You are focusing on the guy giving the kidney and his rights. I’m looking at the guy not getting the kidney. He doesn’t have the same “right” to life giving care, since he’s not getting it, and the other guy is. If we all have the same “right” to life-saving medical care, then we can’t square that with some people getting it and others not. My point, and maybe this is too pedantic, but it seems we are stretching the meaning of what a right is if we recognize that we are willing to let people be denied that right. Or other rights, more important, are in conflict. And so it goes with the emergency room issue.
If the sign on the door says “No Whites Allowed” and you’re a white person, then you are trespassing. Or, if there is a bouncer who tells you not to come in no matter who you are, you are trespassing. This is not some gotcha.
What remedy the bar tender has is a matter of public policy, not an issue fundamental to Libertarianism. But in general, I think such a bar tender should have the same remedy he has in his home. Whether that is the right to use deadly force is, itself, a matter of public policy.
You are attempting to draw a distinction between a bar that is open to the public and a home that is not. Why not make a distinction between a wooded estate and a bank vault. If you commit a trespass onto an unfenced wooded estate, probably no big deal. The estate owner brings you to court for the trespass. You explain it was inadvertent and caused no harm. A wise judge throws the case out. Now. You commit a trespass into a public bank’s vault and are bopped on the head. You bring suit because you were assaulted in a “business” open to the public. The wise judge throws this out because the bopper was acting within his rights.
The point I am making is that you are being a bit weird about this. Libertarians believe there should be courts. (Some even believe there would be better courts in the absence of the state). A judge would decide in a libertarian society if a trespass was committed. He would take things such as the nature of the establishment, cultural norms, law built up over the centuries, etc. You say entering the unlocked bar wouldn’t be a trespass, but that isn’t even strictly true. If you entered during open hours, no trespass, closed hours, trespass. You would state your case to the judge ("the lights were on, it was 12 o’clock yadda yadda) and the judge would decide if there was a trespass committed.
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Missed the edit window. Sorry about the bolded part. That sounded more snarky than I meant it to be.
It’s hard to see how Robinson did more for racial equality that Johnson. Robinson made it possible for black athletes to play in major league baseball. But how many black people are going to have the skills to play professional baseball?
Johnson, on the other hand, passed legislation that affected how millions of people lived their everyday lives.
Use of deadly force is a matter of public policy, but discrimination isn’t?
No, the wise judge says, “Yo, idiot, the bank vault isn’t open to the public.”
This isn’t about letting everyone in to everywhere, despite how some people keep trying to pretend this is the issue. Nobody’s claiming you have to let people into your living room or your bank vault or your backyard.
What we’re saying is that if you’re running a business and you serve white people, you have to serve black people as well. You have to give black customers and white customers equal service. But if you’re a restaurant, you’re still allowed to keep all your customers out of the kitchen.
Really, this is not a complicated idea.
First Debate Point:
I’m not a libertarian so I won’t presume to speak for them. However, my impression from self-proclaimed libertarians is that this does seem like something they’re mostly in agreement with
Second Debate Point:
This is a bad thing. Private businesses should not be allowed to discriminate. Its terrible for reasons that have already been stated.
Third Debate Point:
Some private institutions could try to replace the government in promoting equitable welfare, but none are strong enough to do it with the force of law backing them up, so therefore none should try to replace the government. At most, they should and could support the government in promoting equality
I think the only difference there is in that libertarianism shifts the “arrogance” to people rather than a person. It doesn’t strike me as that much more humble for someone to declare that people themselves are the best judge, not them… because people in general have inherently good enough judgement that not only they but the product of their combined action will almost necessarily be rational.
I don’t see that one is more “arrogant” than the other. It’s just two different kinds of respect, unearned or otherwise depending on your point of view.
I think you’re getting too pedantic – they both have the right to access to life-giving care – that is, access to voluntarily donated organs, and access to any individual’s organ who wants to personally donate to them in particular. No one has the right to a non-voluntarily donated organ, of course – so an organ that’s meant specifically for one person cannot be given to someone else… then it’s an ‘involuntary donation’.
I think acting like this paints it in a very dark light when in fact what we’re talking about here is pretty much the entire basis of secular morality - how do I act so as not to harm others? How do I act so as to maximize the well-being of my fellow humans? It’s worth examining QualiaSoup’s “Morality” series on youtube, or some of Matt Dillahunty’s talks on the subject. And in the face of that kind of morality, saying “I support this and I do not care about the outcomes, only the principles” is absolutely antithetical to such a position. It feels dogmatic and hard-headed in the extreme.
…Which, I suppose, is the dilemma here, isn’t it? Sort of the classic utilitarianism vs. categorical ethics, all over again.
I think you have a very utopian view of how smart the average human is.
I don’t really know what I’m supposed to take from this. It’s interesting, but why should I take it on its word?
The key to placing the individual as the judge of what is best for them is not that they will always make the best choice - it’s that it is their choice to make, good or bad. They reap the rewards of good choices, and suffer for the bad ones.
Of course not. Many many people will make poor choices, and they will suffer. The libertarian ideal must accept that some number of people will suffer who otherwise would not suffer if their liberty or ability to choose for themselves were reduced. On balance I would say there would be less net suffering, but that’s also up for debate.
