Social credit in America - Politics invades personal finance

Finance
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I think there is a legit question to be answered here. Try to make it black and white without any gray in between isn’t helpful.

Generally speaking, people shouldn’t have to PROVE anything in order to enter a business. I hand you my money, you hand me your product or conduct your service. But there should also be exceptions to that rule. If you have a sincere religious aversion to something I am asking for, that is cause for an exception. You whip your johnson out in a female locker room and make my female customers uncomfortable (to say the least), you are not welcome to use my facilities if you insist you belong in female spaces regardless of if you say you’re a woman or not [this is an easy one, right?]. So the question we have to ask is, does vaccination status create a situation in which business owners have a legitimate gripe against serving non-vaccinated folks?

I think the answer is hard to get to. If I am a vaccinated business owner, I know my chances of getting really sick with COVID are extremely unlikely. But I know I can still get it and spread it. I also know that a person that isn’t vaccinated is more likely to have COVID than an unvaccinated person. But not all unvaccinated people have COVID. I just know odds. So the question then becomes - are “odds” a legitimate reason to exclude people from your goods or services?

Up until we had the vaccine, it was perfectly legitimate for a business to keep out a person with a high temperature. Not many people argued with that, even though there were some feverish people without COVID and lots of non-feverish people with COVID. It was essentially agreed upon that if you had a fever, you were so likely to have COVID at that moment that you could be barred from every indoor public place and public accomodation willing to spend the time to check your temperature. But they were more than willing to let you in when your fever went away.

That was a temporary barment that was lifted as soon as your body returned to a normal temperature. There was nothing you had to do in order to gain entry. It was completely our of your control. So since people didn’t feel they did anything to get barred and weren’t forced to do anything to eventually have the barment lifted, they didn’t feel like their rights were being affected (which, funnily enough, is the opposite of how our current protected classes setup works).

But, a business employing the “vaccine passport” model is quite different. They are requiring you to do something to gain entry and they aren’t considering your likelihood of having COVID at that moment you request entry. They are considering your likelihood of catching COVID at all. Considering that many people refusing the vaccine are doing so specifically because they already had COVID in the past, the logic of a vaccine passport begins to wane. An unvaccinated person that had COVID in the middle of August is probably less likely to spread COVID inside today than a vaccinated person that has never had it. So without the information behind why someone is unvaccinated and whether or not they have already had COVID, the blanket decision to exclude people that have been unvaccinated seems akin to using a steamroller when a hammer will do fine.

But I am also sympathetic to businesses doing what is best for their bottom line. Some businesses seem to think that keeping out unvaccinated people will make vaccinated people more comfortable and more likely to come in. This isn’t a moral stance to them. They have been killed (monetarily) by COVID, in some states worse than others, and they are willing to do anything to get people back in the door. The problem there is that it is just a guess. There are clearly lots of vaccinated people that don’t mind sharing spaces with unvaccinated folks. And there are clearly lots of vaccinated people that just want to go out and live their lives. The question is, are there more vaccinated folks that won’t come in unless they know they are surrounded by only vaccinated folks, or are there more unvaccinated folks that don’t care about being around people in general. The answer to that changes based on geography, the type of business, and probably a bunch of other factors, so there is no real one-size-fits-all rule that will make sense to all businesses everywhere.

In the end, I like to look at the overall effect of the policy. Vaccine passports are not outlawed where I live. So far, I am aware of only one business that I patronize that has implemented it. It’s a small indoor concert venue. For them, I think it is not just a bottom line decision. I think there is some ideology tied into it too. Indoor concerts aren’t a need. Outdoor concerts are also a thing. Prior to them announcing the policy, I was planning on going to a show there (I have already attended 1 indoor show this year). Once they announced the policy, I decided I wasn’t going to patronize them until they drop their vaccine passport requirement. I was going to write an email explaining that, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt right now. If it persists longer than I think makes sense, I will somehow decide to let them know that I would be coming, but I am not because of their policy, even though I am vaccinated. So big picture - they are a concert venue where social distancing would be impossible and masking would be overly arduous - so the policy right now makes decent sense and isn’t having a deleterious effect on the day to day life of folks. So personally, I don’t think they should be barred from implementing a vaccine passport model. However, If they were the only grocery store in town and they were implementing that policy, that would have a huge overall effect and wouldn’t make sense because social distancing inside is possible and masking for the amount of time you are in the store isn’t that bad. I would be against allowing many grocery stores to enforce a vaccine passport policy. It’s the places in the middle that are harder to adjudicate. Restaurants and private colleges, for example. I don’t think there is an easy answer for those places.

