You're going to have a hard time showing someone discriminated based on something that nobody knew about.
Trying to prove someone's mental state is a pretty hard thing to do in general. Trying to prove that someone knew you were part Cherokee is probably about as hard as proving that they fired a member of a protected class *because* they were a member of that class.
I think we agree. I think I just took us on a tangent. Requiring an employer to provide "a reason" (i.e. as opposed to a good reason) is basically the same as not requiring a reason.
Just because you are white, doesn't mean you can't have a little Cherokee in you. Assuming a Cherokee is white just because they appear white sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I guess I just don't see this as a case of "justice has been done" (although maybe it was) as much as it exemplifies the wastefulness of our legal system.
If lawyers made $1,000,000 per trial, and you sue someone for causing you $10 of damage. Justice would be for the defendant to pay you $1,000,010 to cover your damages and legal fees (not including any pain, suffering, and inconvenience).
But this system is broken because it costs $2million to cause $10 of justice to be done. Obviously real life isn't this bad. But it is still ridiculous that it costs $X to ensure that $X of justice is done (i.e. lawyers got 2/3 of an anual salary I'm estimating 1/3 for each side), and your coworker got 2/3 of an annual salary.
How to determine whether a particular teacher is incompetent is a separate issue. The issue I'm talking about is that a teacher (assuming they are incompetent), can't actually be fired. As long as the teachers show up to work and don't assault anyone they get paid. The school district can remove them from the classroom, but that just means they get paid to sit in a room for 6 hours a day to not teach.
Maybe all the teachers being paid to sit in a room are all perfectly good teachers. Maybe there is no such thing as an incompetent teacher (unlike every other profession). School districts are really going out of their way to get some perfectly good teachers that they just don't like away from teaching children, even if it means they are paying them to surf the internet and read books.
Maybe they could have gotten over their differences and avoided this huge waste of resources. Surely losing 1 year of salary for 0 years of productivity must have been a tough loss for those invested in the success of that company (owners, other employees, etc).
Why was the penalty for wrongly firing your coworker so high? Did it take her a year to find a new job?
Well, many employers strongly discourage a second job.
I was not even referring to a 2nd simultaneous job. I was referring to a subsequent job.
I never said they could cut it off forever
They are not even cutting it off at all if you can collect unemployment benefits. They are only cutting off the income that you get from them, not the income you can get from anywhere. Just like how you quitting only cuts off the productivity they get from you, not necessarily the total productivity they get from everyone.
vast majority of cases they can cause a whole lot more trouble for you than you can for them (unless you break the law).
I think this is a good thing. A corporation is a large group of people that typically has a larger impact on society than a single person. It makes perfect sense that a single person would not be able to severely disrupt an entire corporation under normal circumstances.
I think this imbalance makes sense for the same reason that I think there should be an imbalance in voting power between states with large populations and states with small populations (i.e. to keep the balance of voting power between individuals the same). If a person had as much power as a corporation, it would mean that that person had much more power than every individual person in that corporation.
Are you telling me you believe that an education in 2014 that will leave a student with six figures of debt is a better education than an education in the 1960s when many students left school with money in their pockets?
I would not say that the state of tuition prices is not better than the past. But I don't think the actual quality of the education is worse. Also, the number of ways to become educated (aside from 4 year universities) is truly amazing in 2014.
I think we are in a bit of an interesting time right now where we are starting to question the idea that a degree from a 4 year university is a good investment at any price, but this is just one hiccup on the way to a much better society
You're looking only at consumer goods, which actually make up just a fraction of the cost of our lives. You want to bet whether the house that was built in 1953 that is affordable to the average family, isn't better than the same house (more likely a condo) that the average family can afford today?
You can get houses in detroit for pretty cheap. You may not want to live in detroit. I would not want to go back to living in the 80's for many of the same reasons. The reasons that houses are expensive now is because they are bigger and better. You are not forced to by a big modern house that is free of asbestos and aluminum wiring.
Houses are also more expensive because the land that the houses are built on is more valuable (i.e. more desirable to more people). People who bought houses in the middle of lemon orchards in the 60's now find their houses to be in very nice city centers. Those people are certainly better off now than when they initially made their investment. There is nothing that stops you from buying a nice house in the middle of nowhere and hope it becomes a nice location.
Also interest rates got up to 20% for a 30 year mortgage in the 80's. Now it's at like 4%.
You really think the houses built today are going to last a hundred years? Do you think the materials used are anywhere near what was used 50-100 years ago?
