Recently, managers at the Armour meat-packing plant in Fort Madison learned that they are criminals. Their crime? Since 2000, the company has required that prospective employees undergo a strength test as part of the hiring process. Because of the rigorous physical nature of the work — lifting 35-pound rods of sausage to eye-level — Armour wanted employees fit for the task.

It may seem puzzling that having hiring requirements could be illegal. As it turns out, there are applicants for the meat-handling jobs who are disqualified — namely those who cannot pass the strength test. Only 40 percent of women have been able to pass the test, compared to 97 percent of men. Recognizing this disparity, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Armour under the Civil Rights Act, which forbids gender discrimination in hiring.

Meanwhile, a health-care company has implemented a policy requiring employees to be nonsmokers, noting the high cost of employing smokers — an additional $3,400 in medical costs and lost time, annually. As a result of this policy, worker’s rights advocates have accused the company of violating employee privacy rights.

If a meat-packing manager has no right to “discriminate” against weaker workers and if an insurance company has no right to “discriminate” against more costly employees, what can be said about the meaning of rights and discrimination in today’s business world? Under this logic, a qualification possessed by one applicant is a potential tool for discrimination against another, a resume listing group memberships is superior to one listing key skills, and a hiring manager is reduced from filling job openings with qualified employees to filling spreadsheet columns labeled “race” and “gender” with equal numbers.

Just as hiring unqualified or costly employees represents the opposite of common-sense business practice, affirmative action law represents the inversion of individual rights.

The concept of individual rights — that one may do what one wishes so long as he or she does not violate the freedom of others — is just as distorted today by its enemies as it is simple. The act of “discrimination,” which in this case is merely choosing between two applicants on some basis, does not constitute a true rights violation.

Why? The faulty premise behind the affirmative action argument is known in simplest terms as the notion of “positive” rights, which means the “right” to some material good, such as a house, Social Security or a job. However, there can be no such thing as the right to something that must be provided by someone else. In other words, there is no “right” to be hired, and therefore, there is no “right” to be free from an employer’s “discrimination.”

When a business owner decides to hire an employee, the two engage in a trade. The employer offers a salary in return for the employee’s labor. There is no obligation involved; if either is dissatisfied with the terms, the two part ways. The employer should be left free to choose between employees, just as the employee should be left free to choose between employers. If both agree, a job is created.

With this in mind, the notion of affirmative action law loses its validity. An employer is no guiltier of violating the rights of women by hiring men or of blonds by hiring brunettes than he is of violating the rights of the unemployed by hiring no one at all. An employer might choose rational criteria, based on objective job requirements, or irrational ones, based on racism or chauvinism. Yet whether one agrees with those criteria, to dictate them by law is to disregard the nature of individual rights and in so doing open the doors for control of everyone by everyone, for any reason whatsoever (so long as it is approved by a majority vote, of course).

This is not to say that businesses should hire based upon any form of bigotry — that would be irrational, impractical and immoral. But although the advocates of affirmative action cite freedom as their goal, they actually accomplish its opposite. Neither freedom nor prosperity can result from abridging the right of business owners to use their own judgment and hire accordingly.