From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 08:52:21 MDT
On May 21, Samantha wrote
> These days a husband is often likely to move for the
> wife's career and may well stay home with baby himself.
> And no, the company should not be able to fire anyone
> for taking time off in such circumstances.
As you know, whether or not someone should be fired
can be an infinitely complicated decision. Just think
of the complex stories you've heard from some co-workers,
or your boss. Personalities get into it. Resentments,
injustice, and past incidents of unfairness get into it.
When you write "the company should not be able to fire...",
I take it that you want to submit disputes to judicial
review, when the fired party so desires. That would be
fine if the judges could get to intimately know all the
circumstances, and if they could be trusted to not let
their own human limitations bias their judgment, and if
we had some way to pay for the (immense) effort of letting
them become intimately familiar with all the circumstances.
Because such issues are so enormously complicated, the
Earth's most successful societies evolved the tradition
of local decision. True, in some societies (both modern
and historical) everything that happens is the business
of the state authorities or religious leaders, and their
wisdom is consulted on all matters. But compared to our
modern Western societies, these societies are unsuccessful.
Thomas Sowell, in his wonderful book "Knowledge and
Decisions" explains with remarkable clarity why decisions
should be made by the people closest to the particulars,
and not by remote bodies or general rules (laws).
The freedom to quit and the freedom to fire are part
of the liberty of free association. It's remarkable
to what degree people are becoming less and less free
to associate in this way. Today in some large German
companies, for example, not only are companies not free
to fire employees (which does not surprise you), but
employees are hardly free to quit. Companies use a lot
of tricks, one of which is that if you want training, then
you have to sign a contract promising not to quit for some
specified period. But if you don't want the training, then
you end up in limbo. This sad situation has arisen because
what happens is no longer entirely determined by the people
most closely affected. The state of the German economy
reflects the influence of such cultural assumptions and
traditions; and unfortunately, we seem to be headed in
that direction too.
Lee
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