I'm not sure you can be effective if you do it reactively with lawsuits; who can afford to sue a Wall Street bank? You need regulations and rules.

Also, the problem is not just misleading statements, but requiring that essential information is included, that it's expressed according to certain common standards, and that it's understandable to common people - not just to Wall Street bankers.

There's a long history of selling bad deals to widows and orphans by confusing them. Currently you can't sell certain things to non-professionals; if they have free speech, can you stop them?

Whether it's understandable doesn't matter, you only need to prove that they intentionally mislead you to get you to sign something detrimental to your interests.

>There's a long history of selling bad deals to widows and orphans by confusing them. Currently you can't sell certain things to non-professionals; if they have free speech, can you stop them?

I'm sure there already are laws that prevent/penalize sellers from conning people.

There is a wide chasm between provably misleading and confusion or lack of information on the readers' side. That's why those communications are regulated, afaik.

> I'm sure there already are laws that prevent/penalize sellers from conning people.

Right, laws and regulations.

1) My point above was that the legal analysts said that the new corporate free speech rights, which the Supreme Court said were Constitutional rights (if I understand correctly), might invalidate those laws.

2) If you look at the recent history of Wall Street fraud, which among other things was the cause of the 2008 Great Recession, those laws and regulations haven't been effective enough.

But then why aren't individuals using this as a defense already?, they have had the free speech rights for much longer.

I don't think individuals are regulated by the SEC, for example. Usually it's corporations that are. What are you thinking of?

In general, not necessarily in finance; but surely there are fields where certified professionals are liable when something goes wrong based on their advice or decisions (say, accounting or civil engineering).

Probably investors or rich customers who get screwed by these statements or a band of normal folks in a class action lawsuit

It's a question -- outlawing questions, especially between private parties in a consensual relationship (applicant and employer), is backwards. You can choose not to answer it; you can lie; you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records. This will just undermine the efforts of companies that have differentiated themselves with noninvasive hiring practices and set them back on the same playing field as less scrupulous employers.

Why is free choice so difficult to understand?

1. You will always need the job more than Comcast will need you (unless you're unusually skilled, most workers aren't)

2. Comcast knows how much the pay every one of their employees, you the job seeker do not.

3. Comcast is only asking so they can figure out the lowest pay you'll accept. You have no way to figure out how high they are willing to go, so you start out at a disadvantage.

4. Limiting a company's ability to ask intrusive questions in no way impinges on individual liberty, you are not a company, and a company is not a person.

5. If you choose to not answer, they likely will not hire you, if you lie and they find out, they will likely fire you. If they lie the you about the pay range and you accept, you have no recourse but to quit if you catch them in that lie, which brings us back to point #1.

Is the final solution here a race to the bottom to normalize wages to prevent perceived discrimination based on non-quantifiable metrics?

That's not rephrasing the question. That's a completely different question.

Where is the evidence for this? This is by no means an obvious claim. No one in the world needs "the job," even though most people need "a job." Do companies exist that are more moral/popular/friendly than others? Of course. And some of them are successful in part because people want them to succeed due to their aforementioned characteristics. That is freedom. There is a market for moral hiring practices, just like every other kind of morality.

> Comcast knows how much the pay every one of their employees, you the job seeker do not.

Actually, this is completely false. You have a pretty good understanding of what they pay employees in similar positions (if you've ever heard of Glassdoor), whereas they have very little understanding what you were making in a past life, especially if you worked at lesser known companies.

> Comcast is only asking so they can figure out the lowest pay you'll accept. You have no way to figure out how high they are willing to go, so you start out at a disadvantage.

Of course, their goal is to get a deal, just like your goal is to get a big sale. Sounds like a free market at work. What's the problem?

> Limiting a company's ability to ask intrusive questions in no way impinges on individual liberty, you are not a company, and a company is not a person.

