Anti-Smoking Fascists won't hire smokers

[JasonC]

Awesome post, Helmuth. +rep

 

[Acala]

Why?...it's not like it hasn't happened before.

I have been in the job market a LONG time. I have worked jobs from the very bottom of the system (Manpower temp, OSCO scut monkey, busboy, construction laborer) up to pretty high levels (attorney in mega law firm). I have worked for tiny, family-owned businesses, giant corporations, and everything in between. And in all that time, in all those different circumstances, I have never worked for anyone who gave a fraction of a shit what I did with my life when I was not on their premises. So, in response to your post, it never has happened before in my life.

Furthermore, if I own a business, mine should be the ONLY word that matters as to who comes onto my property and on what terms. And anyone who does not like the terms I set, can get their ass off and now. And if they refuse, I am entitled by all that is right to use whatever force is necessary to MAKE them leave. Nobody has any right to tell ME what the terms will be for their entry onto my property regardless of their economic hard luck. No matter what kind of tyrant or asshole I might be, if I confine my misbehavior and assholiness to my own property it ain't nobody else's bidness. If anyone does not like it, I can show them the door. And I defy you to propose any real alternative to this that isn't far worse than the problem you are grousing about.

That having been said, I am no fan of the corporate business form and the government-created version should be repealed. But the solution to the problem of crony-capitalism and corporatism is NOT to invent some kind of phony right to make employers run their property the way other people think it should be run.

 

[Anti Federalist]

And we wonder why there are Bolshevik revolutions, South American communism and strangling unionism...

*sigh*

 

[phill4paul]

I had mentioned this idea in an earlier post and thought I might expound on it a bit.

There are many here that believe that a business may do what it will as long as no contractual obligations are violated and that an employee is free to remain employed or leave that business owners employ as a resolution to the conflict.

On the surface I agree with this sentiment. However, it is what lies below the surface which leads me to be skeptical.

Why would a corporation want to make sure that their employees do not smoke on their time outside the work environment? Do we believe that they honestly care about the health of their employees? No, I would say that they do not. Not unless the entire board of directors is made up of anti-smoking prohibitionists. Possible. Not probable. Why then would they care?

Why would a company want to drug test employees for what they are doing on their time outside of the work environment? Do we believe that they honestly care about what they are doing on their time as long as it is not affecting job performance? No, I would say that they do not. Not unless the entire board of directors is made up of anti-drug crusaders. Possible. Not probable. Why then would they care?

Businesses are guided today, not neccessarily by what a business owner/B.O.D. wants or does not want, but by the forces of big business coercion through government force.

In the two examples above I would point to the insurance lobby. The same insurance lobby that, through "ObamaCare" has mandated that companies with more than 50 employees provide health insurance. And even if a company has fewer than fifty employees the incentive to provide healthcare in the current market is there and therefore so are the stipulations. All this from a market that has received immense cooperation from the government in tweaking the system since their inception.

I do not believe that a company would go "boo" about either smoking or drugs on their employees off times had big business and government not created the system whereby they are rewarded for doing this.

And as far as AF's predictions go I fear he is not far of base. I certainly can see a future time when a term for employment may well be 24hr. surveillance. Not necessarily because a business would care to do so but because of the big business and government coercive forces upon the market.

Add to this the state of affairs in a country plagued by "Free Trade" agreements that have destroyed the working class, and therefore the middle-class, and it is a no-win situation for any presumptive employee and a win/win for big business and government control.

Give me a free market and I will go along with those that believe that an employer has the right to set the standards and an employee has the right to become employed or refuse employment.

Otherwise, I will retain my sentiment that such coercive tactics are anything other than that which would be seen in a free economy.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Businesses are guided today, not neccessarily by what a business owner/B.O.D. wants or does not want, but by the forces of big business coercion through government force.

