Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Libertarians and ERA Message-ID: <508@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Fri, 26-Apr-85 17:00:58 EDT Article-I.D.: cybvax0.508 Posted: Fri Apr 26 17:00:58 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 28-Apr-85 07:12:29 EDT References: <1340016@acf4.UUCP> <3564@alice.UUCP> <132@ttrdc.UUCP> <6323@ucbvax.ARPA> <479@cybvax0.UUCP> <120@kontron.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 76 In article <120@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes: > If the hypothetical restaurant is more concerned with pleasing its bigoted > white customers rather than its potential black customers, that suggests that > bigoted white customers outnumber all others. (That sounds suspiciously like > democracy in action, to me.) If the egalitarians in the country outnumber the white bigots, and enact civil liberties laws prohibiting discrimination, sounds suspiciously like democracy to me. > Let's assume for sake of argument that restaurant A does what you postulate. > Unless there are *very* few restaurants in town, at least one of those > restaurants has the potential to make a *lot* of money serving a black > clientele. Unless the government takes steps to make sure that all the > restaurants have the same policy. In fact, many of the discriminatory > practices of the South were the result of laws *requiring* those actions. The question of which came first, the law or the discrimination, is really irrelevant. They were not made for economic purposes: they were made to promote discrimination. As for your speculation about "a lot of money", there were and still are all-black restaurants and bars that would compete with an integrated restaurant from the other side. > I suggest you look into the Plessy v. Ferguson case. (You should remember > that from studying American history; that's the one where the Supreme Court > ruled in the 1890s that "separate but equal" was Constitutional.) The case > in question involved a Missouri law *requiring* railroads to provide separate > accomodations for blacks and whites. The free market couldn't be relied upon > to perform this socially desired function of discrimination, so the government > made *sure* those greedy businessman did what the government wanted. As you may recall, railroads were essentially monopolies. Free market principles don't apply well to monopolies. > South Africa's apartheid laws started in the 1920s as a set of restrictions on > the jobs offered to blacks, because poor whites weren't always getting the > good jobs. The restrictions on where blacks could live were passed because > blacks had this disconcerting habit of buying or renting in desireable parts > of town, and the government needed to take action to prevent integration of > housing. (You'll find that a lot of the discrimination in housing in this > country is left over from when cities explicitly prohibited blacks from renting > or buying in certain parts of town.) This sort of discrimination takes place nowadays despite the fact it is against the law. How is the free market doing anything to stop it? > National Socialist Germany had to pass elaborate sets of laws to make sure that > Jews would be discriminated against; as an example, a German farmer had to > prove Aryan ancestry back to 1800 in order to be a farmer. (I doubt that this > law was enforced real vigorously --- there might not have been too many farmers > left if they had.) Bizzare interpretation. But what does this have to do with the goofy libertarian idea that a free market should cause discrimination to wither away? > Free markets don't guarantee that there will be no discrimination, but they > make it likely that some business will refuse to discriminate because they see > an opportunity to make some money serving a market segment that other business > owners are too pig-headed to pursue. Great. The owner of an all-black restaurant in Alabama announces that he now will serve whites also. None of his clientelle leave, but no whites come in either. > We don't need government to impose non-discrimination on the marketplace; the > government has a long history, in almost all countries, of imposing its will > on the marketplace, and with few exceptions, the imposition has been to promote > discrimination. We're talking about one of the exceptions. So? -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh