Raghu asks: "How would you feel about a hypothetical scenario where an employer provided paid time off plus bonuses on Election Day for employees who are registered Republicans, but not for registered Democrats? (I am not sure if there is a law against things like this, but I am more interested in your opinion rather than the legality of such an action..)
How about a hypothetical scenario where employers simply ordered registered Democrats to switch their party affiliation or get fired? Surely there is a point where "free speech" by employers crosses the line and becomes coercive, no?" Several things: 1. When we (me?) talk about "free speech", by definition we are conceptually distinguishing speech from other types of conduct. I think of "free speech" as advocating a political view as opposed to engaging in the exercise of interpersonal legal rights. In other words, employer telling employee "I am voting Republican and hope you do too," is qualitatively different than employer telling employee "Vote Republican or I will fire you." While both involve words and are "speech", there is a qualitative difference, and to conflate the two is to beg the question. 2. As a practical matter, in democratic capitalist countries rooted in enlightenment values, where is the evidence that private employers fire employees for refusing to tow a political line? Let's go back to first principles. Voltaire famously said "Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion, and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt." That is the reality of the capitalist corporate workplace. Your hypotheticals are outlandish, precisely because that is not how corporate workplaces function in capitalist economies. If an employer ever did what you suggest, the outcry would be overwhelming, again proving the libertarian point that the market system provides the necessary framework to successfully addresses the issue withou! t the need for a coercive apparatus. It is only when we go to state owned enterprises where political views and employment are connected, either benignly as patronage or more directly in the socialist societies, where vocal opposition to the regime results in a loss of employment and privileges. 3. At an abstract philosophical view, a libertarian not only believes in freedom of speech, but freedom of association, and believes that the coercive power of the state should play no role in the employer-employee relationship. A libertarian sees no moral distinction between the right of the employer to quit, and the right of the employer to fire -- both are positive goods. At this point the libertarian expects to hear quoted "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." But such quote is utterly unconvincing to a libertarian, both because of the abstract philosophical point, but also because point 2 above -- there is no evidence that, as a practical matter, arbitrary actions by employers is a real problem in capitalist economies. We have evolved very complicated employee protection rules in the capitalist countries, and a libertarian would argue that empirically the costs of ! such programs (increase in unemployment rates, increased transaction costs and litigation, etc.) far outweigh the benefits (the protection of an anecdotal employee unfairly treated). 4. Ironically (or maybe intentionally), the complicated employee protection rules have created a coercive apparatus to address speech in the workplace. To comply with such rules, workplaces are evolving to political free zones. Is that what progressives really want to have happen in the workplace? David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
