I have told you what the harm was that justified the Feds to intervene in 1964 was. It is that you find that ‘harm’ to be inconsequential even when it is inflicted by the majority in power upon a minority disadvantaged group. So your statement about protecting the weak was mostly fluff to make libertarians sound good when they are opposing a minority group’s demand to be treated equal.
To be fair to the discussion, Libertaria must be compared to 1950s and 1960s Southern States primarily. So at that point in time Whites dominated property ownership, including banks, gas stations, hotels, movie theaters and restaurants and private residences. Whites were strong. Blacks were weak. So your theoretical 'many, many, many establishments being available to blacks during this period of evolution of the white majority to learn the meaning of racial equality is quite a bogus argument.
So in a reality based Libertaria, black folks did not have such an easy time as you make it out to be for them.
And the second flaw in your point is that in 1960s Libertaria segregation laws would not exist as if Jim Crow laws did not reflect the will of the white majority in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama. In your theoretical world it is much easier to see goodness prevail but here’s decent description of conditions mostly in the South for how blacks were expected to endure. This period must also be true in Libertaria:
Even in Libertaria you must accept a starting point in race relations between the white majority and the black minority that B] All major societal institutions reflect and support the oppression of Blacks.**.
Oppression is harm.
Perhaps you think Libertarian politicians could have been elected and wiped out the treatment of black Americans but that is a tough sell.
Could you explain why you think black people in 1964 themselves ‘or descendants of many’ who suffered decades of conditions described in the two links posted above, should have continued to suffer and wait until all “establishments that segregate based on race becomes uncommon” some day and at the pace agreeable to the white majority that was oppressing them?
I’m not big on government involvement myself, but this is not necessarily true. Given a situation where category X dislikes category Y, and category X is in the majority, turning away category Y customers could easily be good for business. I do agree with your larger point though. Social changes being legislated is probably not a good idea.
You do not think the government moved in to stop harm being done by the white majority against the black minority primarily in Southern States in the early 1960’s?
Considering my response to Human Actions’ non-governmental solution in Libertaria to these problems;
So you’ve used the word “harm” about 400 times in this thread, but can’t say what it means or when it justifies government intervention. Noted. See, this is what happens when you start from a position of “Well, this law must be good!”, instead of any kind of principles or political philosophy. You’ve got a cart but no horse.
Demand to be treated equally by the law? No problem, that’s a human right.
Libertaria would have had no slavery and no Jim Crow, so no, it can’t be compared to the Jim Crow South. If you want to discuss how the actual United States might have dealt with the problem of racial discrimination, as opposed to a Libertarian United States, however, see below.
If the legal aspect of Jim Crow was a minor plank in the overall system of oppression, ask yourself this:
Why was it necessary to pass segregation laws as quickly as possible after the shameful betrayal of the newly freed slaves in 1877?
Why did areas with high levels of racism but no segregation laws, like Boston, not have the same levels of segregation by businesses as areas with segregation laws?
The answer is simple. In the absence of segregation laws, business owners are in a prisoner’s dilemma. If some of them break ranks and sell to anyone with cash, they operate at a major competitive advantage over those who don’t. It’s the same reason price-fixing cartels can’t last long; whichever firm is performing the worst just breaks the cartel’s scheme to secure an advantage. Industries like those covered by the CRA are nearly at the level of “perfect competition”, being as there are many, many thousands of them. Clearly, if white business owners could rely on one another to “do the right thing” and segregate, then Jim Crow laws wouldn’t have been immediately enacted and kept in force after Reconstruction.
The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Plessy v Ferguson removed this prisoner’s dilemma, and removed the economic pressure.
Why didn’t this uniformly racist majority white folks just exercise the private-club exemption to make sure they’d never have to dine with anyone of color? Some did, sure, but the rank and file did not, even though there was an exception carved into the law that allowed them the option.
The CRA hardly covers every type of person that others dislike. Why don’t we see business today that exclude, say, women as clients? There’s Augusta, but if there’s such a great opportunity to be had by excluding customers, few seem to be taking advantage of it.
Even if all Southern whites refused to do business with non-whites, regardless of the economic costs, that would just create a massive, highly visible economic inefficiency. Every capitalist in the North or out West could flock to the South as a new wave of carpetbaggers, making money hand over fist.
That ain’t Libertaria, but as for that starting point in the U.S., see above.
Is that your definition?
It didn’t require libertarians, just respect for the Fifth Amendment would have accomplished the same end.
First, see above. Second, because you can’t violate Constitutional rights in the name of expediency.
But I see you can make up a violation of a constitutional right in order to not do anything about harm done to the minority.
And you have admitted that you know that business owners that discriminate against black folks traveling our nations’ roads does do harm to black folks. So no need to keep going down the road that you don’t know what the harm is.
When the law is mostly run and dominated by whites, and when the vast majority of property and wealth is in fact owned by whites, and when the local, state and sufficient parts of the Federal Government are run by whites; then the equal treatment by the law towards blacks is a faint figment of your theoretically inclined and reality averse imagination.
The difference between racial friction in the Northeast and throughout the South is that the population in the north has a larger white population that is more sympathetic toward the plight of black folks, plus the great migration of the blacks to northern cities to escape Jim Crow laws and find jobs in factories etc. produced a more integrated community than in the South.
