NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/sci/econ/7390

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-08 | 8.5 KB

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From: [e-mail] (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 8 Sep 92 07:55:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Lines: 179

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul A Sand) writes:
>vy: Victor Yodaiken
>ps: Paul Sand
>
>vy: [...] let's examine the "libertarian" position that one has the
>    "right" to refuse service in a public place of business on the basis
>    of racial bigotry. [...]
>
>ps: Translation: libertarians believe that market transactions should be
>    mutually voluntary.
>
>vy: That is not a translation, it is a sugar-coating.
>
>On the contrary, it's an accurate description of the underlying
>principle.
>

Hate to break this to you, but most people do not volunteer to be
discriminated against any more than they volunteer to be victims of
fraud.

>vy: The "libertarians" argue that it is moral to impose taxes for the
>    purpose of paying for a police force which will enforce the racial
>    prejudices of property owners by forcibly ejecting blacks, jews, or
>    whatever from hotels, restaurants, banks, or any other "privately
>    owned" place of business. [...]
>
>ps: Translation: libertarians believe that A's presence on B's property
>    should be agreeable to both A and B.
>
>vy: You may word this how you like, but it would be nice if you could
>    confront the reality of the situation.
>
>The reality being what? That, under a system of liberty, some folks will
>use that liberty in stupid and vile ways, and yet be perfectly within
>their rights to do so? This is uncontested.

Again, if A calls the cops to enforce his prejudices by violently
ejecting B from his property, this will likely not be agreeable to B.
To insist on viewing police enforced denial of serice on racialgrounds
as "mutually agreeable" is nutty.


>
>vy: Thus, the "libertarians" find it perfectly moral to forcibly extract
>    taxes from minority groups in order to violently oppress them. [...]
>
>ps: Untranslatable, because false. Some (maybe most, by no means all)
>    libertarians find taxation acceptable to adequately protect the
>    rights of all individuals; to claim that the actual motive is "in
>    order to violently oppress" minorities is baseless slander.
>
>vy: Only if one accepts willingly confuses propaganda with reality.
>    Those libertarians who accept the need for taxation (e.g. in
>    accordance with the platform the the Libertarian party) [...]
>
>A factual aside: the LP's 1992 platform calls for `the eventual repeal
>of all taxation.' Whether this shows Victor's confusion with
>propaganda, reality, or just reading comprehension is an exercise left
>to those who care.

And the Communist Party of the Soviet Union called for "eventual" withering
away of the state. The LP admits the current necessity of taxation.

>
>vy: do so on the basis of government protection of "private property".
>    If police, hired at public expense, are going to enforce the
>    racial/religious bigotry property owners, then it follows that
>    members of unpopular racial/religious groups will be forced to pay
>    taxes to support their own oppression. If you want to call this
>    process voluntary and freedom-enhancing it only illustrates the
>    shallowness of your ideas.
>
>Taxation is only voluntary in the doublespeak of the IRS; if Victor is
>trying to claim that *I* said it was voluntary, he's (again) badly
>confused, and I shall therefore discount accordingly the usual

Let's get this straight: The LP calls for an "eventual" end
to taxation, i.e. it supports the necessity of taxation for the
time being. It also supports the "right" of property owners to run
businesses which actively discriminate on racial or other grounds. Thus,
it follows that the LP supports, until this "eventuality" appears, the
right of property owners to have the cops actively enforce racial
barriers while supporting the right of the state to extract the salaries
of those cops from the victims of discrimination. Yet, your characterization
of the whole process is "A's presence on B's property should be
agreeable to both parties". Did I miss something?


>Yodaikenian bushwa about `shallowness.' I note he failed to respond to
>the actual point I made, which was (once again): his charge that the
>actual motive of libertarians is to "violently oppress" minorities is
>baseless slander.
>

I don't give a damn what the motives of "propertarians" are and have
not made any such charges.

>vy: In actual US history, the civil and economic rights of the newly
>    freed slaves were systematically and violently stolen from them as
>    soon as the Federal government removed its protection by withdrawing
>    federal troops. If you would take the trouble to learn a little
>    history, you would see that the JimCrow laws were imposed *after*
>    non-governmental terrorism had deprived black Americans of their
>    liberties. [...]
>
>If Victor took the trouble to learn a little English, he might see that
>I used Jim Crow laws as just one example of how the state (and *not*
>the "free-market system") failed to adequately protect the rights of
>individuals. Victor has not refuted this; he has merely supplied

Yes the state supported racial discrimination. But, no, the state was not
the only bulwark of racial discrimination and market forces acted to
reinforce discrimination, not to weaken it.

>vy: You might also see that racism had an economic effectiveness which
>    far transcended the Jim Crow laws. For example, as late as 1954 the
>    television networks cut away from the Rebublican convention as
>    Eisenhower's nominating speech was about to start -- because a black
>    man was making the speech and the TV networks did not want to offend
>    southern affiliates.
>
>Certainly the date's two years off--1954 wasn't a Presidential election
>year--and I wonder what else is inaccurate in this story? In any case,

Sorry for the innacuracy and the date typo. The actual event in question
was 1960 when Eisenhower's assistant E. Frederick Morrow spoke at the
republican convention which nominated Nixon. The networks refused to
televise any negro speakers at either convention that year (source:
Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch, page 323). And the point of the
story is simply to show that offending the lucrative white
segregationist marketplace was much more of a concern to even
national corporations, than was the chance of missing out on the low-income
black marketplace.


>if Victor's best evidence of the perfidy of the free market is the
>FCC-regulated (read: protected) broadcast industry of the 50's, ho
>hum.

It's a simple example of how prejudice was reinforced by market conditions.

>
>vy: Note, not only were there no Jim Crow laws governing the New York
>    City based networks or the federally regulated TV stations, but the
>    Federal government was clearly interested in having the speech
>    televised. The fact is,that popular prejudice was a powerful
>    economic force which had the effect of stripping a large
>    sub-population of the right to enter the economy on any where near
>    an equal footing. Blaming the Jim Crow laws for this is simple
>    nonsense.
>
>Victor, as usual, makes Herculean efforts to avoid defending his
>original assertion: that the shameful history of US race relations was
>somehow an example of libertarian economic and legal ideals given free
>rein.

As usual, your charcterization of my argument is completely off base.
I am arguing that there is no evidence that discrimination is economically
non-competitive in an environment of widespread prejudice, and that
claims otherwise are not supported by the historical record.

>The Jim Crow laws are but one simple piece of disconfirming
>evidence; yet, despite all his bluster, Victor has not dealt with the
>interesting question of why such laws were considered necessary, if the
>allegedly overwhelming `economic force' of prejudice alone was doing
>such a swell job of keeping blacks subjugated.

One simply notes that even where the laws left a theoretically open
space for non-racial business practices, there is no evidence that
the market acted to make racism unprofitable or to create non-racially
segregated markets.


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