From: trif@bike.rad.washington.edu (To Run In Fear)
Subject: Re: free market
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle WA
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 19:54:51 GMT

In article <1992Nov10.041738.17774@gibdo.engr.washington.edu> bobk@gibdo.engr.washington.edu (Bob) writes:

     Just curious.  How do the following fit in with your argument?

     1) Libertarians arranging protests and consumer boycotts against firms
     that have employment contracts with individuals that include drug and
     lie-detector tests.  If a firm thinks it is in its best economic
     interest to have drug and lie-detector tests, shouldn't they be free
     to hire only those willing to take these tests?

A lot of people make the mistake that libertarians don't believe in social
responsibility.  Libertarians believe that social responsibility belongs to
individuals and not the government, and that each individual must decide for
themself what their social responsibility is.  If a firm believes that it is
in its best economic interest to have those tests, no one has the right to
use nonconsensual force or fraud to prevent them.  However, if *I* believe
that it is in *my* best interest *not* to support these practices, it is my
responsibility not to support companies that adopt them with *my* money, and
I have no right to use the power of the state to *force* the company to not
use these methods.  If a company loses money because of its adoption of these
practices, well, then it isn't in their best economic interest, isn't it?
Certainly, I may try to convince others (other than by nonconsensual force or
fraud) that they too should not support these methods, and again, it comes 
down to individuals freely making choices with their own property.

I overheard two women debating what action to take in the Ice-T "Cop Killer"
case.  One woman advocated a boycott of the company.  The other woman 
vehemently shook her head and stridently proclaimed that boycotts were
*wrong* and what was needed was to get a law passed to make things like
"Cop Killer" illegal.

     2) Libertarians arranging protests and consumer boycotts against
     newspapers and television stations that did not give them "fair"
     campaign coverage.  Should Libertarians be telling the media what
     to do with their private property?  The Libertarians might be in a
     catch-22 on this one.  In a free market, only those with money have
     power -- but the Libertarians have no money and thus no power.  And
     they can't even complain about it, because that is the system they
     are advocating.

Certainly a libertarian can say that person X ought to do Y, and lobby
them to do so, and even refuse to patronize person X's business, but not
use government power to force it.  If you don't like the concept of fast
food chains, regardless of whether you like the food and price, then you
may decide to take your money to small, locally owned single food 
establishments.  Nobody could build up a concentration of economic power
unless people *voluntarily* did business with that person.

There is no hypocrisy.  Many people get that misconception when they read
that libertarians want to remove the government's power to stop Z.  They
think it means that libertarians support and want Z.  That because someone
should have the legal right to Z, that a libertarian would feel bound to
ignore someone's Z'ing when making their decisions about their property.

There are also many things that many libertarians consider good (such as
education), but because they believe that it is not a government 
responsibility, people assume they are opposed to it in principle.  Thus you 
find people who say that libertarians oppose education for the poor, when the 
reality is that libertarians oppose government involvement.
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