What if I am a consultant, sole proprietor, prime contractor, etc.? As I already mentioned, not all employers are corporations. It DOES infringe on freedom. And it's not like there is this nebulous, evil entity named Comcast that wants to ask the question -- it's the people in the business making business decisions, who decide to ask the question to better inform their offers (whether this is a poor decision is subjective, both morally and otherwise).

> If you choose to not answer, they likely will not hire you

Sounds speculative -- I need data for such a broad generalization.

> if you lie and they find out, they will likely fire you.

Sounds really speculative -- would you think it's common to go back in time and try to find old salaries? I appreciate that you're putting "likely," but I would like to see some evidence that it is indeed likely (defined as more than 50%).

> If they lie the you about the pay range and you accept, you have no recourse but to quit if you catch them in that lie, which brings us back to point #1.

I think it's pretty universal that you know your compensation in the contract before you accept the job -- it's just as much your fault if you take a job for the salary that they say you might see in a future promotion.

As you can see, I'm extremely unconvinced by any of your arguments here. I'm open to seeing another side of this if you have more compelling arguments, but I hope you can see that the world has not fallen apart thus far without this regulation in place, and I don't think there is any benefit to outweigh the losses/loss of freedom. If you can somehow show that employers are infringing on peoples' freedoms by asking this question more than the freedoms of the employers would be impacted by not being allowed to ask certain questions, then that would be compelling. But I don't see it.

It does not require a great deal of imagination to understand that a large corporation and single prospective employee are not equal parties. If you fail to get a job, you will starve. If Comcast fails to hire you, they most clearly will not face an existential crisis.

This is most certainly not a free market at work. Comcast wants this power because it will give them a significant negotiating advantage and result in lower wages. Eliminating this advantage is one small step in leveling the playing field between the two unequal parties.

Is Comcast the only company hiring people? If you don't get a job with Comcast you get a job with a different company. That is a market, many sellers of labor, many buyers of labor. The buyers look for the best labor and the sellers look for the best price.

In todays volatile world, noones existence is certain. And govts need to realize this soon before they spend all of their capitals like this.

Partly this is because I don't think a market can function justly on a principle of enforced asymmetry and imbalance. As I see it, if we allow people to pool capital together to gain greater collective leverage than any of them would have individually, and reap greater returns as a result (also known as a corporation), we must also allow people to pool their labor together to gain collective leverage and reap greater returns (also known as labor unions, worker protections, etc.). Having one without the other does not appear ethically justifiable to me, and rigging laws to strengthen one significantly at the expense of the other is similarly unjustifiable.

Partly this is because of the relevant history. Much of what people have convinced themselves constitutes a "free market" was in fact deliberately rigged to artificially preserve and benefit one side (capital) at the expense of the other (labor). Look into employment law from the 1800s, for example, and it's very clearly designed to prevent competition between companies in the market and ensure they each can comfortably remain immune to several important market forces. But somehow we've idealized that period as one of "laissez-faire" and "free markets" despite it being nothing of the sort, and then whenever an attempt is made to un-rig the system we hear that it's bad for business, will kill business, will hurt business, is anti-business, etc. -- being in business for business' sake is not an end worth pursuing in itself, and if a business can't survive without the market rigged in its favor, well, the true free-market position is that that business shouldn't survive.

And free-market does not stop them in any way. In fact FM give them most freedom. So FM favours/disfavours none.

The reality is, the job market is not that liquid. That's why people are terrified of losing their job.

Unions and collective bargaining are one general solution, but those are under great threat now.

IME, Congress seems to play whack-a-mole with most issues; I've often wondered what about Congress causes that outcome.

I am in the tech industry but have several friends in various non-tech fields and sometimes the stuff they put up with at their jobs amazes me. But when I ask why they don't just leave the answer is that they don't want to start a potentially lengthy job search right then or that they aren't sure they can find a significantly better one.

An individual's tolerance to go into the job search experience is also a factor, likely dependent on their financial situation

That sort of implies that you were born to have that job, and Comcast was formed to provide you with that job.

