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For the libertarians here, a good book to read is The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration of blacks from south to north during the 20th century.
The author conducted detailed interviews of people who had migrated in that era. One of them was a black physician who moved from GA to California, IIRC in the 1950s. It's interesting (and appalling) to read about his journey, and his futile efforts to rent motel rooms along the way. Even sympathetic motel owners wouldn't let him in, because they said that other owners would cause problems for them if found out.
I am libertarian-oriented myself, but sometimes there is a need to look at things pragmatically.
The problem is that you can't throw out a foundational principle to get the result you want in arbitrary situations. If the end result was all that mattered, I'd be all for forcing mean people to be nice.
None of us want anyone to be wrongfully discriminated against, but the alternative is to throw out the foundational principles of a civil society - don't bring force into a non-violent situation or take what doesn't belong to you. Not even if it leads to some goal you want to achieve. That's small picture thinking.
The big picture is that non-aggression and property rights should be upheld, and within that framework you find ways to solve problems. It's tempting for people to say "Ah, it's just this situation...what's the big deal? No immediate downside."
Segregation and Jim Crow were State-mandated. The governments forced business owners to serve only white people, and made it extremely difficult for blacks to own businesses.
Government-mandated segregation and free association/property rights have nothing to do with each other, since the latter is voluntary.
In the cases I reference, most or all of the refusals of service were not mandated by law. It was the choice of the motel owners to decline service to blacks. They all did it--it was kind of an unwritten rule. I'll have to reread to see if I can confirm that. It's been a couple years since I read the book.
You have the liberty to produce milk, bread, a meal, and a place to sleep for yourself, and no one should infringe on that liberty. You don't have the right to someone else's milk, bread, meal, or place to sleep. Pretty straightforward.
Is this another example of loopy libertarian logic?
The point is that if you're in business, you are offering goods and services as a public accommodation. You can't discriminate between people if you are offering that. If you're not willing to abide by these laws, then don't go in business.
It defies logic when someone is willing to pay for these services as a monetary exchange that you characterize that as theft or coercion.
In the cases I reference, most or all of the refusals of service were not mandated by law. It was the choice of the motel owners to decline service to blacks. They all did it--it was kind of an unwritten rule. I'll have to reread to see if I can confirm that. It's been a couple years since I read the book.
That is cold comfort to a black person who gets denied service whether it is voluntary or by law.
Don't Tread On My Right To Tread On You ( the right to discriminate ):
Quote:
“[E]very piece of anti-discrimination legislation passed over the past few decades,” a young campus activist wrote in a 1982 editorial in Baylor University’s college paper, “ignores one of the basic, inalienable rights of man — the right to discriminate.” Though “eliminating racial and sexual prejudice” had “noble aspiration,” the editorial claimed, anti-discrimination laws “necessarily utilize the ignoble means of coercive force.”
More than three decades later, the author of that editorial is a United States senator who hopes to be president. On Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed his presidential campaign slogan: “Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.” On Tuesday, he is expected to formally announce his bid for the White House.
Rand Paul Would Be The Worst President On Civil Rights Since The 1800s
That's not true and you have no proof. Do you actually think business owners wanted to treat their customers a certain way because government said so?
Do you actually think a modern business owner would want his name and business plastered all over the country as a racist, Jew hating bigot? Look at Starbucks. What happened there wasn't even racist and yet because of public outrage, closed down for a day to train everybody on how not to be racist.
Stop with the slave labor comparison - which is nonsense. You're getting paid if you sell to someone you don't like. The slaves don't have that privilege.
If that's the case then I guess you mind your local police department forcing you to work for them. At least you're being paid.
Quote:
If you run a business, you have to comply with all laws governing that. This includes antidiscrimination laws.
If you are offering services to the public, you have to offer them to the public without discrimination as a public accommodation. Period.
If you don't want to do that, don't run a public business and just sell what you want on an informal basis to your friends or relatives like a club or something.
What I advocate is the repeal of antidiscrimination laws.
Is this another example of loopy libertarian logic?
The point is that if you're in business, you are offering goods and services as a public accommodation. You can't discriminate between people if you are offering that. If you're not willing to abide by these laws, then don't go in business.
It defies logic when someone is willing to pay for these services as a monetary exchange that you characterize that as theft or coercion.
I have a feeling this isn't worth my time, but I'll give it another chance...
A business owner owns the products they sell, obviously. If someone else comes along and forces the owner to part with them, or forces them to make a deal they don't agree to, that would clearly be coercion.
Also, the public accommodation paragraph was an assertion with no reasoning to back it up. Why can't you decide who you do business with, and what makes every business inherently public? A business is a person or group making a product to potentially sell, or a service to potentially sell. Trade is requires consent on both sides, or else it becomes a form of theft.
The irony is what the Koch & Mercer famiiies libertarian lapdog says about States' Rights & including the regulation of social matters like sex (he's all for it):
First, Ron Paul is in no way a "Koch & Mercer lapdog." When the Cato Institute kicked out Murray Rothbard and replaced him with the Koch brothers he pretty much disassociated them. Hence the founding of the Mises Institute.
Second, I don't agree with everything he's said. I don't agree 100% with ANYONE, and neither do most sane, rational people.
Third, as a strict Constitutionalist, he is 100% accurate in his point that the federal government has no say in the matter, due to the 10th Amendment. I, being an anarcho-capitalist, happen to disagree, but that is a matter of philosophy.
Maybe you should do some more reading.
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