And don't forget that force more powerful than government, lawyers. So much of the absolute nonsense that goes on in both corporations and government is nothing more than legal CYA, recommended by lawyers, who create the legal nightmare problems in the first place.

 

[phill4paul]

And don't forget that force more powerful than government, lawyers. So much of the absolute nonsense that goes on in both corporations and government is nothing more than legal CYA, recommended by lawyers, who create the legal nightmare problems in the first place.

That too. Everything is distorted in this market. That makes it tough to apply libertarian axioms to the existing model.

 

[pcosmar]

And don't forget that force more powerful than government,

Yes there are, There are forces beyond governments,
but it isn't the lawyers, though they are corrupted as well, simply by the system they support.

 

[PRB]

I don't believe in corporate slavery any more than any other kind of slavery. I think there may be a missing variable. The correct computation of individual value. If a company wants to say 'no smoking, ever' it should cost them a great deal more in salary because the employees are selling a part of themselves.

Employees would only be selling part of themselves if they wanted to smoke to begin with. You know the saying "I wasn't using my civil rights anyway"? Kinda like that, it's of no loss to me if I didn't use it to start, of course, it MAY justify me asking for more if it translates into less qualified candidates competing with me.

If some guy said "I am going to pay you $20,000 a week to stand on your head 5 minutes a day and do the hokey pokey," then I'm probably taking the job, saving up for a year, and then quitting to pursue my dreams.

I'll laugh at anybody who thinks he's too good for 5 minutes a day. I'd do it for much less.

Employees should be free to voluntarily choose these kinds of sub-tyrannic jobs if they want to, but you will never find me in one. I think the trick to making this kind of thing work is how do you evaluate the right cost for all these 'extra powers' the corps want, and convince everyone to hold out for more money?

You convince people to hold out for more money by actually offering them better jobs. Otherwise people will take any abusive job they hate if they can't find alternatives.

I dunno, trying to add categories to the discrimination laws is not the solution.

I agree, but I bet somebody in here will tell me how the government allegedly makes jobing so hard that getting a job is no longer a freedom and therefore we should use government force to solve government force.

You have individual rights on BOTH sides of this question getting crushed. Maybe JillyJane Barnum never smoked a day in her life and she loves having the freedom to make more money by working for a company who only hires non-smokers.

I am a smoker myself, so it's not like I'm trying to make the world pleasent for myself.

If there were some mechanism in the market to ensure that these workers willingly submitting themselves to tyranny were getting appropriately compensated for that act it might prevent it from overtaking everything on account of it being too expensive. What is the value of a life? 3x a 'normal' salary minimum, I should think. With the liberty to walk away at any time.

the only measure of "appropriately compensated" is whether you asked other people what price they'd be willing to do it for. Whether you have expenses at home is not your boss's problem. We DO have the liberty to quit at any time, unless we voluntarily agreed to do otherwise.

I don't actually know the answer, I can only speculate. But I can clearly see the imposition of tyranny and the restriction of liberty on both sides of this debate. I don't want to restrict the liberty of the smokers, but I also do not want to restrict the liberty of Miss JillyJane Barnum to work where SHE pleases, y'know?

Smokers have the liberty to smoke, a person's "liberty to work" is the same "liberty" as "liberty to live where you want, liberty to eat what you crave, liberty to marry who you wish", you can have anything and everything as long as you can pay for it, nobody owes it to you, you have a choice as long as somebody makes it available to you. The government shouldn't be able to stop 2 willing parties who agree to an exchange, but the government can't(shouldn't) force anybody to engage in any at all.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

stand on your head 5 minutes a day and do the hokey pokey

I'll laugh at anybody who thinks he's too good for 5 minutes a day. I'd do it for much less.

Could someone explain to me exactly how one does the hokey pokey standing on one's head? I am beginning to think I may have a very different idea of what the rules and procedures of hokey pokey consist of than everyone else. Everyone seems very enamored with this idea of head-standing hokey-pokeying.

