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Employers usually have significant power advantages over those they employ, and they may abuse that power. In particular, discrimination for reasons of race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. is pernicious and has been a demonstrated historical problem in lots of different places all over the world. With access to a person's Facebook, a prospective employer most likely has all the information they need to act on their own prejudices.

For background checks, frankly I believe a licensed, disinterested third party should perform them where they are necessary.

(I downvoted you because I strongly disagreed with you. Freedom of association is a poor defense for permitting discrimination, particularly where employment is concerned, IMO.)

> (I downvoted you because I strongly disagreed with you. Freedom of association is a poor defense for permitting discrimination, particularly where employment is concerned, IMO.)

Exactly, you don't wish to engage in intelligent discussion, you're punishing me for not being politically correct.

> Employers usually have significant power advantages

Unlike this and the other assertions you made, I actually made arguments to defend my position. What you've given here is the standard liberal ideological beliefs.

Don't worry, you're not the only one-- this is true of everyone else who responded to me.

You all chose convenience over principle, you all ignored my argument and you all gave me unintelligent answers.

Hacker News is not a place for intelligent discussion.

My "assertion" comes from real-life experience. It's been demonstrated to me in substance, not as some "liberal ideological belief" - that kind of insult has no place in an intelligent discussion either.

I expounded further here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3826441

You could do with re-reading the guidelines - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - specifically:

Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

Your specific baiting played a significant part - perhaps 70% - in my decision to downvote, the other 30% was because the comment was so high on the page (it was first IIRC), and such a wrongheaded comment (by my experience, not my ideology) being afforded such prominence disturbed me.

PS: value is highest for me from HN when I ignore politicized topics like this one. But sometimes I get sucked in. Don't leave in a huff simply because of this; it's not worth it.

Are you married? Have any children? Expecting a child? What is your sexual orientation? Democrat or Republican? Do you have communist leanings perhaps? Have you ever had cancer? Any other health problems? ...and so on.

States enact laws preventing employers from asking these questions for very good reasons. Most of this information can easily be obtained by accessing a persons Facebook account.

Your argument presents several hypotheticals. I would not trust a potential employer to do any of them. Not because they are evil, but because are charged with protecting the company from unwanted employees. And the definition of unwanted in that situation varies wildly from one to another.

It's good that you have integrity. People should stand up to such nonsense. But if you have a red flag on Facebook and everywhere you apply asks for your password, then you are SOL.

I also have the right-- freedom of association-- to not give them the password, and not work for companies that would even ask.

That right also, sadly, depends on how much choice you have in the first place. What about those in less fortunate positions, the cleaners of the world if you will, who need a job, and need it now?

Surely in such cases, an individual's perceived rights disappear as their desperation to pay the rent increases?

I think it helps in these kinds of situations to imagine that instead of a job we're talking about, there's a girl. You're really desperate because your mother is hounding you to get a girlfriend and all your friends are teasing you about how maybe you're gay, but you're ugly as sin and no girl wants to go out with you. You ask a girl to go out with you, but she says she won't consider it unless you shave your head. Do you have a right to force her to date you without having any requirements? That's what the State of Maryland is doing here- they're forcing one member of an association to give up the freedom to decide not to associate based on some arbitrary (and we all agree) stupid criteria.

However, back to jobs, even if you're poor, you still have the right to refuse. Just as even if there aren't a lot of girls in your town you may not want to shave your head to date your first choice. Desperation doesn't remove choice.

Further, the way things work out, there are a whole lot fewer Chairman of Goldman Sacks type jobs than there are janitor type jobs. Thus the fewer skills you have, the more jobs there are to choose from. This makes sense if you think about it- unskilled means no special training, so there are lots of industries that one might work in. While being skilled means training which immediately limits the number of industries where that training is relevant.

People want to accumulate skills and valuable ones, not because there are more jobs the more skill you have, but because there are fewer, and thus they are higher paying because there are even fewer people who can do them.

Further, remember that every employer is competing with each other. Employers do compete on quality of life for their employees.

I've seen others compare someone's assumed need for a job to a form of coercion-- as if because you imagine they might "really need" the job, then they're being "coerced" into submitting to something that we all disagree with.

But this is, strictly speaking, factually incorrect. Coercions is compelling someone to behave in an involuntary way. Even if-- and I think this is an absurd hypothetical-- there were absolutely no other possible jobs you could do, there's no coercion here if you're asked for your password and refuse and thus don't get the job.

Coercion would be the situation if, when you refused, not only did you not get the job, but they broke your kneecaps. It would have be an act that the employer threatened to do to you if you didn't comply. Your external situation cannot make it coercive.

