From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: On Banning Private Discrimination
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 14:18:17 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >[ discrimination also distributed by market; jobs as well as housing ]
| 
| >mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
| >| Mind justifying that?  After all, why won't the 60% who don't mind
| >| Tasmanians try to take advantage of the Tasmanian labor pool that the
| >| bigots won't hire?  Either the Tasmanian wage rises to the national
| >| average or the bigots lose money evey day they don't hire Tasmanians.

gf:
| >It's a similar process.  A substantial number of non-Tasmanian
| >bigots won't work with Tasmanians or will take lower wages to
| >not work with Tasmanians.  Unbigoted managers will either 
| >take advantage of their desires, or compete at a disadvantage.
| >Other bigots won't do business with company that hires
| >Tasmanians.  A free market constantly distributes utility;
| >that's its great advantage.  But some of that utility can
| >be undesirable from other points of view.  Bigotry is one
| >example.

mf:
| Gordon, if we play this out with real numbers will you accept the
| results?  I'll even let you set up the initial conditions.

You're welcome to play it out.  I'm trying to explain my
observations with a theory.  If the theory doesn't work,
I'll have to construct another; so, if you demonstrate that
the process I describe above doesn't work, I'll accept it
in the sense that the theory is inadequate, not that the
observations are illusory (unless you wish to construct a
theory about how my observations are illusions, etc.)

You will also be demonstrating that a market does _not_
distribute utility, which to my mind is one of its more
salient, and usually desirable, characteristics.

gf:
| >| >However, since we can
| >| >see results in history which the theory would predict, we
| >| >can assume the theory at least approximates the behavior of
| >| >real communities.

mf:
| >| You mean in places where discrimmination was not mandated by the
| >| government?  Where?

gf:
| >Suburbs of New York City, most of my adult life, which is
| >most of the last thirty years.

mf:
| You mean you lived in an NYC suburb without restrictive zoning laws
| where blockbusting was legal?  Bull.  Which one?

Restrictive in what sense?  There are very few places without
some kind of zoning.  

mf:
| >| If you look at real life it doesn't work that way.  For example, the
| >| government prevents block-busting.  Who gets screwed by block-busting?
| >| Bigots.  Who benefits?  Minorities who get good houses cheap and the
| >| real estate brokers who sell to them.  Who stops it?  The government.

gf:
| >A well-run blockbusting campaign does not result in
| >cheap housing for minorities.  The point is to get the
| >bigots and those non-bigots who fear for their real-
| >estate values to sell cheap, and then jack up the prices
| >for the minorities.

mf:
| Gordon, use your head.
| 
| Who do they sell cheap to?  Hint.  It isn't the real estate brokers.
| It's the minorities themselves.
| 
| You seem to have some really weird ideas about how block busting
| works.  Want to explain them to us?  Do you think that the real estate
| agencies involved warehouse the buildings? 

In answer to your last question, yes, certainly.  The lawyer
who handled my closing 15 years ago owned about a dozen houses,
not for the purpose of blockbusting but simply as items in
trade.  He rented some of them out meanwhile.  It's obviously
perfectly legal.  In a blockbusting campaign, the first step
is usually to buy a couple of houses and move in the most
offensive examples of a minority one can find, as renters at
very low rents.  The frightened homeowners now want to sell
cheap.  Why have them sell cheap to the minorities, when you
can make a substantial profit by buying the houses, kicking
out the offensive renters, and selling at high prices to
respectable minorities?

Such a campaign doesn't always work.  The homeowners may
hang tough, or sometimes the campaign runs away -- they sell
directly to the minority.  And so on.  But that means the
blockbusting campaign wasn't well-run.

Actually, the whole bigotry thing in real estate goes well
beyond block-busting.  Large developments in not very
desirable areas have been possible simply because people
thought they were getting away from minorities -- the other
side of blockbusting.  But I digress.

The main thing to notice is that most people operate on a
profit motive, and the high utility accorded to discrimination
by bigots means that the profit motive and the market will
serve them.  If that leads to deleterious social conditions,
especially politically significant ones, the temptation will
be great to find political solutions.  It does little good to
explain classical liberal theory to people who are suffering
real, live discrimination, nor to those who want the society
to remain nice and stable so they can stay at the top of it.
-- 
Gordon Fitch | gcf@panix.com | uunet!cmcl2!panix!gcf 
*       1238 Blg. Grn. Sta., N.Y., N.Y. 10274      *
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