From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,alt.discrimination,misc.legal
Subject: Re: On Banning Private Discrimination
Date: 21 Jul 92 05:03:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: genie.1992Jul21.050329.5196
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences

In article <1992Jul18.145037.26114@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
}In article <1992Jul18.071751.29767@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>As for search costs, there was a supreme court case in which an employer was
}>successfully sued for hiring from a hispanic youth organization exclusively
}>because the employer had had successful workers from that organization.  The
}>suit was on the grounds of disparate impact upon blacks, so the employer had
}>to take out ads for black applicants and hire enough to have "proportional
}>representation", i.e., to fill a racial quota.
}
}I read the book in question (ObNamedrop: autographed by my property
}professor).  This wasn't a Supreme Court case, it was a Mike Royko column,
}which has slightly less legal precedential value.

Must have misrecalled the info.  Sorry.

}>Lastly, the best argument against anti-discrimination legislation is that it
}>doesn't minimize prejudice, hate, and other unpreferred things, it merely
}>rechannels them.  Racist practice won't go away until racist theory does, and
}>legislating what theories, what beliefs people subscribe to has always failed,
}>in addition to being contrary to the freedom of conscience principle we've
}>inherited from the British Enlightenment and that is implicit in the first
}>amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
}
}This is arguable.  To a great extent, a society's laws reflects the society's
}values.

This is far from a necessary truth.  Ted, you should be familiar with the
distinction between morality and permissibility.  Being a libertarian, my
position is that morality is not within the purview of the State (nor much
else, for that matter...).  Lysander Spooner's piece "Vices Are Not Crimes"
addresses this nicely.

When discrimination is illegal, there are not only civil penalties,
}but, to a certain extent, there's a statement of moral disapproval from the
}society at large that discrimination is wrong, which, in turn, shapes the
}values of the society.

Again, not really.  I thought the import of the part of Forbidden Grounds (FG)
about the last-minute inclusion of sex as a criterion of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act showed how even on matters of discrimination legislation can be
quite out of step with the societal ethos.  (For those who may not have read
FG, sex discrimination was banned at the behest of opponents of the Act, who
thought that this would discredit the legislation.)

I don't think one can honestly say that the
}Civil Rights Act of 1964 has done nothing to reduce prejudice and hate.
}Just take a look at the South.

Insofar as the Act was deregulation (also addressed in FG), I'd agree with this.
But it's quite clear that the disparate impact cases are causing quite a
backlash, and that even some of the disparte treatment ones are, too.  To
hear some argue it, these regressions surpass what progress (excluding that
from the deregulatory effect of the Act) had been achieved.

I think it's perfectly legitimate for a
}society to say that they'd prefer to live in a society where discrimination
}is illegal and there are some additional transactions costs (though there
}are also additional market gains as well) than one where discrimination is
}allowed.  They're paying a little bit extra to live in a nicer place,
}just like I'm paying a lot extra to live north of 60th Street than south
}of 60th Street; there's nothing economically irrational about my decision
}to do so.

The problem I have with this is the reification of "society".  I didn't
make this choice, and neither did many.

}Furthermore, you make the mistake of thinking that the existing anti-
}discrimination regime is the only possible one.  That the current set of
}anti-discrimination laws has some unreasonable elements to it that incur
}societal costs without tangible or intangible societal benefits does not
}mean that it's impossible to have anti-discrimination laws where the
}wealth benefits outweight the wealth costs, completely outside of the
}gains in subjective value of living in a society with less discrimination.

No, no, I don't make this mistake at all, I hold to a different standard for
the proper sphere of government.  I don't condemn anti-discrimination law for
being partly unreasonable, I do so on the grounds that it is wholesale
violation of individual rights.  Racists have the right to discriminate.  I
don't like the vice of racism, but I don't like many vices which are not
illegal.

I take cost-benefit analysis to have procedural value only; for example, to
determine just compensation for the taking of private property that much
anti-discrimination legislation constitutes.

I'm not just complaining that disparate impact cases are wholly irrational
and that disparate treatments cases impose costs.  Banning discrimination
constitutes banning actions only when motivated by certain beliefs; there's
nothing in the actions themselves that constitute violations of individual
rights, therefore this is impermissible legislation.


Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Voltaire
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc