[ALawPoker]

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Edit: it's also really questionable to me how you got 'government does not work' out of a case of a bunch of racist local authority figures running amok.

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I sort of missed this when I responded to you before.

Obviously this is just one indication. I wouldn't make such a bold claim without strong justification. My belief that "government does not work" is based on a ton of other stuff that we can devote other threads to if you really want to debate the point. Like I said after the part you quoted me on, "this is just empirical icing on the cake."

The fact that a bunch of racist people HAVE the authority to do this to someone is what highlights the problem. Your solution would probably be to apply further layers of authority to keep them in check! But all we really need is a healthy respect for liberty. A free society does not select for racism. There's no reason for it. So when you encourage rational behavior, you encourage the selection against racism (even if that isn't obvious to the knee-jerkers who love to talk about how righteous they are).

So if race issues concern you, you're best to ignore it. Literally. That's the best thing you can possibly do. You should merely encourage people to act rationally, and then you're encouraging racism to evaporate as efficiently as possible. It's only if you hold the opinion that racism could have some long-term benefit (which to me is an odd and bigoted opinion) that you should have the opinion that something need actively be done about it.

I don't feel like I need a rule in my house that says "no putting your hand on the stove top." There's an innate incentive to not want to do that. All I need to do is demonstrate the rational chain of thought that the stove top is hot and if you touch it you will regret that decision a split second or two later. (The only difference is that it's easier to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship when the effect is immediate.)

It's amazing how everyone just ignores that a state forcibly redistributed other people and brought them here against their will where they would not be treated like fellow humans. Then for another hundred years or so the state systematically defined their rights and segregated them accordingly. And in more recent times the state has adjusted to the realization that black people are equals and also they are less well off than white people (wow, didn't see that one coming!), and so the racism we see today from the state is in the form of affirmative action policies. It's less bad than segregation (and it's also 150 years later so we should expect a great deal of improvement) but it's still [censored] racism and it's still [censored] stupid.

A free society has no reason to ever be racist. You wouldn't migrate to areas that you know will hate you and harm you because of the color of your skin (and those areas will pay the price by missing out on your goods and services). And without a ton of artificial hoops to jump through to move in between different imaginary lines, it is easier to move if you do want to.

And also, the problem just wouldn't exist. When all exchanges are voluntary actions between individuals, there is drastically less reason to see people as some "group" based on the color of his skin. To whatever extent people still did this, they would have to deal with the very real disadvantage that this mindset brings.

Over time racism WILL disappear because it is not to human beings' best interests to be racist.

But when a state comes in and says this percentage here, this much there, this happens for these people, this for that people... the whole thing is just a mess. The state makes racism much, much worse and delays our ability to see past it, but would prefer to trick us into the bizarre position that they are actually necessary for SOLVING the mess. That without them, ZOH NO, racists will run amok and everyone will be racist everywhere!!!

They [censored] make the mess! And then anything they can do will only make it worse. Only time can heal the mess we inherit. NOT a further reliance on the state to somehow make things better.