I Apologize to My Fellow Americans

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-28-2017, 11:58 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-28-2017, 08:59 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'm not particularly an expert in libertarianism.  I guess I'll have to ask others on the forum who think of themselves as libertarian to confirm or deny Galen's assertion.  Does libertarian thought necessarily demand the right to discriminate?  Is bigotry an inherent aspect of libertarianism?

Everyone demands the right to discriminate, not just libertarians.  No one thinks they should be denied a choice in the race of the person they marry.  No one thinks that gays should be required to accept dates from straight people and vice versa.  In those cases, everyone accepts the libertarian belief in the right of free association.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that people can't deny offers to go on a date.  The area I'm most concerned with is when a prejudiced individual is supplying goods and services to the public.  Can such an individual provide services selectively by race, gender, culture, etc...

I will note that the current legal blocks against prejudice do not apply to churches, private homes and private clubs.  Thus Augusta National as a private club denied membership to women and minorities for a long time.

Certainly, the principle of free association has much merit in most to all private interactions, but a culture conflict erupts when one is supplying goods and services to the public.

(01-28-2017, 11:58 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: I think most strict libertarians would tend to side with Galen on this issue:  people should be allowed to conduct business with who they want, without government intervention.  Without laws passed by the state requiring segregation, probably all libertarians believe that competition would have put businesses wasting space on segregated lunch counters out of business, in favor of more efficient businesses that used a single lunch counter for all their customers.

I disagree with your spin on history.  Jim Crow, the KKK, the Nazis...  Bigots remain problematic until and unless decent people force them to behave.

In a world where everyone followed libertarian values, perhaps, as you say, economic considerations would triumph over bigotry.  The problem would go away.  However, if everyone followed Communist values, or Nazi values, or fundamentalist Islamic values, there would be no problems.  Any hypothetical mono culture might be utopian if only every single individual bought into the same mono culture.  Alas, in the real world, an assumption that everyone will buy into the same culture is absurd.

(01-28-2017, 11:58 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Personally I'm more toward the minarchist side and further away from the pure anarchocapitalist side.  While I agree that things would most likely work out fine under Galen's model, I'm okay with a local government - under the fiction that the government is a voluntary organization - having licensing laws that require businesses to serve all customers.

I don't assert that governments are voluntary.  Humans are social animals.  They claim territory, form groups, make up rules, enforce said rules over the breadth of their territories, etc...  Humans have been doing this for a long time.  I see it as in their DNA.  While humans are capable of learning and teaching cultures, which makes them different from other animals who can't do so, humans are political animals.

Libertarians asserting a 'right to freely associate' and pushing for rules that say there shall be no rules are still human.  They have a culture and will press to enforce their culture on everyone else.  I can often sympathize with much of what they desire.  I still prefer the 'power of the majority is trumped only by the rights of the individual' model.

(01-28-2017, 11:58 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: However, I'm not okay with the government violating first amendment rights by requiring the bakers to put a swastika or a congratulatory message for a gay couple on the cake if they don't want to.  The customer who wants those things on his cake can go to a like minded baker, or buy a blank cake and put the decoration on himself.

This would be my preferred common sense solution, assuming the second nearest baker isn't a zillion miles away.  However, it can turn into private individuals censoring speech that conflicts with their prejudices.  The First Amendment can be applied the other way.  My own culture suggests that tolerance is the proper solution, just as the libertarian values focus on economics.  I don't know that we will agree.