We want the city to treat its employees equally, which means offering each employee the same benefits.
I honestly don’t even understand your snipe about forcing people to marry the opposite sex. Forcing the city to treat people equally has nothing to do with the private citizenzry’s choice in spouses.
An “activist judge” is a judge who applies the constitution or laws in a manner you find inconvenient, but in whose judgment you don’t wish to go to the trouble of actually finding an error.
Yeah, that’s how it always works with libertarians, right? Force is bad, so always define force in such a way that the bad guy is the one doing it. Lib, why shouldn’t a city decide with whom to do business on the basis of how they treat their employees? Why should the city be forced to do business with people who don’t respect their employees? Does this extend to consumers as well? Should I be forced to do business with businesses that act in what I consider an immoral way?
I don’t know the specifics of the law in question, Lib, so take this with a grain of salt. But it would be my understanding that the rule is, if you want to do business with the city government, you are obliged to offer equal benefits to the families of all your employees on equal terms, whether they be constituted by a legal marriage or not. No force involved, though a small element of coercion.
If you offer me a contract, one of the terms of which is that I register with the Board of Elections as a Libertarian (and hence help to keep NC’s third party alive), I am free to accept or reject that contract, but if I accept it, I’m obliged to comply with its terms, including registering as a Libertarian. There’s just a touch of coercion in that – you’re making me an offer that is very tempting, and requiring a stance of me in consequence, and my choice is to accept or reject your offer.
I see the same sort of mini-coercion in the City’s law – if you choose to do business with it, you must comply with what it expects of its vendors. You can choose not to do business with them, but it you choose to, you need to comply with its expectations.
As far as I can tell, based on the recent hysteria over “judicial activism” and how it’s GOING TO TURN YOUR CHILDREN INTO GAY SECULAR HUMANIST PAGANS, yes, Brown v. Board of Education was indeed a violation of the rights of the legislative branch to make laws.
Interestingly enough, they never mention the supreme court decision that decided the last presidential election. I guess it’s only overstepping their bounds when the courts act all liberal.
From The Governor’s Guide To Practical Politics:
When the courts strike down a bill you like, it’s judicial activism.
When the courts strike down a bill you don’t like, it’s judicial review.
Force is not bad; initial force is bad.
That’s what happens when you hypostatize. Cities are not rights bearing entities. The only business any governing entity ought to be doing is securing your rights. When you allow it to become a monopoly builder of roads, emptier of trash, extinguisher of fires, and deliverer of water — and then give it rights to boot… you’ve created a monster.
Of course not.
The difference is not subtle. The hypostatized entity has eminent domain over all it surveys. In the end, it owns everything. If I fashion deals that do not suit people, I go out of business. If the city does it, it raises taxes.
I’d dispute that, but even if taken as true, I don’t see how that changes the point Polycarp was making. If you are, say, a supplier of office janitorial services in NYC, the city is one of your potential clients. From your POV, they’re really no different than any of the other consumer of office janitorial services – you can do a deal to clean Donald Trump’s many buildings, or you can do a deal to clean the city’s buildings, and from your perspective they’d just be potential clients. So why can’t the city attach strings to its vendor contracts just as Donald Trump attaches strings to his?
I can make a reasonable policy argument that this is a dumb move for the city economics-wise (by imposing these restrictions, they are limiting the available universe of vendors, and thus possibly not getting the best price for the services they need, which could be considered wasteful of taxpayer dollars), but that’s a separate wonkish type discussion (is it worth the marginal increase in costs for the perceived benefits of improving the availability of same-sex benefit packages?). Your argument is quite different. I’m not sure I see how you can draw a meaningful distinction between the city and a private actor on this particular set of facts.
The answer is in what you quoted from me. The city can’t attach strings for the same reason that angels on the head of a pin can’t attach strings. Only entities that bear rights, and not hypostatized entities, ought ethically to enter into contracts because of the voluntary volition that is required to establish one. Otherwise, what is to prevent me from gathering thousands of signatures on a petition to show popular support that I am the new High Holy Mullah, and declaring that “the city” shall now do my will?
You can certainly make an argument that “corporate legal persons” should not exist, that the responsibility for actions devolves on the human beings committing those actions, and not on a corporate entity. And I would be quite willing to listen to such an argument.
But – if you allow the existence of corporate persons as legal fictions to begin with – a municipal corporation acting in its private role, as a purveyor and consumer of goods and services (as opposed to its public, governmental role) should be treated no differently than a private-sector corporate person.
The distinction that a municipal corporate person can “switch hats” and act in its governmental capacity, is no different to me than taking Brandon and Jordan somewhere they want to go. 90% of the time, we are three persons with mutual respect for each other’s individuality, doing what we consider fun – which for me is enjoying the opportunity to give the boys a chance to have fun. The fact that the other 10% of the time I need to put on my in loco parentis hat and say that no, you cannot do that, because it’s too risky for you under these conditions (as when Jordan wanted to walk the top of the stone wall that was still wet from the rain) doesn’t impair the significance of the other 90%, when I’m not wearing that hat. Would you deny Replacements Ltd. the right to reject contracts with businesses that discriminate against gay people? If you would not, why would you deny the City of New York, a municipal corporation, the same right?
