There's no overall benefit to it from an economic perspective. It should be discouraged because it promotes racial and sexual inequality. It's not like it doesn't happen anyway. Unfortunately, businesses can get away with discriminating against employees if they are careful and don't openly boast about it. In any realistic competitive job offer, no one can prove that you dropped a certain group of potential candidates based on race or sex if the judgement criteria is private. Also, I think your individual vs business example is a little weak. Most people don't know/don't care about their lawyers political views. When I choose a lawyer, I choose one based on his ability and pricing. On the other hand, if two identical resumes (excluding one factor) are handed to various businesses, the overall trend does show that discrimination occurs. That's the difference. Businesses were banned from discriminating on certain grounds because they did so in the past and continue to do so today. My resume example is based on an academic study (IIRC) where a generic black name and a generic white name were added to two resumes and handed out to employers. Guess which resume was accepted more often? A consumer avoiding certain lawyers/businesses based on their political views/whatever does not tend to occur unless the business openly boasts about it or otherwise makes it clear that they hold this view. This significantly harms the businesses involved, if such avoidance is widespread. However, it has no major ramifications beyond this point. On the other hand, discrimination based on race/sex does have a large impact on society. It's one of the reasons there is a pay gap between men and women, and why black people are less likely to be employed. Good post/good devils advocate btw.