mayo,

i am curious how you handle steams example exactly?

here are the assumptions:

-woman accuses man of sexual harassment. (or vice versa it doesnt really matter)
-neither of them has any proof. zero
-both workers perform their job adequately
-the woman's job for his industry is easier to replace, cheaper to train w/e (keeping the man is clearly +ev from a shareholder perspective)

how do you handle it? i don't want to focus on the making up a story to fire the woman as im pretty sure we agree that isn't good.

you would just deal with lawsuits and unproductive strife?

the other example someone gave is less extreme: their business-owning relative just not really hiring young women to avoid dealing with maternity issues, how do you feel about that?

can you see that laws designed to 'protect these groups' may be having consequences that actually harm these groups? might they be more willing to hire the group of young women if they could create their own contract with the willing worker as opposed to dealing with regulations?

How exactly do you define invaded? Did Clinton invade Kosovo? Did Bush I invade Iraq?

suzzer,

you really should stop making the blanket assumptions 1 & 2 as the basis of your defense of the obama administrations foreign policy and continuance of bush's policies. they are not facts.

as to 3, i have already said i think it sounds foolish to think that is some sort of 'gotcha!' against ron paul or his libertarian supporters. the fact that you can't really differentiate between his views and what has been happening for the past 10 years through the future and the reality of the situation in afghanistan is pretty bizarre to me.

i really am starting to get the impression that if the united states were to nuke north korea and iran tomorrow or kill 100k children in epypt under whatever pretense the only thoughts in your mind would be "ron paul said he would let the holocaust happen!" and "bush would have killed 300k children!", leaving no time to ever think "what in the **** are we doing as a country", and that seems pretty unhealthy

I know Ron Paul supports a strong defense at home. In interviews he said he was not against Star Wars, which was controversial at the time. But will he cut the budgets and revenues of Lockheed, Raytheon, LLL, Martin Marietta, ... ?????

I'm reading this as you know the waitress is probably telling the truth and was harassed but she's cheaper to replace so you engage in wrongful termination to get rid of her before it escalates. "You have to pick who you believe" doesn't seem to really enter in.

I can tell steel is old cause Lockheed bought Martin Marietta in 95.

In a perfect free market, sexual harassment should not be a problem. Women (and men) wouldn't sign contracts that allow them to be sexually harassed (unless they accepted it for higher pay).

Obviously markets aren't perfect nor free, but it's not so clear a jump from "markets aren't perfect" to "ergo, current sexual harassment regulations are good".

Snaggle, are you saying that in this scenario, if the cook's position was easier to fill, you would fire the male, even though he said her accusation was untrue and she had no proof?

ver,

in the framework of steams example where:

-both sides are making different claims
-there is neither proof of either side
-a decision must be made to fire one or the other to avoid strife/lawsuits/reduced productivity
-one side is more easily replaced than the other

then i have to say i would not be surprised for the better business decision to be to fire the more easily replaced position. which would be the outcome for corporations seeking to maximize shareholder returns.

do you disagree with any of that?

I love how accurate front page articles about RP are smear jobs by the media.

good lord, this baloney again


You find a couple of bozos that are willing to roll around in the mud with you and suddenly it's the DEFININIG CHARACTERISTIC of RPbots/libertards/whatever group of the week.

Dvaut, wtf happened to you, you used to be a good poster, now you're abusing statistics to make dumb points about drunk driving, using fly's bag of tricks, etc instead of making decent posts.

Man nobody needed to invade Libya. I think the Iraq war was a mistake (i know not revolutionary thought but I am and R) but we didn't go there alone, 25 countries sent troops. It is revisionist to think this was Bush fetishism.

Yeah, those other countries were just pushing Bush hard on invading Iraq. The pressure from Poland was getting to him and eventually he caved even though he was convinced it was a bad idea.

I'm not advocating any solution. People can decide what protections they need. One solution might be contracts in employment. It might not be common or it might be very common. It might look similar today or might be very different. I cannot predict such things nor do I want to even try.

