Bryan, as a tenured professor living on government handouts and not on the monies made through the free market, please fire yourself. You are the paragon of hypocrisy - just like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker.
You have already blown the whistle on tenure. Your job is done. Now please quit.
He has explained why aspects of his job make no sense from his employer's point of view. There's nothing hypocritical about continuing to enjoy the absurdity. Tenure is not *immoral*, it is just stupid.
Yeah right - let me explain why it is immoral to tax people above some very small amount for very limited government while using their immorally collected taxes to carve out a cushy life for myself.
The biggest thing I learned from this is that the Majority of Americans believe Divorce is Morally acceptable. I googled Gallup's numbers and 81% say it is morally acceptable in all situations, there was even a "it depends" option that only 6% chose.
This seems shocking to me. I tried to find the numbers, but I assume most people believe breaking a promise is wrong. Most Americans are still nominally religious, and all Abrahamic religions say divorce is morally wrong except for very specific situations. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that most Americans think breaking what they believe to be a sacred promise is always morally acceptable. Clearly people have a different idea of morality than me.
Comparatively, firing an at will employees seems morally acceptable, since the employee was never promised they wouldn't be. Employees under contract actually have a promise to not be fired as long as they follow the terms of the contract, and I would think it's morally wrong to fire them in a way that breaks the contract.
Small aside, I do think immoral things like divorce should be legal.
All such promises pretend that history has not been what it has been. Perhaps we should change wedding vows. They are at best aspirational, at worst delusional. A few fortunate persons can achieve the ideal, by a combination of luck, preparation, and determination. I am married and have never divorced, but I think it is crazy talk to say it should be more difficult or more socially disapproved. People make mistakes. Keeping a relationship strong is difficult and depends to some degree on luck. Marriage counseling is pretty primitive and useless.
Or perhaps we should conclude that no one should get married?
Does your view of morality assume that things that are commonplace are moral? I agree that history shows how hard it is to be married until death, but I do not see why that is relevant to a discussion on whether it is moral. People do immoral things quite often, and I have yet to meet someone that has never committed an immoral act, at least by my definitions. Divorce is just one of many common immoral acts.
That doesn't mean that divorce should be more difficult or more socially disapproved, in fact I think it should be significantly easier to get divorced than it currently is. But individuals should recognize that you made a promise and broke it, and a divorce is at least as immoral as any other broken promise.
As an aside, I was surprised that you described marriage counseling as primitive and useless, since mine was really helpful, but in retrospect this was probably another reason I was missing others views and scientifically, you are likely very right, though I haven't done the research to confirm.
“Things that are commonplace are moral” does not seem equivalent to what I wished to say.
Ought implies can, and can't implies need not. If I promise to do something for you next week, but I am struck by a lethal bolt of lightning before that, I will break my promise, and there is no moral significance. All promises are contingent on circumstances and unforeseeable factors. Maybe we should take that as recommending that no one ever promise anything.
Or maybe we should have at least two flavors of promise, one that merely announces a serious plan that is contingent on circumstances, and one that involves staking one's entire reputation. I’m not sure how useful the second one is, as ordinary contracts seem sufficient where business is concerned, and things get very complicated for more intimate relationships. I might argue that a marriage vow is not an ordinary promise, but that might actually be a point in your favor, (as in, such a solemn and institutionalized vow should be taken extra seriously). That all depends on what we think marriage is about these days, which we may also disagree about.
In the context of a marriage vow, the promise seems conditional upon the spouse fulfilling their promise also. Even when divorce was greatly frowned upon, it happened for cause. I suppose that does not prevent it from being considered immoral. I suppose my point is, it is possible to be entirely not at fault and yet be divorced, and in extreme circumstances, to not be at fault and yet justified in initiating the divorce.
If you think that the immorality of divorce doesn’t mean anyone should disapprove of divorce, we have a different conception of morality. Maybe I am off base. Maybe it works better as, anyone who creates just cause for divorce deserves some disapproval. That leaves open the possibility that they might not deserve disapproval if the divorce is for less one-sided reasons. But I still find it off to say it is immoral but not deserving disapproval. I should think about it.
