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From: robertp@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Discrimination
Message-ID: <223@weitek.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Jun-85 16:48:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: weitek.223
Posted: Mon Jun 10 16:48:35 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 01:29:11 EDT
References: <5872@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: Weitek Corp. Sunnyvale Ca.
Lines: 39
Summary: Throwing baby out with the bath water...

In article <5872@ucla-cs.ARPA>, mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP writes:
> 
> Put yourself in the position of the EEOC, an appointed body, and imagine
> trying to fulfill a Congressional Mandate that industry simply refuses to
> follow.  What would you do?  To prosecute, you have to PROVE discrimination.
> 
> There is a lot to say against quotas.  The reason quotas came into being
> was that they were TESTABLE.

Well, they could ask to have their Commission dissolved, since it wasn't
working, but that would cause them to lose their salaries.

Traditionally, the legal maxims that "There is no crime without criminal
intent," and "There is no crime without a victim" have proven very effective
in keeping the innocent from being convicted, but have also kept some of the
GUILTY safe, too.

The typical bureaucratic solution is to make regulations that discount
criminal intent and don't require that a genuine victim be found.  That way,
you can round up the innocent and the guilty and hang them all together.

(You can always get a higher conviction rate if you convict the innocent,
too.)

So with quotas, you can fine or prosecute a company successfully EVEN IF
EVERYONE WAS HIRED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUAL MERIT.  In other words,
ethical hiring practices don't guarantee immunity from prosecution, but
tokenism does.

This is typical of government intervention.  The government sets up a bunch
of button-counters, and people who produce the right number of buttons
succeed.  The intent of the law, the good intentions of Congress, and the
ethics of the people involved all get ground down by the immobility of the
bureaucratic process.  It's like expecting a doctor to do surgery with an
axe.  The instrument is simply not capable of doing the job without massive
side effects.
-- 
		-- Robert Plamondon
		   {ucbvax!dual!turtlevax,ihnp4!resonex}!weitek!robertp