The parent replied to a comment as a rebuttal against the claim that France's employment laws are what you get when you give employees rights.

They specially stated the false dichotomy, and made a strong argument.

No one here knows if the other option has to be Marriott losing business, so you putting that out there is wrong, and ironically, again a false dichotomy.

Maybe you didn't read the full parent comment?

I was responding to this point, which is specifically about the Marriott case.

>Executives dismissing a support employee—out-of-touch executives who have probably forgotten how important an ongoing income stream is for people on low or even normal incomes—just to save face in a business relationship is in my opinion unjustifiable.

I did, and GP said that firing to save face is unacceptable. While you said

>Not if the other option was China shutting down a bunch of Marriott hotels and hundreds of employees losing their jobs instead.

to which I said we don't know, and you saying so is a false dichotomy because there are often other options.

But that wasn't the other option. They could have fired the executive who was responsible for managing and training the staff (who clearly failed to do so) or the executive that implemented a customer support system that allowed staff to like tweets that could cause significant damage to the company.

Or they didn't have to fire anyone - it's not like China actually gets to see employment records for random staff in Omaha.

See, this is an interesting thing about labor law: it can actually protect both parties.

If Marriott was forbidden by law from firing the employee in this situation, then they could much more easily deflect the pressure from China. Make some token gesture and then say, hey, we'd like to do more, but those pesky laws prevent us from doing that.

This is a case where everybody wins when there's stronger employee protection.

Nah, the better outcome is Marriott showing it's hand. Better to know who is running the show, the consumers do just fine sorting it out. PR is extremely powerful and at least in the US many of us are very conscious about voting with our money. The alternative, where influence by people that are antithetical to our core values stays under the radar is much more damaging. My whole family will soon know this story, and they _love_ voting with their money.

How's the NFL doing?

This can work sometimes and may even sound wise, until you realize that a lot of people's character and behaviour is determined by their environment.

So I prefer the direct approach that is known to work by directly helping people do the right thing, over the indirect approach that may or may not work, depending on circumstances.

"direct approach"

Which is? Decide for them?