Re: Fix unemployment

Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Mon, 14 Sep 1998 19:01:02 -0400

Peter C. McCluskey wrote:

> hanson@econ.berkeley.edu (Robin Hanson) writes:
> >Peter McCluskey writes:
> >> The other is to have employers routinely provide public evaluations
> >>of their employee's job performance. This would reduce the cost to employers
> >>of distinguishing accurate resumes from inflated ones, at least if our legal
> >>system can be persuaded to discourage all lawsuits over anything except
> >>clear-cut lies in the evaluations.
> >
> >It's not clear elminating lawsuits gives employers an incentive to be honest.
>
> Excessive lawsuits increase the costs of providing information that can't
> be cheaply proven accurate, thereby discouraging employers from giving away
> valuable but controversial information.

Without allowing lawsuits, you have no means of preventing evaluation extortion and rampant abuse of all kinds. I much prefer Eliezer's old idea of Institutes of Verification.

Keeping evaluation of one's skills in the hands of non-partisan independent organizations is absolutely necessary.