The Ryan replied to me: *“Equally obviously, consumer boycotts in the absence of anti-discrimination legislation do have something to do with employment discrimination and are being offered by some posters in this thread as an alternative to such legislation.”
But strictly speaking, we aren’t discussing consumer boycotts and anti-discrimination legisltaion, were discussing the efficiency of consumer boycotts and the morality of anti-discrimination legislation. In my mind, those two issues do not have anything to do with each other. *
I can see why you think they don’t, if you believe that the immorality of anti-discrimination legislation trumps any question of effectiveness in remedying its negative consequences. Fine. For somebody who is not such an absolutist on the issue, of course, it is perfectly reasonable to weigh one desideratum of fighting discrimination effectively against another desideratum of interfering as little as possible with business activities.
blur: *I’m glad you wouldn’t chose to do business with companies that follow these practices. Unfortunatly, that doesn’t help the people out of jobs because of them. *
David B’s reply: *Yes, it would. Not because I, alone, do it. But if everybody who felt the same way did it as well. *
Kimstu’s comment: Clearly, this is suggesting that consumer boycotts could be a workable alternative to legislation when it comes to fighting discrimination in employment.
The Ryan: All this is saying is that boycotts would help reduce discrinination. It doesn’t say that they will eliminate discrimination, or even be as effective as legislation.
Exactly. My point is that they would be much less effective.
The Ryan replied to me: *“But it’s important to recognize that this position is also being defended on the grounds that there are workable alternatives to anti-discrimination legislation, so it’s perfectly valid to examine more closely just how workable these proposed alternatives really are.”
You’re using different definitions whenever it suits you. When you give evidence that people claim there are “workable alternatives to anti-discrimination legislation”, you consider “workable” to mean “will help”. But when attacking this position, your definition of “workable” suddenly changes to “will magically make the problem entirely disappear”.*
No, not really. I thought my use of the phrase “how workable” would make it clear that “workability” is to be considered along a spectrum, not as any one absolute level of effectiveness. What I’m trying to focus attention on is the question of how workable such alternatives would be: should we expect them to help just a little bit, to eliminate the problem, or somewhere in between? As I’ve pointed out, nobody has shown any evidence suggesting that consumer action alone would be anywhere near as effective in fighting employment discrimination as the system we have now, and there are powerful reasons (e.g., the burden and difficulty of creating boycott movements) to think that they would in fact be much less effective.
*All that’s being claimed is that they will help. *
If you’re not willing to venture an estimate about how much they will help, and to back that up with convincing evidence, that’s not much of a claim.
*I really don’t understand why you’re referring to me as a “fundamentalist”. I have made numerous qualifications that you seems to be going out of your way to ignore. *
My apologies if the term is offensive to you. “Market fundamentalist” is a common descriptor for somewhat extremist free-market advocates who believe that the operation of the market always (or almost always) produces results that are optimally (or so nearly optimally) efficient that it is generally unconscionable to interfere with it via regulation. If that doesn’t describe you (to be honest, it’s a little hard to tell from your Socratic-question responses below), then I withdraw the application of the term to you. If it does describe you but you find the word offensive, I withdraw it anyway.
*If Alan Greenspan is generally right about economic matters, how can any of decisions regarding the Federal Reserve Board ever be wrong? If Stephan Hawking is an extremely intelligent physicist, how can any of his hypotheses possibly be wrong? How do they fit all that hot air into a hair dryer? Why do we drive on a parkway but park on a driveway? What are three words that end in “gry”? Have you figured out my opinion of your question yet? *
Frankly, no. What exactly are you trying to say about your beliefs about the market’s efficiency? Are you saying that you believe the market is almost always optimally efficient, instead of always optimally efficient? If so, how often do you mean by “almost always”, and how do you identify cases of inefficiency?
*“Or if the market can be ‘economically wrong’, and thus can produce less than optimally efficient results, then why should we be so quick to assume that any particular existing state of the market (e.g., all-white companies making more money than interracial ones) is necessarily the most efficient and therefore shouldn’t be interfered with?”
If one of Alan Greenspan’s decisions is wrong, why should we pay any more attention to him than anyone else? If one of Stephen Hawking’s hypotheses is wrong, shouldn’t we ignore the rest of them? Shouldn’t we drive on driveways and park on parkways? *
Again, would you mind explaining a little more clearly what you’re trying to say? I still don’t see how any of this answers my question.
Do you conceed, as you imply in the previous passage, that the central issue is not what the effects are on society, but whether it’s a right or not?
As I’ve been saying all along, this “Sovereign Employer” theory is attempting to argue the illegitimacy of anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds that employment discrimination is an individual right. So yes, the issue of whether this is in fact a right is indeed central. However, I don’t think that issue can be completely separated from the question of its effects on society, because that involves its effects on other people’s rights, which are also important.
*Also note that you are taking it as a given that deciding what to [do] with one’s own property is not a right, when that is the very issue being debated. *
Well, I will try to be more careful about terminology. It is very clear that there is no recognized right to completely unrestricted choice in how to use one’s own property. What we are debating is whether that should be considered a right. Fine.
*Since we are talking about an act by a sovereign individual, the natural place for this is the sovereign individual rights, not the public sphere. If you claim that an act by a sovereign individual is not covered by sovereign individual rights, then it seems to be that you have the burden of proof, not me. *
Hey, you’re the one who’s advocating a drastic change in the legitimacy of at-will employment discrimination, in defiance of the existing consensus of law and jurisprudence that it is not a protected individual right. Seems to me that you ought to be the one making a case for why you consider it legitimate to overturn that consensus. However, if you don’t want to attempt that, I’m happy to argue the opposite side.
*If private individuals gather in a privately owned building to engage in private enterprise, in what sense is this “public” space? *
In the sense that they’re not restricting themselves to the specific activities protected by the individual rights that are paramount in the private sphere. They’re not merely exercising their right to free speech or freedom of religion or anything else in a protected category; they’re involving the public, as employees and customers, in their attempts to make money through commerce. That is a type of activity that is regulated by the government as not being a protected “private” one.
Now, if you want to argue that all activities not performed by the government ought to be considered on the same level as free speech and religion, and that therefore any government regulation of private enterprise whatsoever (including restriction on employment discrimination) is illegitimate, fine, have fun. (It will just go on taking you farther and farther away from any interpretation of sovereign rights that is generally considered valid or realistic, but I won’t let that bother me if you don’t.) However, if you concede that commercial enterprise may be legitimately regulated by the government in some respects, you should explain why you think it’s logical to permit regulation in some areas but not in employment discrimination.
It’s not a question of what I “like”. I believe what I believe. It’s not like I chose my beliefs just for the sake of non-conformity, as you imply.
Didn’t mean it that way, and I apologize for the unintended implication: I was trying to stress the fact that yours is very much a minority opinion, but if you’re happy with that, fine.
I guess I’ll take this one on, though kabbes has handled a lot of it already.) How do you reconcile the first two of those three statements with the third? If the unconstrained free market produces the most efficient results, then how can it be “economically wrong”? Or if the market can be “economically wrong”, and thus can produce less than optimally efficient results, then why should we be so quick to assume that any particular existing state of the market (e.g., all-white companies making more money than interracial ones) is necessarily the most efficient and therefore shouldn’t be interfered with?