kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (09/29/86)
[ Umm, how do equal employment laws (known to some as 'employment
quotas') favor those already employed?
You are right, they don't. But they do favor some groups (blacks,
hispanics) at the expense of others (non-protected minorities) and the
general population. As well as creating an additional paperwork
burden for employers. And violating people's right of free
association.
In practice, such a law is brutally unfair. Employers can be found
guilty of discrimination if a protected minority group is under-
represented or over-represented to within a five percent confidence
level. This means that if several employers were totally
"colorblind", and that members of all races were equally qualified,
and if none of the individuals had any preference to associate mainly
with people of the same race, that 5% of the employers will be found
guilty of discrimination! The idea of a statistical proof to send a
person to jail is not wholly new. In the dark ages, judges sometimes
flipped coins or rolled dice to decide on the guilt of the defendant.
This is the same principle.
The idea that one can be found guilty of discriminating against a
RACE, rather than against MEMBERS of that race, is somewhat scary to
me. It implies that GROUPS have rights in and of themselves. If a
person can be sent to prison for discrimination even if not a single
person can be found who claims he was discriminated against, the
floodgates are wide open for even more radical interpretations of the
constitution.
Its beginning to sound as if your libertarian government would
still be rather highly centralized, with various bodies keeping an
eye on each other.
I don't think it matters whether it is centralized or not. What
matters is what powers it has. I would certainly keep the three parts
of the federal goverments. Checks and balances are very important.
Can you please describe the actual structure of your proposed
governmental institutions?
There are hundreds of possibilities. Dissolve the state and local
governments and just have a federal government. Or dissolve the
federal government and have only state governments. It doesn't
matter. What matters is what powers the government has. The powers
it would have would be:
1) Catching, convicting, and punishing crooks.
2) Defense.
3) Making new laws and removing old ones.
Part 3 would be VERY small.
...Keith
[ Well, them laws was created to try and correct a perceived imbalance
in the employment of minorities. By your rule - if the electorate
allows it to stand, they want it - the American people wants these
laws. I think your analogy to the middle ages is rather far fetched.
Further, the idea that races (or if you prefer, individuals of a given
race) are discriminated against is a fact. If I deny every individual
of a given skin color a job because that skin color, I discriminate.
I can cloth it in whatever color paper I like, but that's
discrimination against that race.n
I don't see how you are going to stop your libertarian government
from becoming very like the current one. The powers you grant are
very similar to the original ones granted the US Federal government
(surpise! I noticed that). What's the diff? I thought defence was to
be privatized - if its going to be voluntarily funded, why give it to
the government? - and there wouldn't be any new laws, I thought.
Give the government the right to make new laws, and we're right back
where we started. Remember, we're making this government to last, not
to tweak every 10 minutes. - CWM]
-------