Nonviolent discrimination by a private company in the employment process or with respect to clientele does not seem to violate the principle of noncoercion.
Immorality thereof by other standards is not in question here.
Please discuss. Liberal’s feedback would be especially welcome.
I’m not a libertarian, but from what I have gleaned in many discussions with people of that ilk, most libertarians would absolutely agree with you that discrimination of the sort you describe doesn’t count as force or fraud, and thus is indeed non-coercive.
I wonder what the reasonable expections of the customer are. In the absence of a label saying “produced with all Catholic labour” am I entitled to suppose the seller doesn’t discriminate and consider myself defrauded if they do? Or should I consider that in the absence of a label that the firm could be doing anything and only be defrauded if a claim on the label turned out to be false?
You are correct, and you have stated it well. Nonviolent discrimination by a private company in the employment process or with respect to clientele does not violate the principle of noncoercion.
Just so you know, I’m not Scottish.
I would think that any claim, whether made on a label or in an advertisement or in a speech or even in a leaked office memo absent any other context or clarification, would entitle the consumer to the expectation of that claim. Other than that, I think the consumer is entitled to any common sense expectations, for example that a vacuum cleaner not be represented as a toaster oven. On a related note, I think that the big tobacco fiasco from a few years back would have been handled much differently in a libertarian society. The de facto effect of what Congress did was to punish the customers rather than the companies who had deceived them. The companies and their officers still prosper, while the customers are paying out the nose in higher prices and new taxes to cover the cost of company fines. The companies were not punished; their victims were.
Lib: Just so you know, I’m not Scottish.
Yeah, but I was using “ilk” in an ethnically non-discriminatory way. 
Having know people of your ilk, I just wanted to clarify. 
Is there a debate, or is this a GQ thread that **Lib **has answered?
If not, I’ll take my ilk elsewhere.
If this is a GD question, it’s put in a strange way. As a GD question, wouldn’t itr rather be, “On libertarian principles, should the state intervene in a private company practicising nonviolent discrimination in an employment situation?”
If a private company has a policy of paying certain groups (e.g. women and blacks) less for the same work, and a policy of never hiring them in management positions, then I think the state should intervene. But then, I’m not a libertarian – just an old-fashioned liberal – so I’m not sure how to justify it in libertarian terms.
In liberal terms, I’d say that a private company exists within the society governed by the state, and gains certain advantages from this. As part of the price, it should conform to certain norms that a majority agree are self-evident in terms of human rights, including nondiscrimination against customers and employees.
No, actually I’m an old-fashioned liberal. You’re with the new-fangled ilk. 
Actually, it was done pretty well by the OP. There is no coercion involved. It ain’t any more complicated than that.
Right. “Principle of noncoercion” is a technical term in libertarian political philosophy, so the OP’s phrasing makes a perfectly straightforward GQ question which has now been straightforwardly answered.
It’s true that “Statement X. Please discuss.” is not the usual format for GQ’s, but maybe Paladud didn’t realize how straightforward this was going to be.
OK, then: in a libertarian society, which organization enforces the consumer’s “entitlement”? How would they enforce said entitlement, and how would said enforcement be funded?
For that matter, is there any such thing as “entitlement” in a libertarian society?
Thanks for the feedback.
I’d imagine there would still be some measure taxation to support a small government with some military to prevent coercion from the outside, and police, courts, and some sort of penal system to deal with it internally.
There is entitlement to protection from said coercive force. Now who this extends to would be a harder question. I’d think taxpayers and minors, but I’m not nearly the most informed poster on the subject.
If you mean his “entitlement” to receive what he paid for, such as with the vacuum cleaner / toaster example, that would fall under one of the few valid roles that government should play in a libertarian society: enforcement of contracts. In this example, if it was advertised as a toaster, then there is an implied contract when you make the purchase. If what you get is instead a vacuum cleaner, the person who sold it to you hasn’t lived up to his end of the deal, and you can use the courts to enforce the contract.
A person who initiates no force or deception is entitled to pursue his own happiness in his own way. It is government that enforces and ensures this context. To think libertarianly, it is necessary to cast off preconceived notions, and see government in a new way. It is not an entity that protects an ersatz or de facto kingdom while claiming eminent domain (ultimate ownership) over everything within its borders. It is an entity that is legitimized solely by the consent of those it governs. Whereas you are used to thinking of law as a means by which government protects itself from its citizens, libertarian law works the other way around, protecting citizens from their government. In fact, in a libertarian society only one law is necessary — something along the lines of “Every citizen shall be guaranteed freedom from coercion.”
Let’s be sure we don’t equivocate. It is certainly possible to establish a quasi-libertarian nation-state (which is pretty much what the US used to be), something along the lines of what is advocated by the Libertarian Party. But for a purely libertarian society, there would be no involuntary tax of any kind. Libertarianism and volunteerism are synonyms. Rather, it would be like any other economic praxis — by payment of your fee, you are giving your consent for government to secure your rights. How is this different from a tax? Well, you don’t have to do it. You may withhold your consent and secure your own rights if you wish.