From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Economic Discrimination in Libertaria
Date: 28 Sep 92 02:25:47 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC

isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:

>Actually the Chinese in America are among the poorest in this country
>(per capita).  Despite the popular myth (which depends on household
>income, a skewing statistics in a household with three or four wage
>earners), the American dream still hasn't come true for them.

My impression is that most of the Chinese here are rather recent
arrivals who tend to work very hard at low-paying jobs, but that the
second and third generations tend to hold not-so-low-paying jobs.  If
I'm right, then my claim that the things they value as a culture helps
them prosper as a group in this country still stands up.  Does anyone
have any figures?

>Furthermore, it is a myth that Asian-Americans do not get "govt help"
>(ie Affirmative Action):  their AA help tends to be in the social
>sciences where they are underrepresented while Black folx mostly get
>theirs in the sciences where they are underrepresented.

My claim was that the explanation of the success of the groups that
have been successful has not been AA and other forms of govt help, and
that reliance on such things is a distraction from the real task of
developing the habits and institutions that will lead to success. 
Under our current system, the government tries to provide the greatest
goodies for the greatest number.  So I have no reason to doubt your
statement that some Asian-Americans get AA help.

>Further, as a liberterian, I would expect that one would find the
>requirement that one "assimilate" (that is subjugate one's individual
>cultural mores to the mainstream) in order to succeed somewhat
>distasteful.  Why is it that it doesn't engender that response?

What's the requirement?  You get what you pay for.  If you want to be
successful and prosperous you cultivate one sort of cultural mores.  If
there are other things you value more, that's fine but don't complain
that you're not successful and prosperous.

>Also, it is a myth that Blacks aren't better off in a whole lot of
>ways since the 1960's.  At current trends, >50% of Blacks will be in
>the middle class by 2000.  The income gap between Black families
>(two-income households) and White families has narrowed . . .

What was going on before the 1960's?  I don't have any statistics
readily at hand specifically relating to blacks, but in the Fall 1982
issue of _Public Interest_ Charles Murray cites figures from the
_Statistical Abstract of the United States_ showing that poverty as
defined by the Bureau of the Census declined from 33 to 28 percent
between 1949 and 1952, to 22 percent by the end of the '50s, to 18
percent in 1964 (the beginning of the Great Society), and to 13 percent
on 1968.  There really hasn't been any progress since then (the poverty
rate dropped as low as 11.1 percent in 1973 and has since risen).  So
the net benefit for poor people in general of the more active
government role in fighting poverty that we have had since the middle
'60s seems to be limited at best.  I have no reason to think that poor
blacks benefited more than other poor people, although of course they
may have.

As to the position of blacks in particular, how much does the relative
success of two-income black households aid the two-thirds of black
children who are now born out of wedlock?  The employment rate of young
blacks has also dropped a great deal since the 1960s.  These trends are
not encouraging.

>	   5.  Therefore, rather than trying to advance by getting help
>|such as anti-discrimination laws from the government, it will be better
>|for us to pull together and make our own success.
>
>Why not both?

They come out of different understandings of your situation in society.
If you believe you can't succeed because you are weak and everyone is
against you, you will believe you deserve special benefits and
protection from the government and you won't have the outlook needed to
succeed in any other way.  If you believe there are lots of good people
and opportunities in the world and that you are capable of making
something of them, then you will go ahead and try to make a go of it
without waiting for the government to act, and in any event you won't
think you have any special claim on the government.

In addition, of course, I think anti-discrimination laws are wrong, but
you don't seem much impressed by my arguments on that score.

>|The MIT example you give is of discriminatory government action that
>|would have no justification under the laws of Libertaria.  Certainly, it
>|has no connection to freedom of association.
>
>Bullshit.  Both systems would have human judges and I suspect that it
>would be impossible to claim that one system will not have the
>problems of the other in this regard . . .

I don't claim that the MIT situation (unequal treatment of murder
victims by race and social class) could not arise in an actual
Libertaria, only that it would be no more consistent with the laws of
Libertaria than with the current laws of Massachusetts and that it has
no particular connection with whether private discrimination is
allowed.

>One of these days, I'm going to have to explain why I think Liberteria
>will, over time, degenerate (if that's the right word) into what we
>have now.  Except that maybe the drug war wouldn't have been
>declared....

One could always take the view that the way things are is the way things
necessarily are, and that view might even be correct.  I don't believe
in defeatism, though.
-- 
    Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:4405 sci.philosophy.meta:2070