You’ve been very even keeled in this discussion, but I’m definitely going to call foul here. If you can honestly go back to that discuss and feel that it is accurately described as me calling that position obtuse, then I think we’re at the end of the line. Seriously, the idea that “Jim Crow, Full Force” could reasonably be read to mean private discrimination without government discrimination is simply beyond the pale.
But it’s the end of the week anyway, and I think we’ve all said all there is to say on the subject. As predicted, no one has changed his mind on either side. I do hope, however, that this discussion and the ones that follow will allow for us to have a better venue for exploring and debating the topic of Libertarianism and how it would be implemented in IRL. That’s all I want to accomplish.
Stay tuned for next week. I may not be back into this thread other than to further flesh out my last response to iiandyiii. I do feel obligated to do that.
I can’t really say I find that a compelling argument. I don’t see the value in weighing abstract freedom above preventing damage and destruction to people’s lives.
I’m curious about that phrase, “actively initiate a harm.” How would it apply in the following hypothetical?
My boyfriend and I have been sharing an apartment for five years. We’ve been good tenants, always paying our rent on time, keeping up the property, not generating any complaints from our neighbors. One year, shortly before our lease is up, the property is bought by a new rental agency, one that’s aggressively marketing itself as a conservative Christian company, and one of their policies is a refusal to rent to same-sex couples. They decline to renew our lease, effectively evicting us from our home.
Would you consider that actively initiating a harm to someone else minding their own business?
Of course not. Just as no one has the obligation to provide you with a meal in their restaurant, no one has an obligation to provide a home for you. To answer question like this, just ask yourself if it’s OK to close the business altogether and not serve anyone. If the owners are allowed to do that, they can choose to not serve you. Or, in this case, can I move back into my property or am I obliged to rent it to you even though I want to live there?
Well, I agree, but I suspect to a much lesser extent. I don’t think pure libertarianism is workable, any more than pure “any other political philosophy” is.
That’s an interesting scenario. In that instance, my libertarian bias might not be offended by the notion that this would be an active harm. This might seem like splitting hairs, but I see here a possible “right to be left alone” for you created by the years of agreement in letting you live there, which resulting in you and your boyfriend establishing roots, possibly not pursuing job opportunities farther away, etc. The new landlord has some moral duty to recognize that, and if he doesn’t want to deal with tenants like you, he shouldn’t buy the property. “But Miller knew the lease might not be renewed, and he entered into the agreement knowingly,” someone might counter. I guess. This is at the very least “gray” for me in Libertopia, in a way that refusing a new gay applicant wouldn’t be.
But then, I’m not a “pure” libertarian, though I am much closer to that end of the spectrum than the other.
Well, see, when I ask myself questions like these, I get very different answers than the ones you give me. For example, I see absolutely no problem with saying that a person can choose to not be in a particular business, but that once they enter that business, they have to abide by certain rules and restrictions.
And, of course, we circle back to the same question again. Why would I want to live in this society? How is my life improved by letting people discriminate against me? How is my life damaged by preventing them from discriminating against me? So far, Bone’s the only person who’s given a concrete answer to this question, and even there, I can’t say I’m too moved by marginal loss in efficiency, versus not having to worry about finding myself out on the street or out of a job because somebody objects to my boyfriend.
I apologize. I’ve tried to maintain that even keel, but, clearly, my emotions are involved as well as my reason.
I’ll happily accept that as a good excuse to move on. My magic eight-ball predicts future disagreements, but I will try to keep from fouls, scratches, tilts, or offsides.
And the devil is in the details-- what specific restrictions are we talking about.
But surely that’s not the be all and end all test of what public policy should be-- what happens to be good for you. For example, current public policy regarding mortgage deduction is great for me, but that doesn’t make it good public policy, and I oppose it.
… the ones that prevent people from being fired for being the wrong color? You know, the ones we’ve been discussing for five pages?
Well, it’s a good basis to start from. I’m not immune to going against my own short term best interest in favor of something that increases the public good, which is generally in my long term best interest anyway. But we’re coming up on three hundred and fifty posts on this subject, and every time I ask you what the downside to anti-discrimination laws is, I just get a slightly embarrassed silence.
