Tesla ordered to pay more than $3M to former worker in racism suit

> I wonder what your sources are?

A pretty decent public school education. I'm not going to be able to quote you sources because I didn't write down cites for four years of high school. But like I said, not working from the same collection of facts. I wonder what your sources are, because you're pretty off-the-bead from the commonly-taught knowledge of US history in the US (and seem to be basing a lot of beliefs about how America should run its affairs on that information).

Black people were, obviously, able to work. Sharecropping came in right after slavery left. We're not talking about work in general; we're talking about work in a corporate environment. American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

> nobody is entitled to a loan

Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

In addition, nobody is entitled to own a business. They can certainly work for themselves (being a contractor is a thing, gig economy is a thing, short-term work is a thing), but the privilege of incorporating, of creating the legal fiction of a "company," of having one's personal assets and fortunes divorced from the errors and risks of one's corporation... That's a privilege that carries several societal obligations. Nobody is owed that legal protection, especially if they aren't interested in abiding by the law of the land.

I'm operating under the assumption that you don't have an issue with the notion that being a company owner requires one to be responsible for tax law compliance, or EPA toxic-waste compliance, or securities / exchange reporting compliance. Is there something special about equal opportunity compliance that you take issue with? If not, suffice to know the government's right to impose it extends from the same right that imposes EPA law and tax law.

> American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

Even if that was the case, which I don't think was universally true, either, it doesn't mean companies should be forced to hire people based on race. It seems more likely black people simply took a longer time to work their way up, as a lot of them started from a "lower" starting point in terms of education and resources.

You shouldn't trust your school education too much, btw. It is obvious that many schools and teachers also push an agenda.

In any case, there were laws mandating segregation (admittedly I only just learned that those Jim Crow laws were actually only in place in the South), which were eventually abandoned. Blaming free markets for that seems completely misguided.

And why do you think of companies as white run businesses that would discriminate against black people? For sure there were also black run businesses, or they gradually emerged once they became legal.

Even today we see a lot of businesses who are racist against white people, and businesses that advertise with being "black owned" - so discrimination based on skin color still seems to be pretty normal and accepted.

> Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

How would that even work? It's a bullshit law that leads to bullshit lawsuits, would be my expectation. And probably also to loans that should not have been handed out, because people fear the lawsuits.

And no, owning a business does not make you exempt from the law. But laws are debatable. Pouring toxic waste into the environment impacts other people. Your hiring decisions do not. It is not nearly in the same category of regulations. People should not be forced to hire people they don't want to hire, period. If you don't like some hiring decisions, you are free to start your own business and hire the people that you think should be hired.

What does it have to do with the law of averages?

It certainly has nothing to do with American history. It is a fundamental principle.

The principle is that nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ.

Right to be one's own boss: it is called freedom. It doesn't have to be written in the constitution with those exact words. I don't think the US is a socialist country just yet.

And your narrative of letting people self-organize seems wrong. There were laws mandating segregation. That is not self-organization, but government interference.

Obviously murdering people and burning down businesses is and should be illegal.

I don't think it's mental gymnastics. The key fact of what I'm trying to argue here, and the lawsuit against mcdonald's, is that at the time, McDonald's was keeping the resting temperature of the coffee far too hot. Not only far hotter than any other location in the same town that sold coffee, but also, as I'm trying to demonstrate, hotter than coffee produced in a normal pour-over process.

It's unreasonable for customers to assume that McDonald's coffee is significantly hotter than every other coffee on the market, and also hotter than fresh coffee they make themselves at home.

I don't really have strong opinions on the "McDonald's kept the coffee near boiling so that people wouldn't request refills in store" bit, since it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as black coffee is dirt cheap and making it hotter only encourages people to consume more cream, which is expensive. Reasoning aside though, it's pretty obvious why McDonald's was found liable.