I think absolutely materials used today are better than materials used 100 years ago. This is why new houses on average garner a higher price than older houses. They are safer for things like earthquakes, fires, floods, infestations, etc, they are easier to upgrade, they are more energy efficient.
You've been so brainwashed by marketing that you believe your life equals the consumer goods you own. The iPhone and the LG TV are the markers of your existence. They will be gone, and after your inevitable reverse mortgage runs out you will leave nothing behind, because our society has been structured so that your children will be poorer than you are.
The fact that I gravitated toward consumer goods does not mean that I am brainwashed anymore than the fact that you gravitated towards only 4 year college tuitions and house prices means you are brainwashed into thinking that those are the only things that matter.
For that, you can thank the lower exposure children have to lead.
I count lower lead exposure as a benefit of not living in the past (i.e. we are better off now and our society is wealthier as a result). We had a
And police forces armed with military hardware. And the highest incarceration rate in the developed world.
The higher incarceration rate only accounts for a fraction of the lower violence and crime. In fact about half of the incarcerated people are in prison for non violent drug offenses. The fact that we consider victimless crimes motivated by drug addiction to be crimes is unfortunate, but it is not even just crime that is lower. Violent crime is also much lower. If the violent criminals we are imprisoning are leading to lower violent crimes, then that part of the prison system we have is working.
That your coworker got a lawyer and a year's salary from the company. It's probably good for your coworker, but in total it actually seems like quite a tragic waste of time and resources in total which is bad for the economy and society.
I had verizon DSL for a whole year. Then 3 days before I was to move, it stopped working. A call to support led to the claim that the phone line from my wall to the DSL modem was too long. Despite being that long the whole year, the technical support representative told me that the modem was "getting tired" trying to send data through such a long wire for such a long time, and now it was "too tired" to work.
I thought about bringing up the semi-relevant fact that I was in my last year of a computer science program, but really I have no idea how DSL modems work, although I'm pretty sure they don't get tired and need 1 hour breaks every 12 months, if the phone line to the wall is 12 feet instead of 6 feet.
I was once a poor person. Even back then I believed in fairness over loyalty to my economic class. I wasn't assuming I would one day become rich (and I am still not what I would consider rich).
That said I don't know who the bully was (if anyone) in this situation. But I am certainly no fan of comcast.
The only way Comcast knows how to respond to criticism is to call your work and tell on you? This seems like a rather unorthodox and desperate way to deal with criticism. The only thing more shocking is that it seems to have worked. What the hell did the guy say to comcast "Fuck you guys! I steal office supplies from my employer!"?
This is the same argument that small red states make as to why they need the same voting power as big blue states. It's not fair if the big blue states can tell the little red states what to do just because they have more people.
They can not cut off 100% of your income on a whim. They can stop paying you money. Whether the money they pay you is 100% of your income is up to you. If a company hired you as their only employee, you quitting would effectively be a 100% drop in productivity. Does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to quit?
What are other sources of income? Well how about a new job, and unemployment benefits for the time you spend looking for a new job.
If the US is based on freedom, how come I am not free to marry whoever I want? I tried to marry Angelina Jolie, and she wouldn't let me. What country is this? Mexico?
The fact that union participation is low might be a good thing in many situations. I am not in a union, but it is because I have desirable skills and don't require union protections. Maybe one day the only jobs that exist (for humans) will be jobs that don't require union protection (i.e. jobs that are not treated like commodities).
Also to say that unions are too powerful is not necessarily disputing the claim that unions used to be more powerful in the past.
Look at teachers unions in California. They have made it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers, but they haven't really succeeded at all in raising salaries to a level that I would expect professionals in a field as important as education. So does this mean the teachers union is too powerful? I don't know. I think it makes them bad for society. I certainly wouldn't want a union for nuclear power plant workers that was powerful enough to make firing of incompetent workers impossible.
I don't think the fact that the teacher's union is currently bad necessarily means that it can't ever be a good thing. I think it would be good if the teachers union fought for raising teacher salaries to double what they are, and did not fight for protections for incompetent teachers. But maybe if they did that and succeeded, teachers wouldn't need unions anymore (i.e. like how engineers don't need unions).
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You're going to have a hard time showing someone discriminated based on something that nobody knew about.
Trying to prove someone's mental state is a pretty hard thing to do in general. Trying to prove that someone knew you were part Cherokee is probably about as hard as proving that they fired a member of a protected class *because* they were a member of that class.