Libertarians generally are not utilitarians. Utilitarianism is anti-ethical to individual liberty.
Not trying to be weird about it.
If i understood correctly, the OP was trying to make the argument that a person’s private residence and the bar (or restaurant or whatever) that they own are essentially the same type of property and that said owner should have every right to discriminate at his business establishment as he would discriminate at home. To paraphrase- why do i have to let someone into my restaurant if i don’t have to let him into my home?
The reason as to why the 2 properties should be viewed differently seemed obvious enough to me and i tried illustrating it by taking BrightandShiny’s a step further
Probably something with similar effect, due to The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of Jan 4. 1969. All but a handful of countries are parties to it.
Article 1 of the Convention defines “racial discrimination” as
…any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
My country, Norway, has substantial legislation in the Act on prohibition of discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, etc.. It prohibits discrimination, but does not define the private/public distinction.
My claim was not that libertarians make such statements about individuals, but about people as a whole. It’s what makes a libertarian system work; a respect (or “arrogance”) for the ability of people in general, and of the market, to arrive at solutions which, overall, work. For a libertarian philosophy, put into practice, not to crash and burn, it requires that healthy respect for people in general to be accurate. There’s also your statement there, which is easy enough to switch around; if it’s arrogance to override a person’s own choices and decisions, it’s arrogant to value one’s own ideals above the ability to avoid people suffering. There’s as much arrogance in libertarianism in theory as anything else, it’s just a different kind of arrogance.
Though I don’t actually think i’d personally call either arrogance, frankly.
First Debate Point: Is this something that virtually all American Libertarians would agree on?
I consider myself more or less generally libertarian, and I’d more or less agree with this. I do think there are potentially a few exceptions, notably essential services. Some might argue that, for instance, a restaurant may decide to reject a customer for any reason, because it is a privately owned business and does not provide an essential service. A doctor, however, may have less freedom in who he treats, as the logic would go that the right to life supercedes the right to free association. So, you’ll get some disputes in the subtleties, but I think the general idea would be agreed upon.
Second Debate Point: Is this a good or bad thing?
I think it’s generally a good thing, but I also think that it has it’s weaknesses. I think in a sufficiently progressed society, a lot of these sorts of issues ought to work themselves out. For instance, a business owner who refuses to serve a minority in a major city will probably get negative publicity and people will boycott his business. But by the same token, an identical business with similar discriminatory practices may do just fine in an area where the majority of people share their views.
The weakness comes in whether or not the morality of the population will be enough cause a critical mass and force businesses to shift their practices. If businesses weren’t forced to serve blacks with the Civil Rights Act, how long, if ever, would it have taken for that critical mass to be reached. I think the fact that the laws were passed, meant that those people had to be elected, so I don’t think it would have been that far off, but there’s obviously also issues with letting moral attrocities persist longer when we have the power to change it. OTOH, it ends up forcing association and may have been partially responsible for causing some deepening in the racial issues that still persist. That is, like forcing a child to eat his vegetables, he might learn to hate them where if he had come to trying them on his own may have been more open to the experience.
Honestly, I’m not sure what would actually be the best result, and I’d like to think that even if laws are changed, it’s still important to make sure that the ideas win over the public as a whole. So at the very least I’d like to see that idea go at least that far, of making sure people don’t feel force fed on those sorts of things and that it’s a natural part of the evolution of the morality of our society.
**Third Debate Point: Are there institutions in the private sector that could/should replace the strong arm of the government in moving a Libertarian society towards a truly equal society where discrimination in the workplace or in business was considered socially taboo? **
The general idea would be that a lot of industries would end up having some sort of voluntary societies or there would be other systems in place akin to the BBB or like Angie’s List (at least in theory, I’ve never used it), where consumers who have interest in these sorts of things can make sure their interests are being met.
So, for instance, imagine there’s something like the National Anti-Discrimination Association or something where they visit various businesses and inspect their hiring practices at all and certify that they’re not racist or homophobic or whatever. And I could choose to only patronize businesses that have something like that or, hell, if I were a bigot, I might choose to only patronize businesses that didn’t associate with them.
To some extent we have things like these, but we largely just let the government handle it. The theoretical problem there though is that the businesses aren’t free to choose to follow them or not, and if those businesses or their customers want them held to a higher standard, they end up creating these sorts of self-regulating things anyway.
Now, obviously, there’s problems with those too, many critics would point out things like the FDA, and I think that’s a valid criticism. But I don’t think all libertarians would argue that the government should do no regulation, more that it needs to have good justification for all of it, not impede on free association, and not do it where the free-market would do an equal or better job. Of course, some would argue that the free-market would always do a better job, but not all would.
YELP-plus. The internet and smart phones makes this infinitely more practical than it would have been prior.
My hypothetical had no sign and no bouncer, so why are you adding them? You’ve completely ignored the question I asked. And I think you’ve ignored it because you don’t actually think public businesses are the same as private homes, but you are unwilling to admit that.
So, you’d prefer to return to 1950, for the sake of political idealism. nice.
I was going to answer your question, but not after reading that last bit. If you already “know” what I think, then there is no reason for me to explain it to you.