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The problem here is it isn’t really custom vs stock–in the real world it’s stock/what my former employer called semi-custom/custom. The middle zone is made-to-order combinations of standard features, whereas custom is an actual one-off creative thing. (I do not know how widespread the term is–this was a very different industry and I never dealt with customers to know if it was a common term or not.)

What the baker was being asked for in this case would fall into the semi-custom category. He wanted a perfectly ordinary cake with a certain combination of colors.

Had the order been truly custom I would support the baker–I do not think artists should be expected to produce art they disagree with. However, that was not the situation here.

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Sorry, got carried away with my Perry Mason defense attorney schtick.

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So “no shirt, no shoes, no service” is not acceptable because it makes you put on clothing?

Fundamentally, it comes down to whether the factor is under your control. You can decide to get the vaccine, there are no appreciable barriers. Thus requiring it is akin to requiring a shirt and shoes. You can’t decide to change your gender or sexual orientation, an exclusion based on them is unfair.

(There are very few people who can’t take any of the various vaccines. While some people have potential issues with certain vaccines there’s no common component between them that would preclude all of them. It would take a combination of low-probability issues to make taking any of the vaccines a problem. It’s not like the flu shot where egg issues–which are far more common than issues with any of the Covid vaccines–rule out all flu shots.)

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As far as I know, no one forces you to physically sew your shirt and shoes onto your body permanently. Anywhere you have to have them on, you can easily remove as soon as you leave.

I’ve tried digging around in my arm with needles and vaccume tubs, but I’ve found it to be virtually impossible to remove the vaccine after I’ve left the business that is requiring it.

If you cannot appreciate the different between temporary and permanent, you are the problem.

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Found something we agree on!

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Your body destroys the vaccine within a few days. All that’s left is your body’s memory of that fight.

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And for almost everyone, your body destroys the virus within about a week. All’s that’s left is your body’s memory of that fight, and it can kill you.

I’m not saying that happens more than very very rarely for a vaccine or that the vaccines aren’t a pretty easy call for most but the healthy young based on what we know, but your argument isn’t the right comparison.

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So you agree, the consequences are permanent.

I mean, I could stab you, and after a while all that would remain is your memory of being stabbed. So that no big deal either, right?

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There’s the 1st amendment artistic expression argument that I am sympathetic to. But I think it misses the crux of the real issue. It’s being forced to participate or celebrate an event that they have a sincere religious objection to.

How about a photographer? One could argue that the baker doesn’t have to attend the wedding so he’s not really participating or celebrating it [I don’t agree with that, but it’s a legit argument]. But a photographer, on the other hand, has to attend the service, look at the couple, and make sure they are taking photos of the exact moments that are the core of the celebration - many of which are objectionable to the tenents of their faith. What they do is only slightly more artistic than you with your iphone 5 feet away. And you’re not an artist, are you? Taking pictures at the church would be semi-custom, no? They’ve done the same photo hundreds of times in different venues and all they are changing is zoom amount, where to stand, and the settings to optimize the light. Custom would be the photoshoot where the photographer directs the couple where to stand, how to pose, etc. So we can argue all day long about what is art and what isn’t, but that’s not the real issue. Would you grant an religious exemption to a photographer that doesn’t want to attend and document a gay wedding? Or would you only grant it for a custom photoshoot?

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Does the sincere aversion have to be religious, or could it be rooted in something else? Like socioeconomic, political, EMF crystal vibrational? I just want to clarify.

Is the Church of FSM a recognized religion for these purposes, or are there legal precedents that only some specific religions are allowed to be used for religious excuses? Serious question, I’m guessing this is a 1st amendment thing, but drawing a blank on whether the law ever draws a line between what is and is not “religion.”

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Yes, at the federal level it has to be religious because RFRA applies. Refer to the Hobby Lobby case. The standard SCOTUS followed there essentially says that if there is a less restrictive means for the government to accomplish its goals, they need to make exception for religious individuals. For example, the court decided in Hobby Lobby that the government could easily cover the few contested birth control types for private companies like they do for churches instead of forcing Hobby Lobby to cover something they found violated their conscience.