Furthermore, any job that pays more than minimum wage implies there was negotiating going on and either party was willing to walk away.

We're lucky that at the moment it's easy to get interviews for programming jobs. If you can program, you can eventually get a job somewhere that will pay a wage you can live on.

Most people's experience of looking for jobs is putting in hundreds of applications and maybe getting one or two interviews. So by the time you are at the interview stage, you really can't be too casual about throwing the opportunity away.

Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc.

A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information.

That is completely false. Asymmetric information and imperfect information are expected with free markets.

The price of gathering information is very well studied.

I disagree - it's where neither party is using force or fraud.

Its free as in freedom; to do anything. You are free to ask anyone about anything anytime.

You can do anything except be physical aggresive (like states).

> Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc.

All of these has free market solutions.

All of these peope you speak of are not free market supporters. They are statists.

The free market is a great tool, but no tool is universal.

Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc.

> Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc.

You are imagining. I am claiming no such things.

> Actually, this is completely false. You have a pretty good understanding of what they pay employees in similar positions (if you've ever heard of Glassdoor),

Are you serious? Do you really think Glassdoor is a legitimate authority for salary at companies? They do zero verification and are mostly dependent on people's honesty. Personally, I've signed up for no less than 10 Glassdoor accounts with companies I've never worked for with salaries way above and below my pay grade. Contrast that with Comcast, who, by law, knows exactly how much each employee makes down to the penny.

> Sounds really speculative -- you think it's common to go back in time and try to find old salaries?

No, it's not speculative. If a company finds out that you misrepresented yourself, they will in all likelihood fire you. I've seen it happen a few times, they don't just pretend like you didn't lie.

And your earlier posts left me a bit puzzled

> you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records

This is not a meeting between just two private parties. It is the meeting of a large organization with vastly superior resources with (usually) a citizen. We, as people, are given certain rights enshrined in various legal documents. Corporations are fictitious entities created to limit risk and thus do not possess certain rights.

> Where is the evidence for this? This is by no means an obvious claim. No one in the world needs "the job," even though most people need "a job."

This is simple math. Generally, 100% of your income will come from Comcast if you work for them. Your impact on the financial fortune of a billion dollar company is negligible.

> Are all employers corporations? And even as such, this is just outlawing information. I do not understand how so many on the left support such a measure.

I don't mean to disparage you, but are you an adult? Information is the most vital and valuable resource in this, the Information Age. Visuals are information, yet I am not allowed to watch or record you having intercourse. Juries are not allowed access to media during a trial. Although I agree with their actions, Chelsea Manning and Snowden released outlawed information. In terms of hiring, there are a number of questions that are outlawed for good reason Here are a few:

How old are you?

Are you married?

Are you pregnant?

Are you a US Citizen?

Do you have any disabilities?

What religion do you practice?

What is your race?

> Why is free choice so difficult to understand?

This is why I question your age/maturity. You do not possess absolute freedom. You can't do whatever you want, you live in a society with other people and we have rules. I don't agree with it, but you are not free to make crystal methamphetamine even if it is 100% for personal use. You are not free to walk around naked. The canonical example is you are not free to yell fire in a crowded building. I just don't understand how you've lived long enough to know the english language yet don't understand that there are limits on your behavior. 3 year olds know they don't have absolute freedom.

Except.... "You are not free to walk around naked."

Funny thing, in Oregon, nudity is considered constitutionally protected speech! You might get hauled off for walking around in the nud, but people have fought that and won in court!

Already excited for the personal attacks and logical fallacies which await.

> Are you serious? Do you really think Glassdoor is a legitimate authority for salary at companies? They do zero verification and are mostly dependent on people's honesty. Personally, I've signed up for no less than 10 Glassdoor accounts with companies I've never worked for with salaries way above and below my pay grade. Contrast that Comcast, who knows exactly how much each employee makes down to the penny.

Sounds like the same argument people made against Wikipedia, which I consider to be a very legitimate source of information on average. You are clearly an outlier by being dishonest.