I agree, but I bet somebody in here will tell me how the government allegedly makes jobing so hard that getting a job is no longer a freedom and therefore we should use government force to solve government force.

That is, indeed, what these guys are saying, if I understand them correctly. And the argument is LAME.

There's not even any argument. It's a "feeling," a mushy-gushy feeling they have. It's all based on feelings. A feeling called fear.

the only measure of "appropriately compensated" is whether you asked other people what price they'd be willing to do it for. Whether you have expenses at home is not your boss's problem. We DO have the liberty to quit at any time, unless we voluntarily agreed to do otherwise.



Smokers have the liberty to smoke, a person's "liberty to work" is the same "liberty" as "liberty to live where you want, liberty to eat what you crave, liberty to marry who you wish", you can have anything and everything as long as you can pay for it, nobody owes it to you, you have a choice as long as somebody makes it available to you. The government shouldn't be able to stop 2 willing parties who agree to an exchange, but the government can't(shouldn't) force anybody to engage in any at all.

Amen, Amen, and Amen, PRB.

 

[PRB]

Could someone explain to me exactly how one does the hokey pokey standing on one's head? I am beginning to think I may have a very different idea of what the rules and procedures of hokey pokey consist of than everyone else. Everyone seems very enamored with this idea of head-standing hokey-pokeying.

I honestly don't know, but for 5 minutes a day and $20,000, I will try to figure it out. If I can't do it to my employer's satisfaction, too bad, I hope he finds his guy. But I'll damn well try my best to get that $20,000.

 

[PRB]

Not too many I can think of that are not.

LMAO. Is your definition of "cooperation/partnership" any which don't break the law and are licensed?

 

[PRB]

Of course you can.

The ana-cap position is that an employer can demand whatever he wants from you as a condition of employment.

And that your only option is to leave and seek employment elsewhere.

So how would that not include daily fellatio, especially if that was the only job open to you?

It would include it, and what's wrong with that? You are not threatened by force or depravation of property if you refuse.

You seem to be arguing for SOCIALISM that guarantees retards and handicapped to be employed even if they have no skills.

WHAT IF I have no brain or energy to lift boxes or answer calls? Why can't I get paid to jerk off and eat popcorn? It's called the MARKET and nobody owes you shit.

Tough luck if you're disabled or useless on the market, you have no right to be employed and certainly no right to live, only socialists and communists think that somehow a government or society must promise and secure a person's livelihood, you make the perfect argument for Obamacare and any other socialist safety net. Our country is fucked because of people like you who want to cockblock exploitation of the poor, desperate and needy.

 

[PRB]

Replace "smokers" with "purple helmet givers" and there you go.

you want to ban people from refusing to hire purple helmet givers and getting fellatios? What kind of fascist are you?

 

[kcchiefs6465]

It would include it, and what's wrong with that? You are not threatened by force or depravation of property if you refuse.

You seem to be arguing for SOCIALISM that guarantees retards and handicapped to be employed even if they have no skills.

WHAT IF I have no brain or energy to lift boxes or answer calls? Why can't I get paid to jerk off and eat popcorn? It's called the MARKET and nobody owes you shit.

Tough luck if you're disabled or useless on the market, you have no right to be employed and certainly no right to live, only socialists and communists think that somehow a government or society must promise and secure a person's livelihood, you make the perfect argument for Obamacare and any other socialist safety net. Our country is fucked because of people like you who want to cockblock exploitation of the poor, desperate and needy.

One, hardly the few would be truly "useless." They may be less capable than another, but that is the unfortunate/often glorious way of the world.

Perhaps if the general public was not robbed of their earnings for the money to be squandered in incredible manners, the needy may be better helped than else wise? It's something to think about.