At the state level, currently the jurisprudence on religious exemptions is mixed. The court ruled narrowly in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop (Jack Phillips) and Catholic Social Services (Philadelphia Foster Care). They avoided taking other cases like Arlene’s Flowers. So in states without a RFRA type statute, as long as the law is generally applicable to everyone across the board and doesn’t specifically target religious people, the states can usually force people to bake cakes, take photos, place children with gay couples, etc. There are several justices that want to revisit that generally applicable standard and put in a standard that give more deference to religious freedom. The next time a case like this makes it to the court, they will either do that OR they will rule 5-4 in favor of the gay couple and the issue will finally be put to bed. So far, no one claiming a religious exemption that has made it to the supreme court has “lost,” but that’s only because the governments trying to force them to change have messed up along the way legally.

To answer your specific question, no (see link below). These questions are addressed at the lower level courts. As far as I know, no one has made it to the supreme court on appeal claiming they should win their case because their church is legitimate when all the lower courts found that is wasn’t. Cavanaugh v. Bartelt only made it as far as the US District Court in Nebraska. People with fake churches don’t generally file legitimate lawsuits. The Alliance Defending Freedom (the ACLU of religious freedom) hasn’t taken any cases from fly by night churches. Good luck getting your case up to a high level court without a legal defense team that knows what they are doing. Those legal defense funds don’t back losers and an insincere religious exemption is a for-sure loser.

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I see it a bit differently–You offer your services to the public, I don’t think you have a right to avoid participating in something you have a religious objection to.

I would exempt the photographer–what he’s doing is far more than just your iPhone at 5’. You hired him because of that skill.

There is a lot of posing in a typical wedding photoshoot. And even if there’s no posing it’s still a matter of knowing how to capture the best images.

A simple test: If you can write a set of directions it’s probably not artistic. If you can’t, it probably is. A decent photography book will teach you how to get the exposure right–but it can’t teach you the photographer’s eye. I have a much better technical understanding of photography than my nephew–but he’s won money from his photography, there’s no way I ever would.

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You realize humans don’t regenerate? Getting stabbed leaves permanent damage.

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The right wing likes to pretend this, but that’s not the case. It’s got about 1/3% chance of killing you, a similar chance of what appears to be permanent total disability and a considerably higher chance of lasting damage below the level of total disability.

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Wait - I must be a freak of nature. Over the years I’ve suffered many cuts, puncture wounds, and even a couple surgeries where part of me was cut open. And every single one of them…healed. But apparently I should be walking around with flesh and body parts hanging out these years-old-but-permanently-open wounds? This is a very interesting revelation, indeed.

Although this would also mean that getting a shot, including vaccines, does in fact cause permanent damage, contrary to your previous assertion…

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I think you’re being inconsistent by creating a semi-custom category for bakers but not for photographers. Regardless, my follow up question, just to be clear… You would exempt the photographer only because you believe what he is doing is artistic expression, not because attending the wedding and photographing it are akin to participating in it and celebrating it (if he were to produce a good product). So what about a minister? What he does isn’t artistic. Does he have any right refuse to participate in a gay wedding that violates his religious beliefs? [assume he is licensed by the state to perform marriages and has an ad in the yellow pages promoting his services and listing his faith]

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You left wingers love to pretend this, but it is most clearly not the case. As a whole there may be a 1/3% chance of killing you, but a bulk of that risk is concentrated in certain demographics and risk factors that simply do not apply to a vast majority of the population. For that vast majority, the risks are far, far lower.

And that ignores the fact that the risks from the vaccine are incurred by everyone who has been vaccinated. While the risks from covid first requires…being infected with covid. Which after 1.5 years is still only 15% of the population. The other 85% have faced zero risk, and thus have in fact incurred more risk from being vaccinated.

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I do agree the risks are concentrated, but even amongst the low risk people the disease is a far greater risk than the vaccine. There’s no demographic with more vaccine deaths than Covid deaths. (Beware any argument that references the VAERS data. It’s only useful for pointing out things to look into, not for proving anything.)

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I don’t think there really is a semi-custom category for photography. If you’re doing anything beyond product photography in a lightbox it’s a skilled task.