From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Date: 1 Sep 92 12:09:21 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Aug31.034235.9294@newshost.unh.edu> pas@kepler.unh.edu (Paul A Sand) writes:
>vy: victor yodaiken
>
>vy: [...] let's examine the "libertarian" position that one has the
>    "right" to refuse service in a public place of business on the basis
>    of racial bigotry. [...]
>
>Translation: libertarians believe that market transactions should be
>mutually voluntary.

That is not a translation, it is a sugar-coating.

>
>vy: The "libertarians" argue that it is moral to impose taxes for the
>    purpose of paying for a police force which will enforce the racial
>    prejudices of property owners by forcibly ejecting blacks, jews, or
>    whatever from hotels, restaurants, banks, or any other "privately
>    owned" place of business. [...]
>
>Translation: libertarians believe that A's presence on B's property
>should be agreeable to both A and B.

You may word this how you like, but it would be nice if you could
confront the reality of the situation.
>
>vy: Thus, the "libertarians" find it perfectly moral to forcibly extract
>    taxes from minority groups in order to violently oppress them. [...]
>
>Untranslatable, because false. Some (maybe most, by no means all)
>libertarians find taxation acceptable to adequately protect the rights
>of all individuals; to claim that the actual motive is "in order to
>violently oppress" minorities is baseless slander.

Only if one accepts willingly confuses propaganda with reality. Those
libertarians who accept the need for taxation (e.g. in accordance with
the platform the the Libertarian party) do so on the basis of government
protection of "private property". If police, hired at public expense,
are going to enforce the racial/religious bigotry property owners, then
it follows that members of unpopular racial/religious  groups will
be forced to pay taxes to support their own oppression. If you want to call
this process voluntary and freedom-enhancing it only illustrates the
shallowness of your ideas.

>vy: On the other hand, the "Libertarian" claim, which has been oft
>    repeated in this forum, that under a free-market system such
>    discrimination would be unprofitable and would render the racist
>    business vulnerable to competition *is* wrong as anyone familiar
>    with the history of race relations in the United States can confirm.
>    That is, we see from US history that discrimination on the basis of
>    race, religion, gender, or whatever, has been quite compatible with
>    profitability, and that widespread racial or religious prejudice has
>    worked to deprive certain segments of the population of a meaningful
>    chance to compete on equal terms with the majority.
>
>Clearly, libertarian claims about what would happen under a free-market
>system have zero applicibility to (for example) an era in which the
>state enforced Jim Crow laws. Conversely, that era doesn't refute such
>libertarian claims. If anything, it should lead one to wonder why such
>laws were necessary: to force racists to practice racism?

In actual US history, the civil and economic rights of the newly freed
slaves were systematically and violently stolen from them as soon as
the Federal government removed its protection by withdrawing federal
troops. If you would take the trouble to learn a little history, you
would see that the JimCrow laws were imposed *after* non-governmental
terrorism had deprived black Americans of their liberties. You might
also see that racism had an economic effectiveness which far transcended
the Jim Crow laws. For example, as late as 1954 the television networks
cut away from the Rebublican convention as Eisenhower's nominating
speech was about to start -- because a black man was making the speech and
the TV networks did not want to offend southern affiliates. Note, not
only were there no Jim Crow laws governing the New York City based
networks or the federally regulated TV stations, but the Federal government
was clearly interested in having the speech televised.  The fact is,that
popular prejudice was a powerful economic force which had the effect of
stripping a large sub-population of the right to enter the economy on any
where near an equal footing. Blaming the Jim Crow laws for this is simple
nonsense.

>If Mr. Yodaiken thinks that *any* period in the history of US racial
>relations was marked by a legal and economic system that libertarians
>would find worthy of defending, he should specify the time and place.
>Otherwise, as he should know, his alleged refutation is nonsense.

Well, if "libertarians" are claiming that while their proposed policies
would fail in any real time or place, but will succeed in some mystical
utopian era,  we have no quarrel and I am happy to let you return to 
your fantasies. But, if you argue that in the real-world the market
mechanisms which you seem to revere so religiously, will have effects other
than ones we observe in history, then I must object.

-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Newsgroups: sci.econ