If you asked a grade 7 child why discrimination is wrong, they would say something like it was unfair because a persons age, gender, religion or colour has nothing to do with merit or their ability to perform a job.

We have laws like this so that employers, like Peter, are not allowed to stuff kids up chimneys or make labourers work 16 hour days.

All of Hume's questions are really just one question: why do we have laws that tell employers what to do? For Peter, laws such as IR torts, taxations laws, OHS laws, traffic laws - indeed the whole of civil society is just a con set up by whacko lefties who are meddling in employers rights to run a slave economy.

Hume's error was also Thatchers. She thought that less laws, less society and less government would mean more freedom and especially more profit for employers. Instead English society became even more dog-eat-dog and this is what Hume is advocating.

Hume's questions such as 'what's wrong with discrimination?' or on another post 'what is the value of trees?' are a childish form of reactionary self referentialism not usually found in mature debates.

While I cannot claim to be an expert on age discrimination, back in the 90s we ran a tourism business and we preferred a mix of older and younger workers. The older workers knew the history of the sites we advertised as well as interesting facts about specific areas. Their expertise meant many return customers.

If people want trees they should have every right to grow them or buy them, and if they don't want them they shouldn't be forced to pay for them.

People should be free to employ old people if they want, and not if they don't want. If you say they are as good as other employees, or better, then go ahead and employ them - which you're not doing, are you?

The issue is, what justifies the use of force - the law - specifically to violate people's freedom of association to force them to obey your opinions?

When asked what is the rational justification of the principle you are contending for, and the use of violence to achieve it, you have NOTHING but hissy fits of spite.

You say you employed older people on their merits. But only because it furthered your purposes. What about if it didn't - like now? Why aren't you employing old people now?

Either stop evading my questions or admit you are wrong.
Why should people's age preferences be criminalised? Spare us your hyperbole. Answer the question.
How do you know it's prejudice? How do you know it's not justified in a given case?
What gives you the right to tell other people what their values should be?
Why don't other people have an equal right to tell you what your preferences should be?
What about your own preferences - should you be imprisoned for them?
How do you know the government isn't wrong?
Should Malcolm King be imprisoned for participating in age-prejudiced programs?
If not, why not?
Why shouldn't age discrimination be illegal for everything else such as choosing a partner as well?
How do you know what wants customers are trying to satisfy by patronising a business, and therefore what are the appropriate characteristics of employees?

Your belief in unprovoked arbitrary violence as the basis of the social good is as invalid as the infantile rage that premises your argument.

"If you asked a grade 7 child why discrimination is wrong, they would say something like it was unfair because a persons age, gender, religion or colour has nothing to do with merit or their ability to perform a job."

Cheryl, how about a sex worker? Has their age, gender, religion or colour got "nothing to do with their merit or ability to perform a job"? How would the grade 7 child know what the employer or the consumer is trying to achieve by performing the job? And why should the decision be made by a grade 7 child, or you, rather than the employer?

Oh, how I love the anti-discrimination theory brigade dictating to the pragmatists.
The pot here is twice as black as the kettle. To disagree with what Peter Hume et al are saying is to disagree with the realities of everyday life.

Peter Hume

‘What are the answer to my questions in my last post? … Just the answers with an admission that you are wrong and hypocritical if you can't answer them.’

‘Either stop evading my questions or admit you are wrong.’

No one has an obligation to jump to arrogant, heavy-handed demands like these. If you wish to treat anyone who disagrees with you as if they are misguided children who need to admit to you how wrong they are, by all means do so if makes you feel good. But don’t expect them to dance to your tune.

CHERFUL

‘You can’t have it both ways, you either have Mum and Dad and Grandma and Grandad move back in with you or you have to employ them or pay them enough through welfare to house, cloth and feed themselves.’

Unfortunately, both of sides of politics, not only in Australia but right across the western democracies, are committed to just that – having it both ways, and more. They continue to push up the retirement age, AND dismantle the welfare state, AND reserve the right to lay off workers as soon as the economy takes a downturn, AND still expect people over 60 to keep working in a workforce that clearly does not wish to employ them.

Sienna

My experience with older (60+) workers is completely at odds with yours. I’ve found the older people I’ve worked with are far more productive than younger people.

Where younger people want to yakkity yak – either via speech or texting – all day long about their drunken night out, their kids’ development, their love lives, their new washing machine and so on … older people just put their heads down and get on with it.

I also like soaking up the on-the-job wisdom of older people. Younger people think they have to change everything for change sake, and waste their own and everyone else’s time trying out their 'totally awesome' innovations. Older people, however, have seen it all before and usually know what will and won’t work before it’s even tried.

The only thing I don’t like about working with older people is witnessing the prejudicial way most younger people treat them.