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Comment by oarsinsync | Hacker News Reader

Except at least one of those is now enshrined in California law. From the article:

> Public companies with all-male boards based in California now face a $100,000 fine under a new state law.

A Google search indicates California is currently being sued for that law on the ground that it violates equal protection, which seems obvious.

It'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Intellectually, this isn't really any different to affirmative action (enforcing opportunities for long time discriminated against classes), which has ultimately been approved by the supreme court.

Except this is not about enforcing opportunities for a certain group but to prevent a group certain privileges based on their skin color and sexual orientation.

Discrimination is not right because you think you have the right motives, the law is also very clear about this.

Doesn't federal contracting explicitly favor people on the basis of being female / minority / veteran? It always seems that the people who make the rules get to break the rules, so long as they can string together a plausible argument, which is a very low bar.

I think the core difference is that AA is supportive, whereas this measure is punitive. Since we're all dealing w finite resources you could argue they're the same but it doesn't seem as easy an argument.

AA is the same thing, surely. Creating opportunities for people based on some identity characteristic is invariably the same thing as denying those opportunities to others - resources, positions, and opportunities are in the instant zero sum games (not in the long run, but decisions on how to allocate opportunities aren't made over the long run but in the moment).

Imagine if I owned a country club and it came out that I'm preferentially choosing people of one race over another, say actively excluding black people. How do you think that would be received?

That's literally what affirmative action is.

> That's literally what affirmative action is.

No, it's not. Affirmative action does not prevent any company from hiring any white/male/etc. people. All it does is preclude them from hiring only such people when there are qualified minority applicants. Equating a preference (even a mandatory one) to a total exclusion is specious, as is equating situations with and without specific ability-to-perform requirements. It's a false analogy.

In my post I said "preferentially choosing people of one race over another". Sure the hypothetical Country Club lets in some blacks, but it really sets a much higher bar for them. It sets a lower bar for other races.

That is affirmative action. Don't believe it? Look at the data unearthed from admissions data provided during the Harvard AA lawsuit. Asians must pass a much higher bar than certain other groups.

The question is, if it's not ok for the Country Club, why is it ok for Universities?

There is a difference, Harvard (a private institution) enacted an affirmative action policy and was sued and won.

This is the government FORCING affirmative action and is most likely unconstitutional.

Harvard was also not an employment case (right?). So a different law. Right now as I understand it California and federal laws conflict.

A quick google suggests the government has done this before, (Executive Orders 10479, 11246). Admittedly I've done very little reading around the subject, so I'm unsure if it's relevant in this context or not, but figure it's worth adding to the conversation in case it is. Please shoot it down if it's not!

I could see a problem with a law that required all businesses to display a certain level of diversity. However, this is different. Corporations are creations of the state, and have no right to exist apart from what the state chooses to give them. Therefore their existence can be made contingent on any priority the state determines (any such priority that wouldn't violate someone else's rights, that is).

Corporations have run roughshod over our laws and society for too long. If this sort of law can improve their behavior, I'm all for it.

The myth of the corporation as a creation of the state

International Review of Law and Economics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014481...

I'm not going to pay $36 to read that (did you?), but the abstract says this:

The general movement to joint stock enterprise could not take place until certain economic and legal changes had been effected … The legal change was the substitution of the law of corporations for the law of partnership in company affairs. Investors could then invest safely and full exploitation of the economic changes became possible.

Of course, no thinking person needs to read a legal brief to realize what a gigantic difference exists with respect to liability, between partnerships and corporations. No actual human being is ever held responsible for the evil done by corporations. Therefore, they continue to do more and more evil. Every time we complain, we're lectured that "their only responsibility is to their shareholders!" If that's the case, it's not because God wrote that on a stone tablet. It is directly a result of the statutes that create the corporation. The laws that legislatures pass, they can change.

A law which itself has not yet been constitutionally tested and is the subject of lawsuits:

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/01/653318005/california-becomes-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/14/this-stat...

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