Quote:
Originally Posted by ddubois
LKJ:
Your "necessities" argument seems out of place. Why is necessities part of your argument? If you think private businesses should not be allowed to discriminate, then you should feel they need be forced to sell Silly Bands and Hula Hoops equally, just as they are food and lodging. When you pull "necessities" into the argument, it seems to me like you are making an emotional argument, not a logical one.
As for your hypothetical with regards to blacks being shut out of necessities: as bad as the Jim Crow south was, I'm pretty sure there was no monopoly such that black people were unable to acquire any food. They must have been getting food somewhere, since they weren't all dead. In any case, Civil Rights Act or not, I can't envision us ever returning to that era. If some jerkwad puts up a Whites Only sign now, he's going to lose business, period. We don't need the government to protect us from this scenario anymore. If someone wants to have a highly unprofitable and very-hated gas station, that's their prerogative. That's liberty.
I don't bring in necessities to make an emotional argument. I do that because I find the opinion in
Heart of Atlanta compelling, and it came down the way it did because the Court determined travel to be a natural right. (Heart of Atlanta was a big hotel.) There are certain inalienable rights that need to be protected. Food and shelter fall into this category. Hula hoops do not. I don't actually oppose allowing a country club to discriminate in whatever way they choose. I think those practices are odious but I wouldn't use the law to regulate such things because I do think those are more akin to legislating who you can and cannot let into your home.
I used to agree with you on this. I used to make the same arguments that you're making. But I have to say that I think the arguments, on balance, fall short. Monopolies that prevent all food transactions are really unlikely to take place, but:
1. Having the law (or lack thereof) in place to even allow for the possibility is wrong, because it essentially states that only some of these businesses are getting the same property rights. After all, if they all exercised the same ones, you'd have to do something, right? So those rights really aren't being protected at all.
2. You would still have situations where certain necessities would be far more difficult to get a hold of in certain areas. You could imagine a monopoly like this taking place in a small town in the deep south, couldn't you? That doesn't seem like a big stretch to me. If it even got to the point where a black person had to head a town over to get what they needed to subsist, then I don't think that's acceptable.
3. It's not like an unlimited number of grocery stores in an area can all exist and remain profitable. Once as many as the market will bear are established, there will be enough disincentives that other prospective owners who may not have the discriminatory policies are not going to set up shop as well.
For these reasons, I just don't think the law should protect property rights in that way when they are implicitly protecting the infringement on other rights in the same process. Sorry, but I'm comfortable cutting somewhat against the libertarian grain here, and I honestly don't think I'm getting there via an emotional argument.