I’ve been neither embarrassed nor silent on the matter. Perhaps you should consider that the answers have been given, and you’ve ignored them because you either disagree with them or don’t like them or something else.
I’m not trying to convert you to either Libertarianism or turn you more toward the libertarian side of things. What I’m trying to do in this thread, and will try and do in future threads, is explain what the Libertarian position is, discuss why it’s important to Libertarians, and explore how it will work in the real world. The fact that you, personally, don’t mind the government telling you whom you must do business with doesn’t mean that other people share those views or see that as a downside they are unwilling to tolerate.
Libertarians deplore the government forcing them to use their property in ways they choose not to, as long as those ways don’t actively cause harm to others. It’s the same way you deplore the government telling people what views they may express in public, as long as those views don’t actively cause harm to others (ie, the proverbial yelling “fire” in a crowded theater).
Your example of a landlord not renewing your lease isn’t actively causing you harm. The lease was signed, and you were well aware that it might not be renewed when it’s term is up. Had the landlord violated the terms of the lease and kicked you out into the street, then you’d have a case. But Libertarians will say that the landlord has no legal obligation to provide you with a home beyond the terms of the lease agreement.
This is all well trodden territory, so it’s a bit surprising that you’re not aware of it, even if you don’t agree with it. And the fact that you don’t agree with it is all well and good. It just doesn’t prove that it’s objectively wrong-- only that different values produce different results.
The landlord and the restaurant owner operate within the borders of and under the jurisdiction of the United States. If the US wants to impose its rules regarding what kinds of discrimination are allowed within that jurisdiction, that trumps the opinions of libertarian philosophers. The burden of action is on the libertarian to move into a jurisdiction that allows the kinds of discrimination they’re aiming for, not for the United States to change. We settled the issue of “We refuse the right to serve Blacks, Jews and Gays” long ago in this country. To reverse those decisions is to go against established Constitutional law.
What kind of hatred are we dealing with such that the business owner would rather shut down than serve a black person, or a gay person? Umm… the Klan, the Aryan Nation, and so on. Which revives again the question of whether the motive for promoting Libertarianism is to allow this kind of discrimination.
Why don’t you move to Saudi Arabia, John?
ps. I ran this post past my mom before submitting it. She says it is snark-free enough to warrant a response.
This thread has been twisted in a few ways by people that have a very narrow focus of Civil Rights in general. Libertarians aren’t generally racist (although I presume some are just any other group) and very few are ant-gay in general. Just to make it clear, it isn’t libertarians themselves that wish to start businesses that cater only to white/black/Malaysian people with a hetero/homo/trans-sexual orientation. It is just that we support the right of people to do that if they wish. We also support the right of the KKK to peaceably march around Washington as well as the Nation of Islam. The ACLU does too as do some extreme left-wing groups. There is nothing unique about that general idea except that it should apply to business transactions as well.
I think John Mace has done a good job of not trying to ‘sell’ libertarian ideas to anyone but he may have gone overboard with allowing the negatives to stand because it is certainly not all negative even for minority groups. As stated earlier, government sanctioned discrimination would never be allowed to stand under a more libertarian system. You know that pesky gay marriage thing that people have been talking a lot these days? That is a libertarian idea too. The general libertarian idea is that states would have to either open up the standard marriage contract equally to anyone or to get out of the marriage business altogether and make it based on whatever contracts any two (or possibly more) people want to draw up.
We never did get into more mainstream Civil Rights issues in this thread because it quickly became hyper focused on a few minority rights topics (few of which are handled well under competing ideologies either I might add). It is probably to late in the thread to start those now but I can say that even left-wing readers would find some of those ideas attractive and relevant to current issues.
My chief concern, which is the return of things like sundown towns, rests solely upon my estimation of how many actual racists remain in America. John Mace’s estimation is much lower than mine; low enough that (if he is correct) there would not be significant hardship to any minorities due to discrimination. So far, I have not heard any other defense of libertarian ideals with regards to avoiding things like sundown towns other than some variation of ‘there aren’t enough racists in America left for this to be a big problem’.