So General Electric can’t ethically enter into a contract?
Is this a serious question? Pick up a high school civics textbook.
You seem to miss these points rather frequently. It’s not the methods that people oppose, it’s the message. The beef isn’t with the way Bloomberg carried out his policy, it’s with the policy itself. There’s no hypocrisy here, because pro-LGBT-rights folk are not saying “don’t use the courts to challenge the law”, we’re saying that Bloomberg is being bigoted about it. Having an opinion doesn’t make someone a hypocrite.
I’ve answered that already. You’re hypostatizing — you’re assigning concrete attributes to abstract entities. Libertarianly speaking, rights are concrete manifestations of birth, and accrue to human beings in their capacity as human beings. The disjunction between a person who happens to govern is that when he wears his “person hat”, he has rights; but when he wears his “governor hat”, he has no rights, but only duties. It makes no ethical difference whether this governor is a one-man-band or a million-man-majority. I do not understand the concept of a municipal corporation without governing powers, given that a municipality is definitively a governing power. If it has no governing power, then it is just a plain corporation. And a corporation is not a rights bearing entity (human being). If a CEO initiates force or deception, then he should be held accountable for his actions. Assigning culpability to a corporation for an ethical crime is like assigning culpability to a knife for a mugging. The corporation is merely an instrument for making profit.
That’s correct. Neither can the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Is that a serious reply? Pick up this book.
With immense respect for your holding true to your principles, Lib, go back to post #31 and read my first two short paragraphs again. I intentionally and explicitly allowed as to how there was a valid argument that the legal fiction of corporate persons produces a disjunct between benefits and responsibility. I then proceeded to argue my point, based on the fact that the law as it presently exists recognizes that legal fiction as valid.
In other words, you’re arguing from the ethical principles implicit in your philosophy, which I respect greatly, but not addressing the pragmatic issue of circumstances in the present state of affairs, which is what I undertook to answer after recognizing the fact that corporations, municipal or otherwise, are a legal fiction with questionable ethical validity.
It’s kind of like our arguing that Christians ought to adopt ethics in accord with the Law of Love against Tom~, who presumably doesn’t disagree with us but is engaged in explaining Catholic moral theology as it presently is taught. There’s a disjunct between premiss and refutation, because they’re dealing with different planes of existent vs. ideal.
So Libertarian absolutists like you not only want to destroy government as we know it, but also wish to destroy the most historically effective vehicle for collecting capital and putting it to use as well, eh? You really want to destroy the village in order to save it, don’t you?
And make no mistake, destroying corporate personhood effectively destroys the corporate form of business. Taking away the right of corporations to enter into contracts and to sue and be sued essentially takes away the advantages of the corporate form. And the corporate form – and specifically, the limited liability it provides to investors – is one of the single most important innovations in modern economic history.
Seriously, how does your proposed system work, anyway? Say XYZ Corp. has a CEO, Bob. The corporation needs to buy widgets. But XYZ under your system can’t enter into contracts. So who does? Bob? Suppose Bob’s personal bank account doesn’t have enough to cover the widget order. What then? Does each individual shareholder have to sign the widget contract, pledging their interest in the corporation as collateral on the purchase? Can they each be pursued personally, even beyond losing the value of their shares, if the corporation breaches?
Is there no respondeat superior in your dream world? If an employee, in the course of carrying out his daily duties, negligently injures a third party with no wrongdoing on the part of his superiors, is the injured party limited to looking to the employee for recourse? Does the corporate entity from which the employee draws his paycheck have no obligation to pay?
Do investors even have limited liability in your dream world?
Really, please, flesh this out, because I’m curious to hear.
Von Mises was no antigovernment zealot looking to eliminate the state entirely. In fact, he favored democratic institutions. His beef was with the collectivization going on during his lifetime worldwide, with the rising bureaucracy and regulatory state, and with government interference with free market processes (beefs I share, BTW). His contributions to laissez-faire economics can’t be overstated, but your citation to him here is silly.
What safeguards us from you gathering signatures and declaring yourself emperor is the existence of well-considered democratic institutions and processes. That’s what I was referring to when I suggested you pick up a civics text. I thought that was reasonably clear, but apparently I was mistaken.
I wouldn’t want to suggest that the esteemed mayor is or is not a moderate, but I will say that a single issue unto itself seems to provide insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion.
The thing is, Bloomberg is a moderate, and generally has supported gay rights. So I wonder if there might be more to this story than is first apparent. Does anyone know exactly what grounds he’s challenging this on? I know New York State has regulations that municipalities have to follow in entering contracts.
Bloomberg is saying that such support should be optional by the companies, not mandated. The new law does not exempt entities such as Catholic Charities.