> one persons perfect diet would kill someone else
Besides allergies, that's not literally true, is it? Or would you say that allergies or severe intolerances are common enough that such dramatic diet fitness differences exist?
I think we're only beginning to appreciate just how sensitive our guts are to the abuse modern high-calorie food can dish out.
Honestly, given the extent to which many people's diets consist primarily of bleached and re-enriched wheat separated from the germ or simply refined corn, I think there are many more people who are slowly poisoned by their diet than realize it.
Yet there's plenty of hyperbole in my statement too. I don't think you could murder someone by making them eat your diet, unless it consisted of bags of broken glass.
I didn't downvote you, but you probably were because your comment is an impertinent strawman. The faces of your downvoters are normal people who care about the quality of the discussion.
I don't think you need scare quotes, this is discrimination. Discrimination isn't always bad. IANAL but it seems like these are cases where we just kinda ignore some laws, and society usually goes okay despite and in spite of it. Just my uneducated impression.
Could you link to some cases where this kind of thing has been tested? I have an amateur interest in law and this issue is puzzling to me. It's not at all clear to me why it's okay to discriminate against Uber drivers based on the genitals they are born with, but not e.g. their skin color or religion.
Interesting, the Wikipedia article has this to say
Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defense, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ – for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Several breastaurants like Hooters have also used such requirements of femininity and female sex appeal under a BFOQ defense. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided."
So basically the question to ask it "Is it a bona fide occupational qualification that the driver be female?" Seems like a high standard to reach. Arguments based on "feels" as in "I don't feel safe around this kind of person/employee" seem like the very kind of discrimination that the law has tried hard to eliminate. It's pre-judging someone based on sex, and deciding that they aren't safe even though they haven't done anything. I understand that women are often harassed, but the law already has a process for dealing with harassment.
I predict this kind of thing (apps that allow customers to discriminate on the basis of protected class) will spread and eventually be challenged in court. Curious how this will all play out and become settled law.
> I understand that women are often harassed, but the law already has a process for dealing with harassment.
And that would be a good argument if we could see that the process really is used and trusted. Do we? What I see is the opposite; the ubers and bolts of this world only care as much they have to. So what is probably happening is that uber calculates this will be cheaper than dealing with the consequences of women losing trust and stopping using their services. If this is banned by the courts, they will move on to the next cheapest solution and so on.
What would interest me is, what would be a proper solution to this issue? Apart from Waymo, probably a surveillance/recording of all the interactions between the customer and the driver?
Capitalism precisely precludes slavery. One of the most important and foundational of its principles is private property. The first, most natural, and universal instance of private property is the ownership of one's own body. Heck, we even have the phrase "private parts." Slavery requires the most basic violation of bodily autonomy. In other words, to permit slavery is to permit the violation of the most basic property right. I struggle to see how slavery could be compatible with capitalism.
Is this supposed to be ... a gotcha? If slavery is involved, it's not capitalism, by definition. Distance attenuates all signals, so each transaction step may somewhat smear or smudge such a stain. Really not clear at all what you're getting at.
you assume that capitalism implies that everyone gets to participate. but that is not a necessary condition. you can have a capitalist system where not everyone participates. slaves did not participate in capitalism, but their owners did. one might even argue that employees do not participate in capitalism either (i am not familiar enough with the specific definitions to state that with certainty however).
No! The owners were not participating in capitalism either, precisely because their whole business is predicated on violating private property. If you wish, you can express it as a matter of degree. That by having ones bodily autonomy stripped, one is engaged less capitalistically, and the same for those which strip that autonomy. The violation taints both ways.
What part of capitalism precludes violating other peoples rights or property? By your definition much of US business isn't capitalist because of the prevalence of wage theft and rights violations, which is absurd.
You should do a little basic research before commenting. Property rights are part of the very definition of capitalism. Wage theft is illegal, because theft is illegal. If you believe that corporations are stealing wages from their employees and the government is tolerating this, then you should probably conclude that those businesses aren't capitalist; that's straightforward, not absurd. And you could probably break a great news story while you're at it.
You realize wage theft is documented as greater than all other forms of theft combined in the US right? It isn't some fringe theory, it is established fact.
If so, then we can safely call that behavior uncapitalistic. That's how the definition works. FWIW, I knew very little about wage theft, until researching it at your prompting, which I appreciate. Seems like wage theft is rarely actual theft, and most often a violation of contract, but in either case it's a violation of capitalism's seed principles. Sometimes wage theft is neither theft nor contract violation. That's my impression from Wikipedia, at least.
I think you would have more of a point if we were still struggling to achieve a good "capitalist" society, i.e. where property rights are enforced, individual liberty, freedom of contracts.¹ But we've already gotten very far, unlike the many regrettable socialist experiments. If we were still feudal, or still keeping slaves, you might have a point, but in a global sense overall things are better than ever. The Brezhnevian notion fails because all the striving towards socialism tends to lead to suffering, and on the way you don't see incremental improvement. But I'm not a historian so please correct any ignorance of mine if you can.
1:I really want to emphasize these as the definition of capitalism, because capitalism as is often defined is not designed top-down with the attributes identified in it. It mostly organically emerges from basic rights. Take for example the Marxist phrase "private ownership of the means of production." (POMP) One does not set ought to ensure this directly, it arises naturally from property rights and liberalism. One would need to prevent POMP by chipping away at property rights and personal liberties: by seizing things, by getting in the way of consensual agreements.
No, the private ownership of the means of production needs to be created and maintained by a state. There is nothing natural about it; if you see it as natural, it is because you naturalize the society you live in. First of all, like any type of property, it is a social construct that must be upheld by laws and instruments of coercion. And speaking of the means of production, to ensure wage labor, a process or arrangement is needed that guarantees one group of people holds ownership while others do not. In the case of land, for example, this requires enclosure, the destruction of the concept of land as something communal.
things are better, but they are getting worse again. wages are not rising long with inflation. why? because capitalism defines that the wages are set by market value.
as i see it only socialist tendencies are fighting against that. (i don't mean achieving a full socialist system)
> KF seems to have a vague goal of bullying bad people (in their view) off the internet
Has KF changed since I last checked? They had an explicit policy of "don't touch the poo"; that is, users mock and ridicule on the forum, but don't try to disturb the lolcows, unless they're committing crimes. That's what I saw; I lurked occasionally in the past. There's been a lot of misinformation about KiwiFarms since it became a minor news story, round about that time of the big DDoS attacks.
> to avoid describing […] Kirk's assassin [as conservative]
That was a bit of a canard, though, right? Did anyone seriously think he was a conservative? I thought this was just another mental gymnastics act in the Whataboutism Circus. With some photo fabrication to support it, according to Wikipedia.
It’s a fair retort here, though, where the grandparent comment was clearly trying to grandstand in opposition to his perceived enemy tribe, mostly unprovoked.
Edit: in other words, it’s a fair interpretation of the comment to be saying “We wouldn’t have to deal with all this misinformation about taxes if there wasn’t some giant liberal conspiracy”, given that they weren’t replying to any specific part of the parent post.
Well, no, that is not a reasonable interpretation at all. For one, the commenter did not proclaim existence of conspiracies, but the existence of conspiracy theories. People mix these up a lot. Secondly, the other interpretation you propose exhibits roughly the same form as "X does A", so it's worth repeating that it does not mean "only X does A" either!
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