From: perez@mgr.hjf.org (Charles Perez)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Libertarianism vs. government
Date: 31 Jul 92 18:15:28 GMT
Organization: HJF AIDS Research Project, Washington DC

In article <1992Jul27.221322.14618@watson.ibm.com> strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom) writes:
>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.

Hmmm... if that happens, that will just mean there is even less
competition for any insurance company that wants to cater to blacks
and aggressive non-bigots. That will fill in the gap post-haste.
Whatever insurance company that does this will then be able to court
any non-bigot and even many bigots with the lower prices that a
company without artificial restrictions on its customer base can
charge. If this is not the case, then why were the old Jim-Crow laws
LAWS and why is apartheid a legal doctrine? Why must the laymakers
*force* business to act racist?

>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.

How about the ultimate check-and-balance, free competition? See above.

>
>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.

See above again for example of reverse-"snowball".

>
>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.

No, just not smart. Any company operating under non-business
restrictions is at a competitive *disadvantage* unless they can
*force* their will on the competition, usually through legislation.

>
>
>
>|> > 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.

Government should not concern itself with "ethics" as such, but with
*justice*. Ethics are what you should do, which is your business. Justice
is what you have a right to do, which is everybody's business.

.sig
Xref: sparky alt.activism:13397 talk.politics.misc:35697 alt.individualism:4524