trc (04/19/83)
Response to Guy Harris First, how could the employer know how you voted? The closest he could come is to fire anyone belonging to the opposing party. In order to determine if a threat made is coercion, one has to look at the results of the threat being carried out. Immediately after the person is fired, will he be in extreme pain, lose his life or owned property, or otherwise have rights violated? A job is not a right, it is a contract between employer and employee, with certain allowable ways of breaking it. If one of these ways is used, it is just. If the contract is violated, the employee has legal rights that can be enforced. Tom Craver houti!trc
guy (04/20/83)
First, how could the employer know how you voted? The closest he
could come is to fire anyone belonging to the opposing party.
I believe the implication is that if Bryan won, the employees could kiss their
jobs goodbye, regardless of whom they voted for.
In order to determine if a threat made is coercion, one has to look at
the results of the threat being carried out. Immediately after the
person is fired, will he be in extreme pain, lose his life or owned
property, or otherwise have rights violated? A job is not a right,
it is a contract between employer and employee, with certain allowable
ways of breaking it. If one of these ways is used, it is just. If
the contract is violated, the employee has legal rights that can be
enforced.
At that time, I suspect the statement "the employee has legal rights that can
be enforced" was half-true. The employee may have had legal rights; with
enough highly-paid lawyers (which a considerably less highly-paid working-class
person couldn't afford) you can often keep legal rights from being enforced.
(Another case where money translates to power.) In the best of all possible
worlds, the Objectivist analysis of money and power may work; unfortunately,
'taint so in this world. This is certainly not a just legal system, but any
political philosophy which depends on the legal system being just and fair
isn't practical.
Guy Harris
RLG Corporation
{seismo,mcnc,we13}!rlgvax!guy