I can’t see an existing organic ‘sundown’ town being created without the cooperation of government and that is not allowed under libertarian principles. It would be possible for some group to start an exclusive private town/commune or whatever else they want in an uninhabited part of Nevada for example if they wanted to. I don’t see a problem with the latter. There are already real examples of such models in place today ranging from very large subdivisions, colleges to country clubs to fraternal organisations. The libertarian idea is that the fight to forcefully end all voluntary segregation is worse than the cure as well as a violation of the general freedom of assembly.
It wouldn’t require government cooperation. All it requires is an informal agreement between the businesses owners and customers among the majority of a town – they will turn away (for example) black people, or the locals will not give them business (or give them jobs, or rent/sell property, etc). So, if a black family stops for lunch, or for a hotel room, or tries to rent an apartment, or applies for a job, it will just so happen that there are no open tables, open rooms, open apartments, or job openings for them. And while a new restaurant or something might try to buck this trend, they will quickly be put out of business because they will not get enough local support.
That’s how real sundown towns came into being and operated. There was no government ‘cooperation’, although in some cases the local officials were sympathetic.
I suppose we can agree to disagree on this point. I personally have been involved in multiple Fortune 100 companies and know that this type of risk assessment is common. The risk of employee lawsuits is significant and increases with the size of a business. Any business of size will always have ongoing lawsuits and a portion of those are precisely because there are protected classes. There will be plenty of business that are behaving badly and under our current legal framework are justified in being penalized. This has an effect on all other businesses - risk avoidance.
It takes the form of having all new employees watch pointless videos so in the event an incident occurs there could be blame shifting. It could impact hiring and firing and disciplinary action. It could affect whether or not you hold a person accountable for poor performance. I’ve been involved in business that will routinely pay all employees who are terminated between 1 an 6 months of salary to avoid lawsuits. Part of those are based on these protected class lawsuits.
Management being white males have nothing to do with this. It’s part of the business culture. I could only guess at the monetary impact both directly and in inefficiencies created by this system. I suspect it is quite large. You may disagree.
This issue is pretty much at an impasse. There is no way to determine the prevalence of sundown towns in this proposed scenario. You think it will be high, too high at least. John, myself, and others think it will be low, too low to be worth impacting the entire US economy.
I’m glad your mother thinks you should get a response.
The entire point of this thread is to discuss aspects of the philosophy, what implementation would entail, and to examine some of the details of such a system. The current legal landscape has no bearing on a theoretical discussion such as this, except to be used as examples and to illustrate other points. Even still, the constitution can be changed and has been changed many times. To get to the point we are at now required many changes.
Motives have been discussed repeatedly - the myopic focus on making aspersions that libertarianism is motivated by racism is willful ignorance.
The suggestion to move to Saudi Arabia is pretty funny though. That was a joke right, because if serious it displays a poor understanding of the thread you are participating in.
If it would be low, then how do laws regulating it impact “the entire US economy?”
It’s like pollution: we know that corporations exist that would dump millions of gallons of the most highly toxic chemicals in the world into open fields and streams. The regulations prohibiting this have a huge economic impact on the economy – but the regulations have come about because of these abuses.
If only a very few people would engage in overtly racist behavior, then the laws would have a very small affect, annoying only those few people. If a very large number of people would engage in overt racism, then the laws are necessary. It’s sort of a tautology that the laws are good…or at very worst, not particularly harmful.
I’ve illustrated how the laws motivate wide spread risk avoidance. This is present now. There is no evidence that absent anti discrimination laws sundown towns would be widespread. There is also no evidence that they wouldn’t be. Not directly anyways. That’s why there is an impasse.
Both John, myself, and others have stated that if they were unacceptably prevalent intervention may be necessary but until it comes to pass there is no way to know. Hence the impasse.
What about nonprofits? They are not owned by individual or groups of people. If the board of director of a nonprofit wants it to discriminate and some/most employees/donors/service recipients do not want it to, does the government have any role in resolving this conflict? If so, which way? Under the “sphere of influence” rule, a nonprofit is not private property so should the non-discrimination rules of the government apply, or should it be up to all stakeholders equally? (Board, employees, donors, those being served)
What about when a large employer forbids all his employees from serving gays/blacks, but most of his employees want to serve them? Why does capital alone determine “sphere of influence” when commerce is impossible without labor? Or again, do you think it should be up to all stakeholders of the business?