Comment by juniper_strong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by juniper_strong | Hacker News Reader

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The protections I am talking about are already somewhat present for public employees, you can't fire a public employee for some random Twitter comment they made unless you show it is interfering with their ability to do their job, so I don't think the proposal is ridiculous at all.

As for your argument that, "We may as well as make it impossible for any business to fire people for any reason, then", I don't see how that follows from what I am proposing. Firing people for reasons that relate to their work makes sense, firing someone for making an OK sign to someone on the highway does not. Someone says "Studies show that violent protests decrease support for the protestors' cause" at work, feel free to walk them out the door for their hate speech. If they say it on Reddit, maybe that's not the hill to die on.

I don't think whether a job is a right or not is the question we should be asking. People have obligations, both to their families, and to society. Someone can't get a job because of something they said on the internet and now they contribute nothing to society even though they are perfectly capable of being productive. That doesn't make sense. I pay more taxes now because they aren't working?

You're going to tell some kid, "Your mom doesn't get child support anymore because your dad said something mean on the web"? How does that even make sense?

"firing someone for making an OK sign to someone on the highway does not [make sense]"

If they're employed in an at-will state, they can be fired for something like that. No sense needed. The issue lies with the company.

And I disagree. Firing someone for making the OK sign -can- make sense, because it can be a racist dog-whistle. That's the entire point of co-opting an ubiquitous symbol. It may be perfectly fine, it may not; the context matters.

"now they contribute nothing to society even though they are perfectly capable of being productive"

That is simply not the responsibility of a business. The fired person can find another job at a different company if it was such a trivial comment.

"You're going to tell some kid, "Your mom doesn't get child support anymore because your dad said something mean on the web"?"

(If it was really just a mean comment): "Your parent was fired because their employer is irrational. Sucks, but that's life sometimes. <Child>, this is a reminder that getting work is a privilege, not a right, and you should save money just in case you get laid off as well. Companies are not loyal to you."

(If it was actually bigoted / hate speech): "Your parent was fired because they put out bigoted statements online, and their employer didn't want to keep them on their payroll. <Child>, this is a reminder that getting work is a privilege, not a right, and you should save money just in case you get laid off as well. Companies are not loyal to you."

If a company fires people like this, they'll get flak and probably burn out as the smart/talented people move to more stable companies, etc. Making people much harder to fire will just make companies worse; I really don't want to have regular jobs function like government ones where terrible people stay around because it's too hard to fire them.

> If they're employed in an at-will state, they can be fired for something like that. No sense needed.

Exactly, that's the whole argument here. When you are talking about destroying people's lives, harming society, harming innocent people, I think sense should be needed.

I get your argument, I used to be more libertarian than I am now, things have changed.

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