So the traditional answer for these two groups (at least the ones in America) has always been "businesses have the right to fore any employee for any reason".
Now I get the sense that with the massive corporate abuse of power on free speech as well as this subject, opinions may be shifting.
But I am very interested in knowing what people think about this and why.
Companies below a certain size.
The likes of Amazon shouldn't be able to, but some 90 year old man's tiny family business probably should.
That’s an interesting idea. Idk where the line would be but I do think a business owner has the right to hire and fire for literally whatever reason. That being said, a lot of the megacorps are quasi-governmental (or even supranational). Treating them the same as a mom and pop bookstore is dangerous and gives them free reign to corral people based on ideology AND affect the policies of whatever target country to fly cover for their social experimentation.
Publicly traded.
It's a well established line that if you're a private company you can basically do whatever the fuck you want as long as you're not brazenly violating the CRA.
Not substantially more than there already is.
The reasons companies go publicly traded is very simple: selling shares "costs" nothing compared to borrowing. That will never change.
Nor should it change. You only need to look at Japan's lost decades to see what happens when companies decide to lean on debt. In the US once a company resorts to debt it's usually a sign for the vultures to circle.
That’s a decent starting point. I can’t immediately find something wrong with the idea.
The megacorps themselves are effectively socialized and are run the same as any socialized state would be.
Who owns (eg.) Boeing? The people who run it? No, the shareholders. Who are the shareholders? Mostly Vanguard, Blackrock, JP Morgan, Chase, Morgan Stanley, Schwab, Citi, B of A, etc...
Who owns all those firms? The shareholders. Who are the shareholders? Mostly Vanguard, Blackrock, JP Morgan, Chase, Morgan Stanley, Schwab, Citi, B of A, etc... And a bunch of people through retirement funds and the like. And then of course rich people.
Can they attend or vote in a Boeing shareholders' meeting? No, because they only indirectly own shares of Boeing. At best they can vote for how Vanguard, Blackrock, et. al do things, but of course they're small potatoes.
So who does vote in a Boeing shareholders meeting. Fund managers of Vanguard, Blackrock, et. al. How do they vote? According to some "Proxy Voting Procedures and Guidelines" document that no one reads. Who wrote that document? Who knows; probably some committee.
How is this any different than a socialist state run centrally run by various State Committees?
These are the same company. Don't know why I feel compelled to point this out, but now you know™
I know they once were, but for some reason I thought they had split up. Guess not.
I’m not going to argue against anything you said
That's a really great answer. You don't want to burden small businesses with all the lawsuit risk.
The difficulty is defining what a small business is and keeping large companies from gaming the system.
The latter part is easy enough. Even if you say < 1000 employees, which is very generous, that excludes larger companies.