I don't think the only criteria is easier to fill. You have to look at what is more likely to be true, and the costs of keeping each person based on it being true and the costs based on it being false.

If the accusation is true, and you keep the guy, he could very likely continue this behavior on other employees and you have to deal with it down the line again. If you keep the woman, then maybe it stops, maybe she gets offended by something else later and just gets easily offended (it really depends on what the accusation is. There's a difference between a coworker groping you and a coworker telling you that you look hot). But you also remove the chance of him doing it again to someone else. The more serious the accusation against the guy, the more benefit there is in firing him (assuming its true).

If the accusation is false, and you keep the guy, business continues as normal as you have removed someone who will create trouble for you. If the accusation is false and you get rid of the guy, you have given more power to a troublemaker who will lie to get her way with the threat of lawsuits. This could be quite expensive to deal with in the future.

It's a really tough call, and while who is easier to replace may come into play. The right play, if you were allowed to actually talk about the issue, would be to see if you could convince one of them to voluntarily leave (help them move to another restaurant). The example here, where there is no evidence, with an improved legal system where it wouldn't be so expensive to defend yourself as an employer, might be to do nothing. That seems like the most fair situation where no one can prove anything and there is no history from either employee.

The other weird thing, is the waitress could be sexually harassed daily from customers yet somehow that would not need special protections, but somehow if they happen to be employed by the same person, it does. I don't understand the difference.

I think the truth lies somewhere between your post and Suzzer's.

I dont approve of steam's actions but they didn't occur in libertopia they occurred in the current united states. If it were me in his position is like to believe is make every effort to figure out who was telling the truth as either sexual harassment or slander is very serious. The law here accomplished two things.

1. Steam couldn't really wait it out to get more evidence. To do so he risks a lawsuit for subjecting her to a hostile environment after she reported it.

2. He had to lie about the reasons for firing her or risk a lawsuit.

Arguably the law created incentives here that hurt the waitress. Real harassment shouldn't be able to go undetected for long. Imagine if he fired a waitress then another came forward at thatpoint it would be obvious. Maybe steam doesn't care about women or something and I'm sure misagony would exist in a free market but you can't neccessarily legislate every problem away.

Bingo!! It's all about getting rid of troublemakers. Both times I had to do this it was over very minor things,but it showed me alot about what kind of person the accusers were,not the type of person you want to employ. For all you guys saying unfair to females I've fired at least 20 males for inappropriate behavior towards females.

Steam,
If the accusations were mild then I'm more understanding of your decisions. I think most people have the experience thay the way sexual harassment laws have played out in the real world is to create a sense of fear and paranoia that any remotely suggestive sexual comments might be misconstrued and result in problems.

Completely agree.

I am a former smoker, quit probably 6 or 7 years ago. I absolutely ****ing hate cigarettes, they make me ****ing naseous, I hate that when I go to bars to play pool or poker or see music or play music (about to start) I have to breath the ****ing **** in, get the god damn **** embedded in all my clothes, even socks and underwear and my ****ing hair, it's absolutely disgusting. But the government has no business telling people what they can and can't allow in their property, and if someone like myself doesn't like it they can just deal with it or not go to those establishments. Unfortunately there's no smoke free places around here afaik.

****ing hate cigarettes.

The bolded seems like something you've added to it (not in any dishonest way, I just didn't think I read that someone had to be fired earlier).

In any case, I'm not a business owner, but I'd like to think that if I was I would have a better solution in place to handle sexual harassment then just making up reasons to fire people.

But wait, there's more!

King Warns GOP: If Paul Wins, ‘Iranian Nuclear Missiles in Cuba’

Ron Paul interview with Bloomberg TV 12/30/11

What business are you in, and how large is it, that you've had to fire 20 males?

That number of firings is so large for a specific gender, behavior and business that it defies statistics and credulity.

I own restaurants/bars,and that's over probably a 7 year period. I'm down to only employing about 30 people now,I owned 3 places 2 years ago and the number was around 100 but I've sold 2 since.

I forget who went to the UN with the yellow cake and centrifuge test tubes. Was that Australia?