From: strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: Libertarianism vs. government
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 22:13:22 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Research

In article <1992Jul24.013827.440@NOC.Vitalink.COM>, rbuchanan@vitalink.com (Rick Buchanan) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul23.150743.32350@watson.ibm.com>, strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob 
|> Strom) writes:
|> 
|> > I thought libertarians gave companies the right to do something
|> > that they would consider illegal if it were done by the
|> > government.  
|> > 
|> > For example, libertarians would allow my
|> > insurance company to put a clause in my insurance contract
|> > forbidding me under pain of losing my insurance to associate
|> > with blacks --- i.e. the insurance companies could coerce
|> > me to restrict my freedom of association. 
|> 
|> Only if you posit an environment with one and only one insurance
|> company.  In a competitive market, a company would have to be run
|> by brain-dead managers to require such a clause.  If some ins. co.
|> did, that would be an instant profit opportunity for the guy down
|> the road to glom onto customers dissatisfied with the services
|> offered by the bigot's company.  It's called competition.
|> 
The competition will lose if the backlash from bigots
exceeds the extra business from blacks and sympathetic
anti-bigots.  And there are no checks and balances preventing
your libertarian society from generating environments
in which there is one and only one insurance company.
There are such checks and balances in our constitutional
democracy.

And once that happens you can get a snowball effect.  Everybody
needs insurance, so the grocery store who needs insurance
is "forced" (in the practical sense of this term) to
make only those kinds of "voluntary" contracts with *its*
clients which are acceptable to the insurance company.

Constitutional democracies provide mechanisms outside
the "free market" to prevent such abusive situations
before they get out of hand.  Libertarianism, on the
other hand, defines these situations as *ipso facto*
non-abusive.



|> > But libertarians
|> > think that government restrictions *preventing* discrimination
|> > are an illegal abridgement of freedom of association.
|> 
|> Not illegal.  Immoral.  The government defines illegal, your conscience
|> defines immoral.
|> 
|> And besides immoral, counterproductive.   Did you ever see a 5-yr-old 
|> child say "Mommie!  Billy won't let me play with him.  Make him let me!"
|> Do you think the little brother is going to be well treated when his
|> sibling is coerced into the association?  Do you really think this
|> benefits him in the long run?
|> 
|> (And don't blame me for the childish example.  As far as I'm concerned
|> the people around here bleating for Mommy-State to force Billy's Diner
|> to serve them (against Billy's wishes) are no better than the 5-yr-old
|> mentioned above.)

Don't use these loaded words.  Nobody is "bleating".  We already
have a constitutional democracy --- *you* are the one trying
to change the rules of the game.

And there's a difference between compelling someone's feelings
and compelling fair play and ethical behavior.
 


-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc