Not, by any measure, the same problem, since a company has no intrinsic right to exist. In fact, if the legal system needs to be hostile against a company so human rights are upheld, that company's very existence should be put in question.
People have a right to form groups and freely interact with others to the extent that they chose - that's a right not a privilege.
The absurdity of the arguments in this threat are revealing - HN is normally viscerally against any kind of authoritarian appeal, hacking on cops for arresting actual criminals ... but for this one ... they're supporting coercive and completely disproportionate actions by the state?
Because someone was called some names and meant to feel bad about themselves?
You can see how quickly the hand of angry populist authoritarianism comes out, like a bad religious movement, whenever it triggers some group's sensitivities.
> Because someone was called some names and meant to feel bad about themselves.
First: If you are in a leadership position, you have a duty of care to the way you practice leadership. And yes, a lot leadership consists of the language you use.
Second: Someone feeling bad isn’t the problem here. The problem is choosing words which set company cultural norms to be hostile to employees based on unchangeable characteristics of their birth unrelated to the purpose of the group.
Third: People do have a right to form groups and a wide range of norms they have a right to set within those groups. That right is constrained by certain responsibilities —- one of which is to be less racist!
No, not really. Just because you managed to put together a business model and get an investor to trust you with some cash that does not mean you have a greenlight from society to act as racist and as sexist as you desire. Everyone around you still has the right to be treated with respect and not be subjected to any sort of abuse, specially those that are actively working to validate your business and make you rich.
In fact, allowing for a racist/sexist work environment to fester is an incredibly stupid move, as you're hindering productivity and limiting your access to skilled employees.
The rhetorical scare tactic of implying that somehow people who oppose this ridiculous ruling somehow think that 'racism should be ok' - is not an argument.
"They didn't put in the accessibility ramp - stop capitalism now!"
So once again - hyperbole - this time with a strawman thrown in for good measure.
Nobody is remotely suggesting someone shouldn't be able to go to work and not be called racial slurs.
The issue is a) to what degree this is systematic and a part of company function and b) proportionality.
The ruling is unreasonable and stupid, it's driven by greed, ideology and a 'law by litigation' approach to everything, which doesn't bode well for anyone.
> The issue is a) to what degree this is systematic and a part of company function and b) proportionality.
The federal court already concluded that the racism problem at Tesla was widespread and systematic, and was aided by the company's internal arbitration process which was bad enough that a Tesla shareholder voiced concerns it "enabled harassment and other problems".
The proportionality was obviously well justified, given that the bulk of it corresponded to punitive damages. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish the defendant, which is a company with an estimated market value of 800 billion dollars.
If there was any doubt regarding how well justified was the decision, you can simply look at how the ruling motivated Tesla's shareholders to address its racism and harassment problem right in their shareholder's meeting. This has been a long lasting problem at Tesla which has been festering for years, with multiple similar complaints handled (and muffled) internally, but it took this court ruling to finally get the company to address it.
Nearly every company is authoritarian inherently. It's a small group of people or even one person leveraging capital to exploit the labour of a much larger group of people for profit with zero democratic process.
I'm not disagreeing that the state should be given limited to zero say on the assembly of people but companies should not be framed as the counterweight against authoritarianism but another manifestation of it.