> I've seen it happen a few times, they don't just pretend like you didn't lie.

Another anecdote.. I'm looking for evidence, if you have any. Not that they wouldn't fire you, but for how common it is that they actually search for your past salaries to verify.

> This is simple math. Generally, 100% of your income will come from Comcast if you work for them. Your impact on the financial fortune of a billion dollar company is negligible.

No, Comcast represents 1/ms % of your potential income, where m= the number of employers, and s=average salary per position. Since this thread started, I've seen people try to play the numbers multiple ways, and every time they underestimate the collective influence of the job seekers.

Going to skip through your attempts at condescension here, and get to the heart of the matter:

> You do not possess absolute freedom. You can't do whatever you want, you live in a society with other people and we have rules.

In a free society, you are free to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others. I think we are in agreement here, but you just didn't have a fundamental way of expressing it, so now you do. It's called the nonaggression principle. Of course, everything infringes on everyone's rights in some way, so my philosophy is to maximize net freedom.

Jefferson agreed with this philosophy and enshrined certain rights such as free speech, even though free speech can offend. Of course, there are exceptions for slander and harassment and the likes. However, I do not think asking a question could ever be considered an exception to that rule, including the above questions you listed. And in fact, most of those questions are required, not outlawed, for government reporting. The government is the primary questioner of that personal information, and I think they are the only ones that should NOT be allowed to ask because they are the only ones you could be FORCED to answer.

> I don't agree with it, but you are not free to make crystal methamphetamine even if it is 100% for personal use. You are not free to walk around naked. The canonical example is you are not free to yell fire in a crowded building.

So let's apply what you just learned. In the first case, I think you should be allowed to make meth and use it yourself. Unless there is a guarantee of inherently affecting others, which you might be able to make a decent case for with PCP. Yes, I understand there are rules, but that's a terrible argument because the rules are bad.

Walking around naked, not hurting anyone, you should probably be able to do it on your own property/potentially even public property. Private entities should be able to say 'no shoes, no service.'

Yelling fire in a theater is a different case, where you are clearly infringing on the rights of others and putting people in danger. So it's illegal, and it should be.

It can not be "legitimate" and "on average".

I do believe you just made that up. Nothing is perfect, and yet there have been studies that show Wikipedia is more often factually correct than Encyclopedia Britannica, which was previously considered the gold standard. http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.html

Is the New York Times legitimate on average? I would say so. Are there mistakes from time to time? Yes. They are typically corrected, as are Wikipedia's.

I don't see the point in trying to find a petty side-argument when there is no argument to be had. If that's the best you could find though, I consider my above points to be well-vetted.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legitimate

I have nothing further to add to this thread.

There are lots of nice ideals in voluntarism and total free-market economics, but I'm less and less convinced that they could work at any significant scale in the real world...

HN appears to lean left of moderate liberals, though. The hive-mind can be a major turn-off at times...

Most people won't agree on a definition of "property" or "aggression" rendering the point moot, however.

First of all, the only relevant definition in the NAP is "aggression." Regardless, I think it's incredibly useful to have a fundamental basis that people agree on, which can be used as a pillar of debate. It's the closest you can come to a 'scientific method' in political discussion, as opposed to the Democrats'/Republicans' strategy of just picking and choosing what 'sounds fair, sounds right.'

Literally in the first paragraph:

"Aggression", for the purposes of NAP, is defined as initiating or threatening the use of any and all forcible interference with an individual or individual's property.[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

>Regardless, I think it's incredibly useful to have a fundamental basis that people agree on

That's hilarious. Not only is the definition of "property" completely open to interpretation, so is the word "aggression", the word "initiated" and the word "threaten".

This principle is clearly meant to be as vague as possible so people can attach their own meaning to it. It resembles religion.

I laid out my definition in a prior comment; the most succinct version is "your only right is the right to not be aggressed against." Adding property is a nice way of delving into specifics, but it's not the most fundamental definition.