I think the statistics on marriage counseling do not indicate it is a solution in general (particularly if the purpose is to always avoid divorce, as opposed to some more moderate goal). As a certified “guy on the internet”, I could be wrong.
Unaddressed is the moral harm done to employers when a trusted, capable hire bails over pay without attempting wage negotiation, Yet who ever criticizes an employee for up and quitting ? Who would dare limit an employee’s right to quit ? Who regards the employee as a traitor who learns and steals protected knowhow ? Who faults the employee who slams the employer publicly and anonymously ? Who protects an employer from quiet-quitters, pilfering time-servers, corner cutters, lay-abouts, rumor millers, crisis fomenters, and shift cheaters ?
I think that many leftists are consistent about this. It seems inconsistent until you add into the mix the assertion that words are literal violence. Then firing someone, which is also violence, is justified. This all makes sense in the critical studies worldview, where almost everything is a power relationship and violence is inherent in the system.
I think that they are not consistent over time, but each of the positions that they have taken is internally consistent. That is, you can’t convince them by way of pointing to a logical fallacy within the chain from their starting points to their conclusions. I think what changed is that they abandoned their adherence to the liberal principle that words are generally not violence (threats of violence being the exception).
Depending a bit on how we draw the Venn diagram regarding "left" I am not sure I think the left was ever anti-violence, but otherwise I think you are spot on. If we more or less define the modern left as "Marxist/socialist types" violence has pretty much always been their go to for dealing with people outside their tribe. Non-Marxists simply don't have moral standing in their view, and that seems to pretty quickly devolve into Not-Marxist-Enoughs or The-Other-Team-of-Marxists who don't have moral standing. I think rhetoric about abuses caused by outsiders or opposition to justify violence towards them is mostly just to persuade those on the fence, as it were. So far as I can tell leftism or Marxism does not have anything approaching the non-aggression principle that is widely accepted or considered an important central premise.
i think people who don't work in the free markets should be very careful about commenting on relationships between employers and employees. the firing process in serious enterprises is not taken lightly because of the costs of hiring someone else, so it is the outcome of a structured performance assessment where employees are offered chances to improve. the marxist view of a cynical employer who gets pleasure in firing people is bs and promoted by people who never worked in competitive industries. Firing should be compared to keeping money loosing businesses going: yes, you can give it a chance but at a certain point you need to pull the plug to protect the other employees, the ones performing, and shareholders who ultimately bear the enterprise risk!
You take the simplifying approach that "firing" and "separation" are basically equal decisions between the parties. Then argue as if all such situations meet that simplifying criteria. We (in theory) write laws to prevent repeated abusive/predatory and corrupt behaviour. Separation from an abusive partner who uses their economic power to enslave? IBM conveniently terminating older people who continued to trust IBM with their careers? Cisco's practice of starting new projects and forcibly transferring those it wants to lay off into them, then cancelling the project? WellsFargo and BofA staff knowingly falsifying customer acquisition because others had been fired because they did not meet the verbally communicated instructions from management? AT&T intentionally destroying unionized employee training records when they acquired Pacific Bell so that those people could be laid off due to "lack of current training" (noting that employees were not given hard copies of their class completions? One fraudulent activity, untraceable, then "legal" separation?
This comment doesn’t seem to me to engage with the argument. Rather it assumes that there *must* be some reason that they aren’t equal decisions, at will, to discontinue a relationship that no longer suits you, and then based on that assumption objects to certain incidents where people were fired under one justification or another.
Caplan’s argument as I understand it is that demanding a ‘reason’ to discontinue a relationship is a little ridiculous, and constitutes coercion in itself; you can complain that reasons given are invalid, but that’s beside the point because he believes *no reason need be given at all*.
And insofar as I understand it I agree with him. If you don’t have a contract specifying otherwise, employment should be at will—that’s practically tautological.
Bryan, as a tenured professor living on government handouts and not on the monies made through the free market, please fire yourself. You are the paragon of hypocrisy - just like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker.
You have already blown the whistle on tenure. Your job is done. Now please quit.
