You raise a thought-provoking point. For example, a company that basis your salary on aptitude tests (or genetic tests - hello Gattica!). It isn’t fair if you didn’t have control over your “intelligence genes” so to say. But, this is very fuzzy right? Your intelligence and aptitude for a job is determined by so many factors, and any tests would struggle to capture the information properly, I think.
By comparison, the car insurance test of gender was straightforward (just look at the letter on the document!). I would hesitate to apply my original statement to such a fuzzy situation.
Yeah I don't have a good answer either. I tend to take a more pragmatic approach, as opposed to a moral one, asking myself, what behaviour do we want to encourage? "Discriminating" based on intelligence => meritocracy => probably good. Young men subsidising pregnant women => possibly good (for Western nations at least). What does discriminating of car insurance do - no idea, possibly discourages men from driving and driving recklessly, but the effect is probably minimal and might not even be there, so...
