Bryan
Caplan asks a good question: why is that if an employer pinches a female
employee’s bottom, the law comes down on the employer like a ton of bricks,
whereas if a CUSTOMER pinches the employees bottom, that’s kind of more or less
OK?
My explanation is that the populist view is that customers are ordinary
deserving saintly “people”, whereas employers are exploitative, evil
capitalists.
Indeed, the above sort of nonsense leads to an even bigger farce: those
frequenent instances of where a public sector employer is “fined” for
misconduct or incompetence or something of the sort.
An employer, particularly a public sector employer, is an entirely
ABSTRACT CONCEPT. In contrast, where such incompetence arises, there must be
ACTUAL PEOPLE in the relevant organisation who are responsible for the
misconduct or incompetence. But “ACTUAL PEOPLE” according to the above popular
mythology are all saints, by definiton. While employers (even if they are
public secotor employers) are all evil and exploitative. So the blame just has
to be pinning on the entirely artificial and abstract concept: the public
sector employer.
Needless to say, the fine imposed on the public sector employer gives
little inducement to the offending employees to mend their ways.
(h/t to Stumbling
and Mumbling)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Post a comment.