I used, long ago, to be an opponent of antidiscrimination laws (I thought they’d be easily evaded and therefore useless, and if hard to evade they’d be counterproductive in the way you said). Exposure to the real world in a hiring agency changed that.

They are indeed easy to evade (contrary to right-wing myth you’d have to be a very stupid employer to have a successful case brought against you), but the simple effort of avoiding overtly racist language or finding a pretext to avoid interviewing a woman for the job had a surprisingly powerful educative effect – it caused employers to ask themselves “well, why not a woman?”.

You can certainly overdo antidiscrimination laws, but I reckon they have a useful role to play in helping to break the vicious cycle I just referred to.

In a rational world, a blued eyed person would simply be paid less because of the higher risk they represent. Current minimum wage and anti-discrimination laws simply mean that this person remains unemployed (or underemployed) because an employer can’t pay them a fair market rate (which is below that for non-blue eyed people) and sanction for discrimination in the workplace against the blue eyed provides a disincentive. As a group, the blue eyed would remain under-employed and they would be unable to overcome the discrimination (fair or otherwise) against them by demonstrating their worth.

Ok, the legislation is not the reason, a mixture of the irrational aversion to blue-eyed people and the rational fear of crime (properly weighted for risk), combined the cycle of reinforcement that you describe got us to where we are. However, the legislation does provide an additional barrier to overcome, one that is counter-productive in acheiving the goals it seeks.

Minimum wage seeks to protect employed people from exploitation. It does nothing to protect unemployed people from idleness.

Anti-discrimination legislation provides sanctions against legislation, providing disincentives to employers from employing minorities lest they expose themselves to the risk that their current employees are prejudiced and themselves to the sanction as employers for the prejudice of their employees or customers.

I won’t address the bit about hardwired fear of the “other”, because the whole history of the human race (not to mention carefully studied behaviour amongst our nearest evolutionary relatives) refutes it. But I do suggest you read Gary Becker on segregation.

If blue-eyed people have a significantly higher crime rate and/or less education than the average, then a rational employer (who has imperfect knowledge of individual job applicants because information costs), will prefer non blue-eyes. But that discrimination changes the payoff to differing behaviours for the blue-eyed – crime pays more relative to honest jobs, and (above all) the payoff to investment in human capital becomes lower. Which leads to more crime and less education for blue-eyes, which leads to more discrimination …. etc. The consequent segregated society is less rich (not to mention much nastier) than one without segregation, but it has come about with every person in it rationally pursuing their self-interest.

Economics, JC, has developed a little beyond Adam Smith’s invisible hand (in fact, of course, Adam Smith developed a bit beyond that too).

“Secondly, you should know enough of models of segregation to understand that systematic, widespread and socially suboptimal racism or caste systems will arise even in a society of perfectly rational optimising individuals.

To a large extent we have a caste system primarily based on merticracy these days and not the family blue blood ties of the past. It’s based on IQ. That doesn’t change under any system.

LOL! That is incredible naivety, Andrew.

Firstly, we are born with an evolutionarily-derived and hardwired tendency to distrust, fear and despise those not of our tribe. It takes heavy socialisation, possibly backed up by heavy legislation, to overcome that.

Secondly, you should know enough of models of segregation to understand that systematic, widespread and socially suboptimal racism or caste systems will arise even in a society of perfectly rational optimising individuals.

Now none of this necessarily justifies particular instances of anti-discrimination law (you have to take a case-by-case consequentialist examination), but it does mean that laissez-faire in these matters is most unlikely to lead to a tolerant liberal utopia.

1.Vote for me and I will make sure you won’t get sacked unless the’re’s a decent ranson…… is not my idea of a positive message.

2. Vote for me and I will protect you from rapcious monsters …….is the language one uses to scare the kids.

The things I can fault the conservatives on was that labor market liberalization should ahve been a 1/2 pager at the most with the bulk of the work writing down labor market laws. I also fault them on degrading the refroms a few weeks ago. Mostly I would say they haven’t had a message about this other than saying that the govervenment ought to butt out of the labor market, which has been changed by the left to mean “the bogeman is after you”, so vote for me. Some positive message!

I still can’t get over the “I don’t want growth if it is unfair” routine. How about you. Some gal they have on the front bench, right?

That Gillard says positive things and you don’t hear them (or choose not to) is hardly her fault. It is a position that is especially humorous given the coalitions unending election campaign based on fear of union control, or “L” plates or Brian Burke.