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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (66232)	12/12/1999 3:19:00 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 108807

An interesting question Lizzie and one I don't believe has been discussed before. First, let me say I don't necessarily believe all affirmative action is "wrong". And I'll give you one example where I believe it has been applied correctly. The Navy realized many years ago that a larger proportion of whites were officers than the population as a whole. And the percentages were way out of kilter. So they formed a task force and within the bounds of "finding the best" attempted to see what could be done. What they found was the Navy never recruited at the traditional black colleges and high schools. So they put an extra emphasis into placing recruiters there without lowering the standards of admission. Some people would call this "affirmatve action". To me, it's simple common sense and a realization that our engrained cultural ways of doing business needed to be altered. Finding the "best" was still the overriding concern. But minorities now had a much greater opportunity to be selected. And the Navy has benefited from the change. Now, on to the more difficult question of of women given preferential treatment on the job because of having children. I don't believe in the axiom that business is only about "making money". Sure making money must be a large concern, for without profits the business will die. But business is really an extension of society and what values we want in that society. In the same way we don't accept child labor sweat shops, we also don't accept the notion that because you are somewhat underproductive as a parent, you should be fired without any other considerations. As businesses assist society in the healthy raising of the next generation. They in turn assist themselves. Of course, this can be taken too far and finding the balance between societal needs and businesses needs is always a difficult problem. That's why IMO government should only intervene if private solutions have shown a great propensity for failure. This is THE big difference between conservatives and libertarians. Conservatives do see a role of government as it relates to business. But only when absolutely necessary for the health of society. Libertarians, more or less, figure that the invisible-hand will solve all societal needs. Michael