Regardless, using the government to extort some at the expense of others is not the way a society should operate. I'm sure most all have humanitarian inclinations towards the poor, the mentally unstable, etc... it would be the "solution" (as we are not God and cannot truly solve the problem) that we would disagree on. Do "we", by the barrel of a gun, take from all to fund this or that? Is it a moral solution? And when one looks into the consequences of that, couples it with the track record of any government program or social planning scheme, and recognizes the true motivations behind these so called humanitarian pushes, it isn't hard to realize it could be better served else wise. Without the robbing of all/violation of rights.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

I think a corporate dystopia is possible too. Regulatory power is the enabler, but what happens when the machine grows beyond the need of enabling? Government could literally be abolished and you still have this corporate tyrannical dystopia; one that could never have existed in the first place had not the government (now extinct) enabled it through regulatory power. The day will come when the abolition of government simply means handing our fates over to different, colder masters, built upon an edifice that should never have been.

 

[PRB]

That's exactly what the statists told me when I said that the anti - DUI/MADD crackdown in the eighties would eventually lead to roadside checkpoints and breath tests and prison.

Even I was not paranoid enough to imagine that they would start strapping people down and taking their blood by force.

Be thankful, the fact they'd need blood is proof there is a rule of law that requires evidence. or else they'd just go by "officer said so therefore you're guilty".

But it's only logical that if DUI is illegal at all, they'd have to be enforceable in a way people can't ignore.

To say that mandatory random blood tests, or 24/7 in home employee surveillance, as conditions of employment, would not be adopted by wide swaths of business and industry is naive and shortsighted.

You like it? Don't take the job. To say that what you do the rest of your day never affects what happens at your job is equally naive and shortsighted.

We already have enough fascist laws that protect employees from getting fired for being sick, being pregnant, you want employers to have less rights, because you're an anti-capitalist who knows employees are on the winning side today, and want to even the field by government force (rather than boycott and market).

What happens when you tax the givers and providers? Do you think you achieve justice and equality? NO, you just discourage giving, sharing, and trading, if you piss off the people who you need (in this case, you admit it's the employers, the HAVES), they'll roll up their booth stand and you can eat yourself. See who needs who!

If you see how Obamacare has put companies out of business or forced people to lose their jobs (or in some cases, allowed people to quit), you can easily see how the same kind of abuse done to employers will also lead to more people unemployed, not more people forcibly employed against employer's will.

 

[PRB]

One, hardly the few would be truly "useless."

You don't need to be truly useless to starve to death, you only need to be useless enough to not get a job necessary to buy a meal.

 

[PRB]

And as far as AF's predictions go I fear he is not far of base. I certainly can see a future time when a term for employment may well be 24hr. surveillance. Not necessarily because a business would care to do so but because of the big business and government coercive forces upon the market.

You seem to assume that it's not already the case, implied.

It IS your 24/7 duty to not murder people and steal. Is that a big deal?

Employers, and government DO in fact expect people to do and don't do things 24/7, some may just not be what you're used to.

"What I do in my house is none of your business" all comes back to 2 questions
1. How would you know
2. How would it matter to you if I did
If it mattered to the employer in any appreciable way, the first question is almost irrelevant.

If an employer was demanding an employee to never jerk off 24/7 or never have sex, the employee, under today's laws, can actually just take the issue to court and ask the same 2 questions (along with others). Today's laws already protect employees from unnecessary or unreasonable demands, especially if harmful. BUT, that does not mean if you DID knowingly and voluntarily agree, you're free to lie or break your promise.

AF's question about "what about demanding fellatio" ignores the fact that there are people who already depend on, or are very good at, exactly that, see porn stars and prostitutes.

 

[LogCabinGOProud]

Smokers aren't a protected class. I don't know how I feel bout adding them. Currently they're in the same boat as transsexual and intersex Americans in that employers can discriminate against them at will.

 

[PRB]

Smokers aren't a protected class. I don't know how I feel bout adding them. Currently they're in the same boat as transsexual and intersex Americans in that employers can discriminate against them at will.

Transexuals aren't protected along with LGB?