He has explained why aspects of his job make no sense from his employer's point of view. There's nothing hypocritical about continuing to enjoy the absurdity. Tenure is not *immoral*, it is just stupid.
Yeah right - let me explain why it is immoral to tax people above some very small amount for very limited government while using their immorally collected taxes to carve out a cushy life for myself.
Nice gig if you can get it.
He is in a voluntary employment relationship. Maybe you are arguing that George Mason should be abolished.
The biggest thing I learned from this is that the Majority of Americans believe Divorce is Morally acceptable. I googled Gallup's numbers and 81% say it is morally acceptable in all situations, there was even a "it depends" option that only 6% chose.
This seems shocking to me. I tried to find the numbers, but I assume most people believe breaking a promise is wrong. Most Americans are still nominally religious, and all Abrahamic religions say divorce is morally wrong except for very specific situations. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that most Americans think breaking what they believe to be a sacred promise is always morally acceptable. Clearly people have a different idea of morality than me.
Comparatively, firing an at will employees seems morally acceptable, since the employee was never promised they wouldn't be. Employees under contract actually have a promise to not be fired as long as they follow the terms of the contract, and I would think it's morally wrong to fire them in a way that breaks the contract.
Small aside, I do think immoral things like divorce should be legal.
All such promises pretend that history has not been what it has been. Perhaps we should change wedding vows. They are at best aspirational, at worst delusional. A few fortunate persons can achieve the ideal, by a combination of luck, preparation, and determination. I am married and have never divorced, but I think it is crazy talk to say it should be more difficult or more socially disapproved. People make mistakes. Keeping a relationship strong is difficult and depends to some degree on luck. Marriage counseling is pretty primitive and useless.
Or perhaps we should conclude that no one should get married?
Does your view of morality assume that things that are commonplace are moral? I agree that history shows how hard it is to be married until death, but I do not see why that is relevant to a discussion on whether it is moral. People do immoral things quite often, and I have yet to meet someone that has never committed an immoral act, at least by my definitions. Divorce is just one of many common immoral acts.
That doesn't mean that divorce should be more difficult or more socially disapproved, in fact I think it should be significantly easier to get divorced than it currently is. But individuals should recognize that you made a promise and broke it, and a divorce is at least as immoral as any other broken promise.
As an aside, I was surprised that you described marriage counseling as primitive and useless, since mine was really helpful, but in retrospect this was probably another reason I was missing others views and scientifically, you are likely very right, though I haven't done the research to confirm.
“Things that are commonplace are moral” does not seem equivalent to what I wished to say.
Ought implies can, and can't implies need not. If I promise to do something for you next week, but I am struck by a lethal bolt of lightning before that, I will break my promise, and there is no moral significance. All promises are contingent on circumstances and unforeseeable factors. Maybe we should take that as recommending that no one ever promise anything.
Or maybe we should have at least two flavors of promise, one that merely announces a serious plan that is contingent on circumstances, and one that involves staking one's entire reputation. I’m not sure how useful the second one is, as ordinary contracts seem sufficient where business is concerned, and things get very complicated for more intimate relationships. I might argue that a marriage vow is not an ordinary promise, but that might actually be a point in your favor, (as in, such a solemn and institutionalized vow should be taken extra seriously). That all depends on what we think marriage is about these days, which we may also disagree about.
In the context of a marriage vow, the promise seems conditional upon the spouse fulfilling their promise also. Even when divorce was greatly frowned upon, it happened for cause. I suppose that does not prevent it from being considered immoral. I suppose my point is, it is possible to be entirely not at fault and yet be divorced, and in extreme circumstances, to not be at fault and yet justified in initiating the divorce.
If you think that the immorality of divorce doesn’t mean anyone should disapprove of divorce, we have a different conception of morality. Maybe I am off base. Maybe it works better as, anyone who creates just cause for divorce deserves some disapproval. That leaves open the possibility that they might not deserve disapproval if the divorce is for less one-sided reasons. But I still find it off to say it is immoral but not deserving disapproval. I should think about it.
I think the statistics on marriage counseling do not indicate it is a solution in general (particularly if the purpose is to always avoid divorce, as opposed to some more moderate goal). As a certified “guy on the internet”, I could be wrong.
