From: jturner@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Jeffrey Turner)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: On Banning Private Discrimination
Date: 26 Jul 92 21:56:32 GMT
	<1992Jul25.164356.8538@panix.com>
	<1992Jul26.050452.12439@genie.slhs.udel.edu>
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University
In-reply-to: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu's message of 26 Jul 92 05:04:52 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.050452.12439@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>   Additionally, blacks committed more crime
>   (as they unfortunately still do) than whites.

	This is absolutely false, by any measure.

>   But it's precisely that profit-maximization
>   I'm counting on.  There's only 30 bigots, so
>   they can and will only buy 30 houses.  That
>   leaves 70 left over, and in order to maximize
>   those profits, the housing industry will end
>   up having to deal with the minority.  Otherwise
>   they'll lose money on empty houses.

	Individual landlords or builders don't own
all 100 houses.  Each, in trying to maximize his/her
own profits will go after the 90 non-Tasmanians rather
than the 70 non-bigots, leaving the least desirable
housing stock to the Tasmanians, especially if for
historical reasons the Tasmanians are of less than
average wealth or if as we've posited the bigots will
pay a premium for segregated housing.

Gordon Fitch wrote:
>>>>   Remember
>>>>   also that, as noted in the previous article,
>>>>   the Tasmanians have less money, and the less
>>>>   money you have, the more you pay per item.
>>>>   Check supermarkets in slums versus suburban
>>>>   areas for confirmation of this.

>>>   This may be empirically true, but irrelevant
>>>   to a free market, as our slums are far from this.

	Nothing empirical can now nor could ever be
said of free markets.  "Free markets" are a theoretical
construct without a very large political base except
as a club to impoverish those who are politically
powerless.

>>   In the case of supermarkets?  How?

>   Another example is how, at least
>   in CA, hundreds of thousands of pounds of nectarines
>   are being destroyed by government order because
>   they're just too small for the instrument to meet
>   size regulations.  Trained pickers can't tell they're
>   too small, but consumers are being robbed of their right
>   to choose for themselves based upon their own
>   judgement.  Ahh, the myriad ways!

	Trained pickers is a smoke screen, picking nectarines
is not remunerated well enough to justify this self-serving
blather.  Nectarine pickers are not skilled professionals.
The implicit part of the argument, that supermarket prices
in low-income neighborhoods would be lower if the people
there had the "opportunity" to buy smaller nectarines does
not refute the argument that they pay more for goods of the
same quality.

>   I thought you were trying to prove that private discrimination under the
>   sort of conditions I've given would be economically detrimental to minorities.
>   I accept the viciousness of prejudice, but I defend the right of bigots to
>   act on their prejudice so long as it's peaceful.

	He was, he did.

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

	Selfishness has only achieved a world in the condition
it's in now, I do not see how more of it would be a corrective.
Anyone who thinks that those in power have not been acting
selfishly is deluded.

>   "True greatness consists in the use of a powerful
>   understanding to enlighten oneself and others."
>					- Voltaire

	Trying to convince others that what is in your political
and economic self-interest is not only in theirs but the only
true and right way to organize society - especially when it
is not very much of a change of course for a rapidly deteriorating
world - is not enlightenment but its opposite.

					--Jeff Turner