I think we agree. I think I just took us on a tangent. Requiring an employer to provide "a reason" (i.e. as opposed to a good reason) is basically the same as not requiring a reason.
Just because you are white, doesn't mean you can't have a little Cherokee in you. Assuming a Cherokee is white just because they appear white sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I guess I just don't see this as a case of "justice has been done" (although maybe it was) as much as it exemplifies the wastefulness of our legal system.
If lawyers made $1,000,000 per trial, and you sue someone for causing you $10 of damage. Justice would be for the defendant to pay you $1,000,010 to cover your damages and legal fees (not including any pain, suffering, and inconvenience).
But this system is broken because it costs $2million to cause $10 of justice to be done. Obviously real life isn't this bad. But it is still ridiculous that it costs $X to ensure that $X of justice is done (i.e. lawyers got 2/3 of an anual salary I'm estimating 1/3 for each side), and your coworker got 2/3 of an annual salary.
So to teach this one manager a lesson you punish the whole company? Why not just fire that manager if she is so terrible?
How to determine whether a particular teacher is incompetent is a separate issue. The issue I'm talking about is that a teacher (assuming they are incompetent), can't actually be fired. As long as the teachers show up to work and don't assault anyone they get paid. The school district can remove them from the classroom, but that just means they get paid to sit in a room for 6 hours a day to not teach.
Maybe all the teachers being paid to sit in a room are all perfectly good teachers. Maybe there is no such thing as an incompetent teacher (unlike every other profession). School districts are really going out of their way to get some perfectly good teachers that they just don't like away from teaching children, even if it means they are paying them to surf the internet and read books.
I mean "legal" in the sense of (the law). There can be no punishment described by laws (i.e. by the government) for speech.
Maybe they could have gotten over their differences and avoided this huge waste of resources. Surely losing 1 year of salary for 0 years of productivity must have been a tough loss for those invested in the success of that company (owners, other employees, etc).
Why was the penalty for wrongly firing your coworker so high? Did it take her a year to find a new job?
Well, many employers strongly discourage a second job.
I was not even referring to a 2nd simultaneous job. I was referring to a subsequent job.
I never said they could cut it off forever
They are not even cutting it off at all if you can collect unemployment benefits. They are only cutting off the income that you get from them, not the income you can get from anywhere. Just like how you quitting only cuts off the productivity they get from you, not necessarily the total productivity they get from everyone.
vast majority of cases they can cause a whole lot more trouble for you than you can for them (unless you break the law).
I think this is a good thing. A corporation is a large group of people that typically has a larger impact on society than a single person. It makes perfect sense that a single person would not be able to severely disrupt an entire corporation under normal circumstances.
I think this imbalance makes sense for the same reason that I think there should be an imbalance in voting power between states with large populations and states with small populations (i.e. to keep the balance of voting power between individuals the same). If a person had as much power as a corporation, it would mean that that person had much more power than every individual person in that corporation.
Are you telling me you believe that an education in 2014 that will leave a student with six figures of debt is a better education than an education in the 1960s when many students left school with money in their pockets?
I would not say that the state of tuition prices is not better than the past. But I don't think the actual quality of the education is worse. Also, the number of ways to become educated (aside from 4 year universities) is truly amazing in 2014.
I think we are in a bit of an interesting time right now where we are starting to question the idea that a degree from a 4 year university is a good investment at any price, but this is just one hiccup on the way to a much better society
You're looking only at consumer goods, which actually make up just a fraction of the cost of our lives. You want to bet whether the house that was built in 1953 that is affordable to the average family, isn't better than the same house (more likely a condo) that the average family can afford today?
You can get houses in detroit for pretty cheap. You may not want to live in detroit. I would not want to go back to living in the 80's for many of the same reasons. The reasons that houses are expensive now is because they are bigger and better. You are not forced to by a big modern house that is free of asbestos and aluminum wiring.
Houses are also more expensive because the land that the houses are built on is more valuable (i.e. more desirable to more people). People who bought houses in the middle of lemon orchards in the 60's now find their houses to be in very nice city centers. Those people are certainly better off now than when they initially made their investment. There is nothing that stops you from buying a nice house in the middle of nowhere and hope it becomes a nice location.
Also interest rates got up to 20% for a 30 year mortgage in the 80's. Now it's at like 4%.
You really think the houses built today are going to last a hundred years? Do you think the materials used are anywhere near what was used 50-100 years ago?
I think absolutely materials used today are better than materials used 100 years ago. This is why new houses on average garner a higher price than older houses. They are safer for things like earthquakes, fires, floods, infestations, etc, they are easier to upgrade, they are more energy efficient.