Historically, til death do us part was usually a five-year contract.
Unaddressed is the moral harm done to employers when a trusted, capable hire bails over pay without attempting wage negotiation, Yet who ever criticizes an employee for up and quitting ? Who would dare limit an employee’s right to quit ? Who regards the employee as a traitor who learns and steals protected knowhow ? Who faults the employee who slams the employer publicly and anonymously ? Who protects an employer from quiet-quitters, pilfering time-servers, corner cutters, lay-abouts, rumor millers, crisis fomenters, and shift cheaters ?
Who needs employers anyway !
Bunch of flying log-dazed Sony polgers.
I think that many leftists are consistent about this. It seems inconsistent until you add into the mix the assertion that words are literal violence. Then firing someone, which is also violence, is justified. This all makes sense in the critical studies worldview, where almost everything is a power relationship and violence is inherent in the system.
But Bryan spells out that the leftist take has changed over time. Have they become more consistent now?
I think that they are not consistent over time, but each of the positions that they have taken is internally consistent. That is, you can’t convince them by way of pointing to a logical fallacy within the chain from their starting points to their conclusions. I think what changed is that they abandoned their adherence to the liberal principle that words are generally not violence (threats of violence being the exception).
Depending a bit on how we draw the Venn diagram regarding "left" I am not sure I think the left was ever anti-violence, but otherwise I think you are spot on. If we more or less define the modern left as "Marxist/socialist types" violence has pretty much always been their go to for dealing with people outside their tribe. Non-Marxists simply don't have moral standing in their view, and that seems to pretty quickly devolve into Not-Marxist-Enoughs or The-Other-Team-of-Marxists who don't have moral standing. I think rhetoric about abuses caused by outsiders or opposition to justify violence towards them is mostly just to persuade those on the fence, as it were. So far as I can tell leftism or Marxism does not have anything approaching the non-aggression principle that is widely accepted or considered an important central premise.
i think people who don't work in the free markets should be very careful about commenting on relationships between employers and employees. the firing process in serious enterprises is not taken lightly because of the costs of hiring someone else, so it is the outcome of a structured performance assessment where employees are offered chances to improve. the marxist view of a cynical employer who gets pleasure in firing people is bs and promoted by people who never worked in competitive industries. Firing should be compared to keeping money loosing businesses going: yes, you can give it a chance but at a certain point you need to pull the plug to protect the other employees, the ones performing, and shareholders who ultimately bear the enterprise risk!
Also, firing comes with the risk of lawsuits these days.
You take the simplifying approach that "firing" and "separation" are basically equal decisions between the parties. Then argue as if all such situations meet that simplifying criteria. We (in theory) write laws to prevent repeated abusive/predatory and corrupt behaviour. Separation from an abusive partner who uses their economic power to enslave? IBM conveniently terminating older people who continued to trust IBM with their careers? Cisco's practice of starting new projects and forcibly transferring those it wants to lay off into them, then cancelling the project? WellsFargo and BofA staff knowingly falsifying customer acquisition because others had been fired because they did not meet the verbally communicated instructions from management? AT&T intentionally destroying unionized employee training records when they acquired Pacific Bell so that those people could be laid off due to "lack of current training" (noting that employees were not given hard copies of their class completions? One fraudulent activity, untraceable, then "legal" separation?
This comment doesn’t seem to me to engage with the argument. Rather it assumes that there *must* be some reason that they aren’t equal decisions, at will, to discontinue a relationship that no longer suits you, and then based on that assumption objects to certain incidents where people were fired under one justification or another.
Caplan’s argument as I understand it is that demanding a ‘reason’ to discontinue a relationship is a little ridiculous, and constitutes coercion in itself; you can complain that reasons given are invalid, but that’s beside the point because he believes *no reason need be given at all*.
And insofar as I understand it I agree with him. If you don’t have a contract specifying otherwise, employment should be at will—that’s practically tautological.
“We (in theory) write laws to prevent repeated abusive/predatory and corrupt behaviour.”
In practice, not so much.