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Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Saturday January 21, 2017 @08:00PM (#13452992)
> You have a very naive, non-nuanced, and absolutist view of the world.

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by quickben on Saturday January 21, 2017 @10:36PM (#13453456)
>"Sounds like the same argument people made against Wikipedia, which I consider to be a very legitimate source of information on average."

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

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Saturday January 21, 2017 @11:10PM (#13453547)
> 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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by quickben on Sunday January 22, 2017 @01:36AM (#13453958)
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Sunday January 22, 2017 @01:00PM (#13456243)
No offense, but neither of your comments here contributed anything to the discussion, nor did they prove even the small, uninteresting point that you think they did.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by FullMtlAlcoholc on Sunday January 22, 2017 @09:23PM (#13459210)
Don't feed the troll
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Monday January 23, 2017 @01:19AM (#13460221)
It would appear you were the condescending troll based on your original post, and I'm glad to have put you in your place. Being outwardly rude does not make your arguments more compelling, and it usually signifies your frustration with your own inability to express yourself. So, sorry about that, but there are more mature ways to handle your emotions. Educating yourself on the specifics would be a good first step, and not making assumptions about others that are irrelevant to the discussion would be another.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Saturday January 21, 2017 @10:03PM (#13453371)
HN is toast. Its being overrun by statists/socialists.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by stephen_g on Saturday January 21, 2017 @10:45PM (#13453479)
I think one would have to be extremely far right to view the predominate view of HN as 'socialist'... But as for statist, it depends on how you define the word, but in an economic sense at least, the more I talk to libertarians, the more I associate that word with 'realist'.

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...

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Saturday January 21, 2017 @11:15PM (#13453555)
There is a wide range of libertarian perspectives, just like you find on the left (socialist and beyond to moderate). I consider myself and my arguments on this thread to be with a moderate-leaning interpretation of the libertarian-associated non-aggression principle. I think everyone here agrees with the non-aggression principle, but Democrats don't usually recognize it or try to apply it as a logical, almost quantifiable rule (quantifiable in the sense of maximizing units of freedom) against policy positions.

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

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by crdoconnor on Sunday January 22, 2017 @02:10PM (#13456663)
"I think everyone here agrees with the non-aggression principle"

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

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Sunday January 22, 2017 @05:27PM (#13457992)
> 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.'

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by crdoconnor on Sunday January 22, 2017 @05:47PM (#13458107)
>First of all, the only relevant definition in the NAP is "aggression."

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Monday January 23, 2017 @01:28AM (#13460273)
> Literally in the first paragraph:

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Saturday January 21, 2017 @10:54PM (#13453502)
If free-market cannot solve this nothing will. No actor (including Govt) has mental capicity to understand everything in this world.

Free-market solves everthing best with most stability.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by stephen_g on Saturday January 21, 2017 @11:57PM (#13453657)
That's a statement of faith though (or ideology if you prefer), not a statement of fact. And I think it's built on shaky ground (such as requiring economic systems to tend towards equilibrium, which while perhaps a useful simplifying assumption a few hundred years ago, these days it's looking more like economic systems are actually better modelled as complex dynamic systems that don't necessarily happen in equilibrium).

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Sunday January 22, 2017 @12:27AM (#13453758)
> I think empirically history shows that lack of regulation can be as bad as too much regulation.

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by unscaled on Sunday January 22, 2017 @12:01AM (#13453668)
Does the free market really solves everything best? Did it solve Pi for very large number of decimal digits? Fermat's Last Theorem? Do you consult the free market when you want to decide what to do tomorrow?

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Sunday January 22, 2017 @12:27AM (#13453756)
Similarly, be careful not to generalize this to all libertarians...

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Sunday January 22, 2017 @12:38AM (#13453788)
> 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.

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).

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Sunday January 22, 2017 @01:19AM (#13453898)
I think 'physical assault' is a very simplistic view of the NAP; and 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.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Sunday January 22, 2017 @01:27AM (#13453925)
> I think 'physical assault' is a very simplistic view of the NAP

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by aninhumer on Sunday January 22, 2017 @09:19AM (#13455259)
>Its simple by design. Its easiest to get universel consent.

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Monday January 23, 2017 @02:28AM (#13460499)
> And it falls down as soon as you want to enforce any other rules, like say, property rights.

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by Jarwain on Sunday January 22, 2017 @05:27AM (#13454565)
What is your opinion on regulations that protect certain social classes. For example, should a business be allowed to refuse a LGBT customer their services?
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by lend000 on Monday January 23, 2017 @01:32AM (#13460288)
Sole proprietor/family business/lemonade stand: yes, refuse whoever you want, even if you blatantly say "we don't serve gays."

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.

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by Jarwain on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @04:17AM (#13469879)
The argument I've heard against the former is that everyone ends up paying taxes and otherwise indirectly contributing to your business, so it isn't right to deny them access.

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

Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by EliRivers on Sunday January 22, 2017 @06:16AM (#13454711)
Indeed. Those filthy commies will be completely unable to provide and discuss anything that "good hackers would find interesting". Only God's only people, the Objectivists, can do that.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by meanduck on Sunday January 22, 2017 @07:46AM (#13454951)
Im perfectly ok if HN bans all political news.
Re:Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires Ab... by mindcrime on Sunday January 22, 2017 @12:18AM (#13453725)
Yes it is. :-(