You've been so brainwashed by marketing that you believe your life equals the consumer goods you own. The iPhone and the LG TV are the markers of your existence. They will be gone, and after your inevitable reverse mortgage runs out you will leave nothing behind, because our society has been structured so that your children will be poorer than you are.
The fact that I gravitated toward consumer goods does not mean that I am brainwashed anymore than the fact that you gravitated towards only 4 year college tuitions and house prices means you are brainwashed into thinking that those are the only things that matter.
For that, you can thank the lower exposure children have to lead.
I count lower lead exposure as a benefit of not living in the past (i.e. we are better off now and our society is wealthier as a result). We had a
And police forces armed with military hardware. And the highest incarceration rate in the developed world.
The higher incarceration rate only accounts for a fraction of the lower violence and crime. In fact about half of the incarcerated people are in prison for non violent drug offenses. The fact that we consider victimless crimes motivated by drug addiction to be crimes is unfortunate, but it is not even just crime that is lower. Violent crime is also much lower. If the violent criminals we are imprisoning are leading to lower violent crimes, then that part of the prison system we have is working.
Ye
That your coworker got a lawyer and a year's salary from the company. It's probably good for your coworker, but in total it actually seems like quite a tragic waste of time and resources in total which is bad for the economy and society.
I had verizon DSL for a whole year. Then 3 days before I was to move, it stopped working. A call to support led to the claim that the phone line from my wall to the DSL modem was too long. Despite being that long the whole year, the technical support representative told me that the modem was "getting tired" trying to send data through such a long wire for such a long time, and now it was "too tired" to work.
I thought about bringing up the semi-relevant fact that I was in my last year of a computer science program, but really I have no idea how DSL modems work, although I'm pretty sure they don't get tired and need 1 hour breaks every 12 months, if the phone line to the wall is 12 feet instead of 6 feet.
I was once a poor person. Even back then I believed in fairness over loyalty to my economic class. I wasn't assuming I would one day become rich (and I am still not what I would consider rich).
That said I don't know who the bully was (if anyone) in this situation. But I am certainly no fan of comcast.
Customers are not always right... But that said, yes we need some laws to get rid of this ridiculous cable situation we find ourselves in.
The only way Comcast knows how to respond to criticism is to call your work and tell on you? This seems like a rather unorthodox and desperate way to deal with criticism. The only thing more shocking is that it seems to have worked. What the hell did the guy say to comcast "Fuck you guys! I steal office supplies from my employer!"?
Freedom of speech means that all speech is free of *legal* consequences.
I suppose it could refer to comcast's first amendment right to tell this person's employer anything it wanted.
This is the same argument that small red states make as to why they need the same voting power as big blue states. It's not fair if the big blue states can tell the little red states what to do just because they have more people.
They can not cut off 100% of your income on a whim. They can stop paying you money. Whether the money they pay you is 100% of your income is up to you. If a company hired you as their only employee, you quitting would effectively be a 100% drop in productivity. Does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to quit?
What are other sources of income? Well how about a new job, and unemployment benefits for the time you spend looking for a new job.
Everyone is a member of a protected class.
"Right to work" to me sounds like the government must provide you with a job if you request one.
Why is that a good thing?
If the US is based on freedom, how come I am not free to marry whoever I want? I tried to marry Angelina Jolie, and she wouldn't let me. What country is this? Mexico?
The fact that union participation is low might be a good thing in many situations. I am not in a union, but it is because I have desirable skills and don't require union protections. Maybe one day the only jobs that exist (for humans) will be jobs that don't require union protection (i.e. jobs that are not treated like commodities).
Also to say that unions are too powerful is not necessarily disputing the claim that unions used to be more powerful in the past.
Look at teachers unions in California. They have made it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers, but they haven't really succeeded at all in raising salaries to a level that I would expect professionals in a field as important as education. So does this mean the teachers union is too powerful? I don't know. I think it makes them bad for society. I certainly wouldn't want a union for nuclear power plant workers that was powerful enough to make firing of incompetent workers impossible.
I don't think the fact that the teacher's union is currently bad necessarily means that it can't ever be a good thing. I think it would be good if the teachers union fought for raising teacher salaries to double what they are, and did not fight for protections for incompetent teachers. But maybe if they did that and succeeded, teachers wouldn't need unions anymore (i.e. like how engineers don't need unions).
We can never really know the true motivations for people's actions. So let's give all our money to lawyers just to be safe.