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Comment by frgtpsswrdlame | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Age/race/gender/national-origin discrimination in hiring and firing should by punishable by, say, 4 months in prison.

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Four months for a crime that affects the lifetime earnings of hundreds of people to the tune of hundreds of thousands? That's not nearly enough.

It depends. The opportunity cost, measured in leisure and luxury and time away from family and kids, can make even short jail sentences scary for older wealthy people.

In addition to your career perhaps being over. Most companies do strong background checks for executive positions. Plus your reputation in the local community. I'm sure if Martha Stewart had to chance to choose again, she'd skip the insider trading and the jail sentence.

I dunno, Martha Stewart got a lot of street cred for doing hard time in the slammer.

4 months in prison for a VP of a tech company is not the same as 4 months for poverty-stricken career thief. It's rather absurd to mention this, but the VP has a lot more to lose; it could potentially ruin his entire life.

So a life is worth less because they are poor? If you're rich you shouldn't have to face the same consequences for your actions? That is insane.

A "VP of tech company" is likely to be wealthy and have a number of assets. They could liquidate or just pay out of pocket to maintain their assests while they are inside and still come back to wealthy life.

If you were already poor going into prison, living paycheck to paycheck, they have literally lost everything. Their life is destroyed.

If anything, prison sentences and fines should scale up based on one's position of power and income.

Justifications for punishment include retribution and deterrence.

Depending on how much importance you assign to each of those the appropriate policy will vary.

If you care about deterrence but not retribution you really might not need as long an incarceration. Your average inside trader might be just as eager to avoid a month in jail as your average burglar is to avoid a year.

I'm not saying that's necessarily the case. But it's something to consider.

And how many months do the people that support such laws get of jail, when their policies affect the poorer and younger workers disproportionately?

If you're young, you have less experience. Are you poor? Unlikely (speaking of the tech industry). Do you make less? Probably. You see "discrimination", I see a skills and experience gap, and faux outrage.

Are you willing to go to jail if your analysis is wrong?

If I'm aware of the consequences of a failed analysis upfront, yes.

I don't get your question. This is not about who gets affected by what. It's about preventing intentional discrimination. Companies should not be able to discriminate based on age. That protects everyone. Fire everyone under 30 as a way of reducing staff? Just as bad as the opposite or racial or any other kind of discrimination.

The thread here is about increasing the wager/skin in the game of companies and executives that do anything that disproportionately disadvantages older workers: I turn that around and say that the people that advocate those policies should also have to risk something in case what they think is good for old people is actually bad for other group, for example, poorer untrained workers.

A relative advantage for one is necessarily a relative disadvantage for another.

That's not what the thread is about. It's not about disadvantaging older workers. It's about discrimination based on age. Just as an example, some states are no longer allowing insurance companies to charge a higher rate for younger drivers.

> is actually bad for other group, for example, poorer untrained workers.

Those poorer untrained workers will also eventually become old. What then?

> A relative advantage for one is necessarily a relative disadvantage for another.

Could you explain that in terms of not allowing companies to discriminate based on race? Who is that a disadvantage to in any sense that could be framed as just or ethical?

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