I think this is the problem that a lot of people have-- they confuse need with right, and thus actually advocate coercion -- the coercion here is the State of Maryland which has threatened prosecution if a company violates this law.

A job is an expression of freedom of association, and people have that freedom on both ends. That is to say, the employer has the freedom to not hire people for arbitrary reasons (e.g.: programmer knows C++ but not Java, doesn't get the job.) These reasons might be stupid, but using stupid reasons is competitively disadvantageous.

By the same token, employees have the right to refuse to take a job for arbitrary reasons (I won't work anywhere that makes me write windows software, for instance.) That choice lowered my income for some years (then it had the opposite effect later.)

> Coercions is compelling someone to behave in an involuntary way. Even if-- and I think this is an absurd hypothetical-- there were absolutely no other possible jobs you could do, there's no coercion here if you're asked for your password and refuse and thus don't get the job.

You have an ATM card. I mug you, and steal the card. All I need now is the PIN. I kidnap you. I ask you to give me the PIN. Are you being coerced?

You refuse to give the PIN. I threaten to hurt you. Are you being coerced now?

You refuse to give the PIN. I punch you, very very hard. You're bleeding. Are you being coerced now?

You hear my accomplice shouting "Just cut his finger off!". You see a tray with a variety of sharp knives.

[...]

At what point are you actually being coerced?

Perhaps it's just the word coercion. I'll agree that it's a poor choice. But do you deny there's a huge imbalance of power? There's a large pool of labour able to do the jobs. There are fewer jobs available. People need to work. It's that imbalance that caused many abuses of labour, some of which still happen. Unskilled women could refuse to work for less pay than men doing the same job, but they don't, because they need the work and they know that someone else is available.

That's a lot of text to say absolutely nothing at all.

At the bottom rung of the skills ladder, there are always more applicants than jobs - you have to count the "overqualified", as they will apply for those same jobs. The bargaining power of the employer in these situations vastly outweighs that of the employee.

Your diversion into coercion is fun, but irrelevant. Someone who needs a job will be at such a disadvantage that the fact that they aren't being forced at gunpoint doesn't matter. The illusion of choice is just that, an illusion.

In addition, if employers are allowed to continue these practices, they will spread irrespective of whether they're a good idea or not. Pretty soon, you don't have a choice at all. There are no companies left that don't violate your rights.

At the bottom rung of the skills ladder, there are always more applicants than jobs - you have to count the "overqualified", as they will apply for those same jobs.

This is only the case in a poor economy (which, admittedly, we've been in for... some time now). In a booming economy, I heard fellow business owners, when I was one, complain about getting zero filled applications for advertised positions in which they mostly needed a warm body to sweep or greet customers.

I think the truthfulness of your statement varies based on the local laws, welfare state, immigration and job area.

Under the right set of conditions, I can see employers struggling to hire staff. However, potential candidates usually take advantage of this by demanding a better wage, overtime, favourable hours etc. Things that you would have no real qualms about opening negotiation on.

When the shoe is on the other foot; remember that a company's hiring policy is often set by someone who doesn't have to do the dirty work of actually asking the candidate themselves. The interviewer can brush it off as "stupid company policy" and, in the end, nobody takes responsibility for it. It becomes something that is just done.

By that logic nearly the vast majority of laws (e.g. minimum wage laws, discrimination laws, etc.) would have to be struck down. This would lead to an outcome that lots of people wouldn't like, and hence lots of people are willing to give the government some limited power for the greater good.

Okay.

What if these companies asked to inspect your home before making you an offer?

What if they were asking for your medical records?

Should a company be able to do whatever it wants to current or prospective employees? My lone alternative is to "work someplace else"? Really?

This law actually does not exempt the state of Maryland. This whole fiasco was brought up in Maryland when someone applied for a State job (I believe at a prison) and his interviewer asked for his facebook password. The man contacted the ACLU after his interview.

And now I have my answer. By standing on principle, and arguing for that principle, I've been down voted to negative one. When I responded, at length, with an explanation to someone who raised a vague disagreement, that was down voted as well.

Yet the people who have disagreed with me have not made arguments, mostly just drive by comments. Mostly assertion and characterization. And one person even admitted he was down voting me simply because he disagreed.

Hacker News is not a place where intelligent discussion can take place, and thus its a waste of time to participate here.

I'm tired of getting responses that aren't insightful disagreements, but vague unsupported assertions of partisanship. I'm tired of personal attacks when I make arguments and the fact that it seems most participants on HN are 20 something and very uneducated about the world. (which means you can't' refer to things that should be well known--like the fact that Apple got a license from Xerox for the inventions such as the mouse et al.)

Hacker News is a waste of time, and its getting blocked in my /etc/hosts file for now.