> That's hilarious.

Sounds like you have a personal bias against libertarianism. This is nothing new -- I deal with contrarians all the time, who are usually dead set on dismissing alternative views instead of building their own. Yes, nothing in the world is "pure" and "perfect," but I'm curious what criteria you use to evaluate policy, or if it's just a doozy and you agree with whatever you read in the New York Times.

Not trying to insult you, but please, for your sake and everyone else's: don't be a contrarian. This is serious life advice. Multiple companies I've worked for have had rules like "don't complain unless you provide a better solution," and they're right. You don't need to blindly pat everyone on the back, but arguing against something without proposing or referencing something better is one of my pet peeves.

Free-market solves everthing best with most stability.

I think empirically history shows that lack of regulation can be as bad as too much regulation. The reality is more of a balance, and black-and-white faith in the free market solving everything looks more and more to me at least as a dangerous delusion.

You cannot stop every bad things in the world. Otherwise you will end up creating more unstability and, as a result, worse things.

Libertarianism/Free-Market does not claim to iradicate all the bad things humans do to each other. It just that it will give you best fighting/winning chance.

> The reality is more of a balance, and black-and-white faith in the free market solving everything looks more and more to me at least as a dangerous delusion.

You got it opposite. Its the libertarians believe that world is too complex to be understood by one entity and better left to multiple entities (aka market). Libertarians wont go around claiming they understand the intention of every employers and ban them for asking certain questions.

Free-Market is smallest abstraction. Free-market can reduce to Statism if there is a demand. But Statism wont reduce to free-market.

This maximalist position is crazy. Our experience shows that there are some things which are most efficiently solved by the (mostly) free market, but nobody managed to conclusively prove that the free market (and which type of free market is that anyway?) solves everything. That's the point where Libertarianism shifts from an ideology to a religion.

Most libertarians have varying stances that all develop from the non-aggression principle ("in a free society, you have the freedom to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe on the rights of anybody else.") I have never heard a compelling argument against the NAP, because it can be interpreted so broadly. Even some of the pro-no-asking-questions people on this thread are using the NAP, if unwittingly, to justify their positions.

Thats not NAP if rights is anything but right to be not physically assulted.

NAP is basically: do no (physical) harm.

You not only allowed to be aggressive in other ways (such as economically) but its relied upon to tackle overly powerful entities (like megacorps).

Its simple by design. Its easiest to get universel consent.

> I fall on the other end of the scale where indirect damage through social/economic/environmental channels can be considered to infringe on liberty. Slander laws, noise ordinances, and non-localized environmental pollution all fall into this category and are eligible to be addressed through regulations which actually improve liberty. However, not being allowed to ask questions does not fall in this category in my opinion.

Sure you can create such contract. But it cannot be called NAP. Otherwise it will lead to miscommunication.

And it falls down as soon as you want to enforce any other rules, like say, property rights.

If I reach to take your property and you slap my hand away, you have broken the NAP as you define it. Or you let me take it, but then expect the police or security company to punish me, they are breaking the NAP.

You are right. For this desirable, two universal consents are needed: 1. NAP 2. Land Registry (eg blockchain based).

I claim that there will be 99%+ consent among inhabitants of a perticular region, which is good enough.

This have to be mentioned that no society (ancapism or socialism) can function without some minimum level of cooperation from all which is safe assumption because we are after all social animals. When this characterstic is not found, people migrate as they have been doing since ages.

Corporations/LLC's: these entities have obtained special government privileges (being detached from any personal liability/ ability to seize an owner's assets), and so it seems reasonable that they can be considered to 'meet some public standards' in exchange for these privileges. Anti-discrimination falls into that category in my opinion.

At the same time, though the business owner also contributed their own taxes to the situation.

I think I agree with your distinction and stance, with the idea being that the market will correct because it's shitty business to turn away a customer over an irrelevant detail like that

Absent that, you need to prove assymmetries cancel out, which has a higher burden of proof.

