> The rule of law doesn't exclude an employer deciding an employee is more trouble than they're worth outside of some very specific situations (class protection, etc.).
"Rule of law" refers to "judgment in a court on the basis of a codified law" as opposed to "mob rule" where the mob takes it upon itself to determine who is guilty. My point is that I hope we can agree that the mob is bad at determining who is guilty and what an appropriate sentence ought to be, and this is why we have rule of law.
> a group of people can organize to petition an employer to remove an employee for behavior A, and the employer can evaluate A and decide whether the group's claims are untrue, A should be removed for the behavior, or it's not worth the time to decide and A should be removed to quiet the group. Good employers won't do 3...
The problem, of course, is that employers have a fiduciary responsibility that reliably overrides their moral responsibility in practice. And naturally, cancel culture depends on this basic fact, or else it would be ineffective. If employers were able to resist the mob, then the mob wouldn't get its way. If the mob and the employer were really righteous then the employer would terminate the errant employee without pressure from a mob (there would be no point).
Personally I think we should make it harder for employers to terminate their employees for their private free speech, such that mobs can "protest" employee behavior but they can't even implicitly threaten the employee's livelihood and access to health care. If you remove the mob's ability to control one's employment, then they can shout into the Twitter void to their heart's content with my full blessing.