late wrote:To turn that into an actual argument, you need to elaborate on what rights you would be giving up, in what circumstances.
Or were you just being goofy?
So we give up our right to unfettered free speech on YouTube, we could then imagine that when I am at Kim's Cakes I am subject to her judgment about what can/cannot be said in her bakery, right?
I am also then probably subject to other things. For instance, maybe she does not want to make a cake expressing approval for the Alt Right, and she does not want Alt Right people in her shop.
It may also be the case that she does not want to make a gay pride cake, or cater a gay wedding / make a gay wedding cake, not because she dislikes gay people (Kim hates the Alt Right, after all, and will not make an AR cake), but because she is a born again Christian, she cannot celebrate a union she does not believe in (and making a cake for a wedding, to her, is being involved in its celebration). She can, however, make them a birthday cake, but this is just not something she wishes to do with her property.
I am not sure if "getting a birthday cake from Kim" is a human right. Maybe it is.
I am not sure if Kim is actually "discriminating" when she does this... and if she does, isn't she also discriminating against the Alt Right by not making the cake?
I can see how this would be confusing.
What is your take on this, Late?
I think we need to do either (1) or (2), as I stated over in post #
15,088,942 in another thread.
I guess there are two ways to understand this problem:
(1) It's a matter for private businesses, who they employ and do not employ, and people can be hired/fired for any reason.
(2) There are human rights that should ensure that people cannot be fired for having perhaps an unpopular position or identity status.
Which boils down to either,
(1) Emphasizing positive rights (the right of the business to do what they want with their property)
(2) Emphasizing negative rights (the right to not have something done to you by others).
In scenario (1), YouTube is clearly right. If we were do to this consistently throughout society, then Kim can bake cakes for whomever/wahtever/whenever and hire or fire whomever/whatever/whenever.
In scenario (2), Kim has to bake the cake (bigot!), but now we have to consider who gets protected.
If gay people are protected from property owners outing them... then, I imagine, other minorities would be protected.
At some point, we will have to wrestle with this:
(1) Free speech and religion is a Constitutionally protected human right for Americans.
(2) Americans are legally allowed to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
If they are privately so and otherwise not bothering people, but they face discrimination and being fired for their unpopular political views, do they deserve protections? Do they get the same negative liberties that LGBTQ & Muslims people get?
And... what if someone dislikes black or Jewish people on a
religious basis? This adds a new component that transcends free speech. They believe these things on a religious level, and maybe if free speech does not protect them from discrimination, their religion might?
It's a crazy can of worms that comes into the fore when we prioritize
negative liberty. This is why, maybe,
positive liberty is better, but it has its own tangled mess:
now the business owners literally do what they want and that can hurt a lot of feelz.