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0 pointsSilverBirch1y ago0 comments

The truth is it comes down to the exact details of the policy whether it's legal. There's tonnes of things you can do to increase diversity in legal ways. For example, Google recruits at college campuses, they must have selection criteria for which campuses they visit, no matter what that policy is it's de facto a diversity strategy.

As for whether it's fair. It seems pretty dependent on your view of the world. If your base case is that without any regulations you'll just get the best person for the job, then these programs all look like an aberration. But if your base case is that hiring isn't fair - people hire their family, their friends, people from their alma mater, people from their church etc. Then putting in a programme to mitigate the biases that do exist seems like a reasonable thing to do.

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scarab921y ago

Other countries often have a clearer separation of responsibilities between government and business.

Governments are responsible for addressing social inequity, while companies simply hire whoever best meets their needs (within the constraints of antidiscrimination laws).

In America these responsibilities seem to have become blurred, resulting in an XY problem whereby people debate which hiring policies are best at addressing certain societal problems, without questioning whether it is even appropriate for companies to be taking on that responsibility in the first place.

Hercuros1y ago

In many European countries there is an expectation that employers behave in socially responsible ways. In many cases this is also codified into law.

Employers also benefit from government support (e.g. the government sponsors education that ultimately provides the workforce for the employers).

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