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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Client Rights and Wrongs
Message-ID: <1148@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 16-Nov-84 15:57:43 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1148
Posted: Fri Nov 16 15:57:43 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Nov-84 01:42:51 EST
References: <11300004@acf4.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 61

The client has the right to determine who shall work for him, no
matter what?

According to who or what, besides the power of the buck?  & even
the buck's power fails if laws prohibit discrimination AND those
laws are enforced, whether by legal authorities or by the atti-
tudes of the industry.  Not to mention the threat of consumer
boycott (eg's, Florida OJ, Coors Beer).  The self-regulating
amoral laissez faire market is a myth; the real market has
constraints of all kinds, including moral & legal ones.

You COULDN'T GUESS what I'd do?  I'd probably tell the client to
get f*cked, & promptly report him to local (Cambridge has compre-
hensive anti-discrimination laws), state & federal civil rights
& business regulatory agencies, the Better Business Bureau, mino-
rity or anti-discrimination organizations, and even attempt to
publicize the client's bigotry in newspapers, TV & radio news,
& trade publications.  Finally, there are "political" actions:
picketing & boycotts.  

But your posting is more than the presentation of a practical
business dilemma.  It insinuates matters of principle by its 
use of the term "rights".

These "client rights" aren't "rights" at all, in any sense of that
word (look up "right" in the dictionary), but merely the "power",
here economic, to hurt me by depriving me of potential profit.

"Right" always implies the idea of a "just claim".  The pertinence
or force of your implicit appeal to principle is illusory, for it's
based on an equivocation (or rather a confusion) in your use of the
word "rights":

	1. Possessing a right (a just claim to something, eg, pro-
	   perty) enables the possessor to exercise a power (eg,
	   dispose of property as he/she sees fit).  Thus the word
	   "right" is occasionally used in a kind of abbreviation
	   to refer to the consequence of a right, namely a "power".
	   But valid use of this abbreviation requires that a right
	   (a just claim) already exists.

	2. You use "right" to mean "power", & echo the above abbre-
	   viation without meeting its requirement for valid usage,
	   thus invalidly linking the nonmoral idea of power with
	   the moral notion of just claim, lending to your posting 
	   an air of moral cogency.

(If you meant to evoke something like the libertarian "right to 
discriminate", you first have to make a case for libertarianism, 
& particularly for the special interpretation it gives the term
"rights".)

I have to echo what Steve Dyer's said: your posting displays an
extraordinary ethical callousness.  It also makes me wonder whe-
ther "laissez faire" has replaced god, science, & the Great Gahuna
as the source of all wisdom.


			"There's nothing fair about laissez faire"

			Ron Rizzo