, rely on peers to bail them out, generally make a mess of the codebase, and cry if you criticize them.
Suppose the world is like that. And suppose, then, we have a woman who bucks the trend -- really can code, but is new to the industry.
Which is the better world?
(A) The talented woman can't get a job, or has to go to extreme lengths to prove herself, over and over again, throughout her career. But everyone around her is free to run their business as they choose, hence most women don't even try to go into the field.
(B) Employers are legally required to hire equally qualified candidates regardless of gender. Hence, many women in the graduating class of C.S. majors land jobs and are predictably incompetent. But the one talented woman also gets a job.
Personally, I find (A) vastly preferable. As an interesting side note, the hypothetical situation actually exists in some fields (think heavy labor), and--despite the occasional injustice--I think everyone is actually pretty happy with (A).
Yeah I agree. (B) is a style of playing God, and it's the use of force.
Fundamentally, it's irrational to force people who disagree with you to do things your way if they don't see why it's best -- to make them go against their best judgment (also irrational to deny they have best judgment, attribute their ideas to things other than thought, and so deny the disagreement exists at all, and forcibly override them on that basis). The only rational thing to do if you want a (B) style world is persuade people, which is not at all the same as campaigning for laws to force people.
And by the way, straight, white, Christian males go to extraordinary and ridiculous lengths to prove themselves, all the time. For example, working super hard in school for 10 years to gain credentials. That's ridiculous and only loosely correlated to actual merit. And I, as someone who chose not to do that, have to prove myself in other ways, which can be hard sometimes, but so what? In general, proving yourself and gaining a reputation is a hard problem that does take effort to solve. And a system where people don't have to prove themselves to the satisfaction of their employers/clients/customers/spouses/friends/etc would be insane.
Which is the larger inefficiency: People acting according to their best judgement, but they happen to be wrong? Or people unable to act according to their best judgement because they can't document that their motivations are pure?
http://www.mercurynews.com/traffic/ci_15147417