We can just take this exchange as an example, maybe that helps to clarify my actual position. Imagine if I had to contact an independent committee before I could "fire"(=ignore) your comment with several snide insults. I'd get bogged down, my work day would be slower. Imagine if somebody could drag me to court over every comment decision because hey, maybe I just ignored it for no good reason, or because you are black or white or have a certain religion. You could file an appeal at HN that I have to give you more attention. So in your desired reality we will have to find out during the court proceedings and in the meantime I am forced to pay you 15% more attention *by default* in an irrational attempt of fairness to all the other comments if they received 15% higher attention.

Having certain protections against discrimination is a good thing but they should be very carefully applied. We can already see that the New York Times Tech Guild does not seem to want careful application of these rules if their website doesn't even mention any evaluation of worker productivity or value, all their study apparently did was to look at pay difference without looking at work difference. A perfect example of a total failure to care about the correct things, a total failure to care about what the company needs to achieve (=actual value) and just looking at pay with no connection to possible reasons I enumerated. https://www.nyguild.org/post/pay-inequity-at-the-new-york-ti...