This is false! You are 1/n to them and they are 1/m to you. Where n=number of job seekers and m=number of employers. Both numbers are very high.

EDIT: You can have many employers over your lifetime, and you are not bound to any one during your job search. m does not equal 1.

Someone with no money to invest (directly or indirectly through savings accounts) can't benefit.

So, instead of getting paid well, we should be happy with companies indirectly contributing a little to us through their succcess? Sounds like a great excuse for people in the middle to skim a cut.

Look - I'm not saying I don't see the value of business, but that doesn't mean we should just let businesses do whatever the hell they want because them doing well benefits their owners/investors (direct and indirect).

>> you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place

>>> you can choose not to work

And here is the disconnect. Not everyone has the ability to simply "choose not to work...". Hence, laws. Your reasoning could be applied to simply working in general. After all, one can just choose not to work until they find a job that meets all of their criteria (salary, vacation time, commute, great people, great mission, etc). Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.

> you can choose not to work for employers

You don't have to work for any particular employer, and you also don't have to work for any employer at all. You can consult, contract, start a company, etc. But of course this is not necessary even if you're basing your entire career around avoiding that question, because it's not like every single employer asks it.

Starting a company? Sure. There sure are a lot of restaurants, food trucks, and dry cleaners out there. Although it's not easy with all the legal barriers to entry created by well-intentioned regulators like yourself :)

This is a tangent, but the whole nanny-state ideology advocated by many of the people arguing with me here is the reason people are so dependent on employers instead of having freedom to easily create their own enterprises.

But this is not necessary regardless, as I addressed in my previous closing statement.

Edit: curious if HN users are downvoting based on opinion versus content. Feels a bit like a hive mind whenever I post against a generally left-leaning argument.

It does nothing to change the market of service purchasers in any way. As such, if you had problems as an employee with the pool of service purchasers, you're going to have those same problems as a vendor of services.

> Although [starting a business] is not easy with all the legal barriers to entry created by well-intentioned regulators like yourself :)

Because that's the hard part of a successful business?

For example, if the CEO of a Fortune 500 company pushes a janitor for sex, you can say the janitor has the "free choice" to deny the CEO, but that's not really the case. If a high-profile coach tells one of their team members to do something inappropriate, the college kid has the 'free choice' to say no, but not really.

This rule is actually the law; the validity of contracts depends in part on the relative power of the parties who negotiated it. A bank can negotiate a contract with a naive person which sells the bank all the the person's possessions for $1, but no court will enforce it.

>you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place

You can choose that, but not everyone can. That's the issue here, most people on HN never even encounter the problem, but they are definitely not the average employee.

So is intellectual property. We live in a world where information is routinely outlawed. Some of us are used to it.

>outlawing questions, especially between private parties in a consensual relationship (applicant and employer), is backwards

It would be a consensual relationship if there were some sort of basic income that were enough to live on with dignity.

It's an article of libertarian faith that the employer/employee relationship is an equal and consensual one, and an easily disprovable one at that: try living with debt, no savings and no job for 5 years.

But this would be a moot point regardless, because: https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

Now they have their free speech rights. They can indeed ask the question. But parties responsible for certain things cannot have access to that information.

Most reasonable companies will simply not bother to ask rather than jumping through the hoops to do so. But further most people won't have a reason to ask because the information can't be used for the normal reasons to ask.

Employers will just low ball people, and those who have higher salaries will bargain more and bring up their salary, and people with low salaries will just accept the low ball...

If state can forbid you speaking something, you dont have free speech. Money does not come into equation when we talk about free speech.

In this case, we're dealing with a condition of employment. Even if we consider it "speech", it's commercial, not political in nature, which courts could use to distinguish from the Citizens United precedent.

Discrimination is, AFAIK, only illegal if it's against or impacts workers on the basis of a few specific issues (race, sex, pregnancy, etc). I don't see salary histories fitting the bill, do you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...