Your argument now seems to go down the primrose path that the Federal Government’s oppression and victimization of racists property owners like Moreton Rolleston need not exist because in a perfect Libertarian world including in the South, blacks would have faced so much less white oppression that there would be plenty of hotels and restaurants and gas stations that didn’t say “whites only” so they could just mosey along in life unharmed until "the invisible hand’ of Adam Smith rids the world of pests like Rolleston.
If such a mostly civilized “Libertaria” ever existed, the Federal Government need not have regulated ‘INTERSTATE’ commerce as they did in 1964.
Segregation Laws did not emerge in a vacuum of racial harmony. They came about because of the prevailing beliefs and prejudices of the white majority in the South.
If you want to really know the difference between North and South… look to Organized Labor.
And yet it was (for the most part) accomplished anyway, thanks to those other 10 titles of the CRA and various other reforms, laws, and verdicts over the years, even though during that entire period property, wealth, and the government has been in white hands.
Yet, racism still exists, it was hardly stamped out by a law, nor could it be by any law. Equality before the law can be achieved, equality before every jackoff on the street cannot.
Where are all the whites-only businesses in areas without segregation laws, again? I’m sure there were a few, but why weren’t deeply-racist cities like Boston teeming with them?
You brought up this “Libertaria” tangent out of nowhere. I explained how things might work in such a place, because for some reason (good Southern manners, I expect) I answer all your questions and address all your points even as you refuse to do the same. I’d much rather discuss the actual historical events in question, though. If you want to know how a Libertaria might work, start a new thread.
When you make a decision to engage in private commerce that is reliant upon providing services to people engaged in interstate travel and interstate entertainment activities, then your business must not discriminated against any race or religion unfairly and in order to do harm to that group, then you will be committing a crime.
I have provided this answer in many ways, many times. Hopefully you can see it now, and give up your argument that the harm against our fellow Americans who happen to be black is some kind of insignificant harm that the Government has no business dealing with.
That’s just restating the law. Where you get shaky is the legal and philosophical underpinnings of the law, and why it was necessary, Constitutional, and the best way to solve a problem.
I still want to know what inflictions of harm must be outlawed and which do not. I assume we can agree on, say, theft, rape, and murder being illegal. I assume we can agree that snide remarks, insincere apologies, running out of Diet Pepsi when your guest really wants one, and asking too high a price for a used car should remain legal.
But what of the vast gulf in between? Is there no principle or doctrine that might tell us what ought to be illegal and what shouldn’t?
Those stricken segregation laws applied to the state and local government aspect of whites discrimination against blacks. Title II dealt with white property owners engaged in interstate commerce who wished to use their power of ownership of property to make money off the general interstate traveling public while at the same time engaging in practices that harmed the minority when they attempted to conduct interstate travel as equals to their counterparts.
I don’t see any point in your question or what thought it is you think you need.
Ok, I’ll break it down further. Say the CRA passes with 10 titles, not 11. No Title II. What are the results, with regard to people being able to dine and get gas and such?
Many pissed off Segregationists who owned businesses related to interstate commerce would likely have done what Moreton Rolleston did - that is continue to harm black folks by using their publically offered property as the specific means to do that harm. Harm of that nature should not be acceptable. it was right to stop all aspects of that harm whether in government or commerce.
It does not matter. One harmed traveling black family after 1964 was one too many. This harm had gone on far too long to just let it be resolved up to its own devices. And Property owners who DECIDE THEMSELVES to engage in commerce related to interstate commerce do not have there property ‘confiscated’ when they treat all travelers who have the money and pay the rate and behave like the vast majority of travelers do no matter of the color of their skin, then that business owner has submitted himself to being regulated by the Federal Government. So there is no harm to the business owner and a reduction in the harm done to America’s black traveling public.
If you don’t mind black travelers suffering for as long as it takes for Adam Smith’s invisible hand to work it all out, that is one thing. But don’t try to argue that the harm is not significant or that it was too insignificant to be dealt with at the time.
I have not heard your claim that you were ever a victim of that type of harm. The people being harmed at the time for the most part appreciate their Civil Rights being protected including by Title II.
Do you have any comments by one of the few black members of the Libertarian Party on the topic being discussed. Roy Innis as I understand it was both a Libertarian and a Civil Rights leader. If you can find where he may have commented on the constitutionality of Title II, I’d like to see it. I have not been able to find anything specific with regard to that.
This is odd, because you seemed to brush off the notion of Herb, the only gas station owner in his city who won’t sell to women; or of me opening up a gas station that wouldn’t sell to Christians.
So, are black people the only so ones so special that one instance of harm alone justifies the law?
ETA: Also, note that this is the same type of thinking that led to internment camps. One Japanese-American aiding the enemy is too many! The risk is too great! We can set aside the Constitution just this once!
Engaging in interstate commerce allows federal regulation; it does not justify the regulation. You have the cart before the horse, here. You could make the same “argument” to support a law requiring those engaged in interstate commerce to have a kazoo on their person at all times. They themselves decided to engage in commerce, and submit to federal regulations! It does them no harm! and etc.
Is it significant? You refuse to say what sorts of harm must be outlawed, and which do not.
Thus I can’t have an opinion on the matter? I haven’t been robbed, either, can I speak to whether robbery should be illegal?
Where did I say you cannot have an opinion on the matter.
That is not what I said.
I have not been harmed in the same way that is being discussed, since I am white. I have severely been expressing and defending my opinion on the matter.