Political discrimination lawsuit against Google to proceed to discovery phase
“The lawsuit alleging that Google discriminates against employees on the basis of political beliefs has passed a crucial test, allowing the plaintiffs to demand and receive internal documents, emails and text messages, and other records such as audio and video recordings related to their contention.”
The Google lawsuit is based on California's employment laws, which make political belief a protected class. I believe the only other place in the US that has this rule is Washington DC.
For what it's worth, I believe that any company that imitates Google's hiring practices will collapse for the same reason as New United Motor.
But there are some semi-monopolies that should be subject to no-viewpoint-discrimination legislation. One is banking; another is the domain name system, which could be used to block opponents from the web if this is allowed (and this has already been attempted against Gab).
https://youtu.be/XwCK2GkR2ew
I don't really support the suit except as sunlight to uncover just how partisan Google has become. Then let people choose whether or not they still want to do business with them - or be employed by them.
Only the government has no right to discriminate, as it's function is to protect everyone's individual rights.
Private enterprise and individuals have every right to discriminate.
The fact that conservatives have taken the wrong side of this issue, demonstrates their total lack of political theory and proves what I always say about them: they are religious and politically illiterate leftists.
Good thing Objectivists DO have the proper understanding of politics to see such a lawsuit for the appalling rights violation that it is.
That may have been true in the past but now activist government discrimination has been implanted in many laws under nice feel good names like, “affirmative action.”
“Private enterprise and individuals have every right to discriminate.”
This is also may have been true in the past but now there are laws against it.
The Federal "Fairness Doctrine" for radio and TV from 1949 to 1987 was censorship. Ayn Rand deciding what to include in the newsletters she published was not.
Forcing individuals to support ideas they disagree with is a violation of freedom of speech and of property rights. Censorship is government telling someone what he cannot say, write, or publish. Using your own private property to disseminate ideas you choose to and not using it help someone you disagree with does not prevent him from disseminating his ideas by some other means.
As Ayn Rand put it in her "Man's Rights":
"'Censorship' is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is censorship. No private individual or agency can silence a man or suppress a publication; only the government can do so. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the fight not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one's own antagonists."
And in "The Property Status Of Airwaves":
"Now observe the practical demonstration of the fact that without property rights, no other rights are possible. If censorship and the suppression of free speech ever get established in this country, they will have originated in radio and television [now extended to the internet]."
Populist conservatives pushing to use government to force a private company to publish whatever they want is collectivism. In package-dealing private and government actions into an invalid concept of 'censorship' they are attacking both freedom of speech and the right of private property, which makes freedom of speech possible.
Ayn Rand discussed the nature of censorship and the distinction between private and public actions many times, including the "Fairness Doctrine" that she opposed. The major articles are:
"Man's Rights" in The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
"The Property Status Of Airwaves" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
"The Cashing-in: The Student 'Rebellion'" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Return of the Primitive (originally The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution_)
Check Your Premises: "Have Gun, Will Nudge" The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 3—March, 1962
Check Your Premises: Vast Quicksands The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 7 July, 1963
"Freedom of Speech" (Dec 2, 1962) in The Ayn Rand Column
"The New Enemies of 'The Untouchables'" (July 8, 1962) in The Ayn Rand Column
"Censorship: Local And Express" in Philosophy: Who Needs It
"Thought Control" The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II, No. 26 September 24, 1973 - Vol. III, No. 2 October 22, 1973
"'Ideas V. Goods'" _The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. III, No. 11 February 25, 1974*
They have control over what is published and what is not.
Which is censorship in the truest sense of the word.
“Censor: A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.”
“Censorship: The act, process, or practice of censoring.“
Is that wrong?
We are talking in a political context and in such a context only the government can "practice censorship."
EDIT: just to add, there is no other context in which you'd use censorship. Not in the literal, proper sense, anyway.
The populist conservatives demanding that facebook publish their posts have no moral or legal claim under freedom of speech and no right to force facebook to help them in the name of opposing "censorship". They are evading the fundamental distinction between government force in suppressing speech and the right of the owner of specific private property to use it for his own purposes and deny trespass.
At best they are guilty of hyperbole in their cries of "censorship" (a progressively increasing misuse of the word), but the calls for government interference are much worse, showing the mask slipping. It is a collectivist denial of private property rights, just as surely as forcing businesses to bake cakes in a way they do not choose to.