Do You Support the Civil Rights Act?

[JayTee]

In this post, I'm referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ( link ). I'm making this post to clarify a reply I made in another thread.

I said I disagree with parts of the Act. The parts about voters rights and access to government facilities is not what I'm addressing. I want to address the issue of banning discrimination in privately owned, public accommodations (restaurants, hotels, etc...).

In this scenario, the assumption is that the majority of people would choose to patronize an establishment that serves all people over an establishment that excludes one or more races of people. Hopefully, this is case, otherwise there is a much bigger problem with this Act.

Obviously, there is an argument to be made that ignoring property rights is always wrong, independent of the outcomes in these scenarios. I won't discuss those here.

Scenario 1:

In this scenario the Civil Rights Act wasn't passed. It is legal to advertise a restaurant as "Whites Only".

I'm driving into a town and I am hungry. I come to a street that has a restaurant on either side. One is labeled, "Whites Only" the other, "Everyone Welcome". I decide that I would rather have the owner of the "Everyone Welcome" restaurant make the profit from my business. Assuming that the majority of people would do the same, the non-racist (or at least not openly racist) owner would earn more profit than the racist owner (or at least the owner who caters to racists). In this scenario the free market has "punished" the racist owner through purely voluntary action.

Scenario 2:

In this scenario the Civil Rights Act has been passed. It is illegal to advertise a restaurant as "Whites Only".

Same opening scene as above. One thing is different, there are no signs. Myself and people like me will patronize each restaurant equally on average. Additionally, black patrons of the racist restaurant may receive poorer service than white customers. The racist owner's racism may actually be even more racist in this scenario, as he is now being forced to open his private property to people who he doesn't want there. He may retaliate by spitting in their drinks, undercooking their burgers, or whatever. He may not retaliate at all. In this scenario, we have no way of knowing that this is a racist owned establishment, or at the least a much less obvious way of knowing.

In this scenario, the racist owner profits more than in the first scenario, while the non-racist owner profits less. Also, the racist would very likely be even more racist in this scenario, and in a way has had his racism "legitimized" by being forced to accept customers that he doesn't want.


Any thoughts?

[AngusThermopyle]

[ QUOTE ]

In this scenario, the racist owner profits more than in the first scenario,

.....


Any thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

Alabama, 1967?

I think your scenarios are just a bit flawed.

[JayTee]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

In this scenario, the racist owner profits more than in the first scenario,

.....


Any thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

Alabama, 1967?

I think your scenarios are just a bit flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

My assumption was that the majority of people would support non-racist restaurants. In the thread that I made the statement, Adanthar said that I would have to accept the fact that no candidate would ever win an election who didn't support the Civil Rights Act. In a scenario where more people would support a racist establishment I think you have to resort to the other argument against the Act that I mentioned. The argument that complete respect of private property is necessary for a free society.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
In a scenario where more people would support a racist establishment I think you have to resort to the other argument against the Act that I mentioned. The argument that complete respect of private property is necessary for a free society.

[/ QUOTE ] But you didn't make this argument, possibly because it is very difficult to sustain.

One problem with these arguments is that they don't mention WHO is being made free; namely, the owner of the property. The non-owners of the property are made un-free when one individual is given complete control of a piece of property. To illustrate, suppose Bob appropriates a previously unowned piece of property, or a piece of public or otherwise held in common property. Before I could use what is now Bob's property to have a picnic or to play baseball (or use it in a number of other ways). Now, if I go onto Bob's property without his permission, some entity (government or private security firms) will remove me and coercively deprive me of my freedom to act in that way. Hence private property creates both freedom and unfreedom, because it restricts some people's freedom in order to create freedom for others.

[adanthar]

This thread got hilariously hijacked, but the response to the first ~20 posts on the first page can be summarized as:

[ QUOTE ]
Alabama, 1967?

I think your scenarios are just a bit flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "oh, the market will even everything out in the long run" line did not get anywhere in the South for over 20 years after the civil rights movement got off the ground.

edit:

[ QUOTE ]
In a scenario where more people would support a racist establishment I think you have to resort to the other argument against the Act that I mentioned. The argument that complete respect of private property is necessary for a free society.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is basically a copout because it's a purely ideological argument - both undisprovable and patently wrong on its face to all but the most biased observer, once you look a little deeper. "Respect for private property" may well be necessary for a free society. "Complete respect...in a free society" is just a bizarre line used only by hardcore libertarians and ancaps that doesn't really go anywhere, because it overlooks the 'society' part of the 'free society' statement.

Rephrase the question a little. If I'm the only purveyor of canned air on Mars after their dome punctures, and the state forces me into temporary price controls, is the society still free? By ancap standards, it's probably not. However, if it doesn't, and people die because they can't afford to breathe, the result is not actually a 'society'. (Before you start rolling your eyes at the hypothetical, understand that the hypo has nothing to do with the point; it could easily be about food during a famine, or, more apt, a village full of white people with a few black families in the middle.) Like it or not, a society is not a collection of millions of random individuals engaging in an endless loop of wholly rational economic actions; it is, instead, a collection of humans. There is a gigantic difference between the two, and in many cases, the disparity is large enough to make something like the Civil Rights Act a necessity.

"Complete respect for private property" gets us to the same tired "move states if you don't like it" argument that ancaps love to bitch about statists for using. The only difference is that you're asking far more people to move because of sheer prejudice (to say nothing of every other reason) than there are ancaps on the planet.

[JayTee]

[ QUOTE ]
This thread got hilariously hijacked, but the response to the first ~20 posts on the first page can be summarized as:

[ QUOTE ]
Alabama, 1967?

I think your scenarios are just a bit flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "oh, the market will even everything out in the long run" line did not get anywhere in the South for over 20 years after the civil rights movement got off the ground.

[/ QUOTE ]

You realize that the shift was from state sponsored segregation to state sponsored integration?

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
This thread got hilariously hijacked, but the response to the first ~20 posts on the first page can be summarized as:

[ QUOTE ]
Alabama, 1967?

I think your scenarios are just a bit flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "oh, the market will even everything out in the long run" line did not get anywhere in the South for over 20 years after the civil rights movement got off the ground.

[/ QUOTE ]

Jim Crow wasn't a product of the market. Jim Crow was a product of the state. Jim Crow was a series of LAWS.



[ QUOTE ]
Rephrase the question a little. If I'm the only purveyor of canned air on Mars after their dome punctures, and the state forces me into temporary price controls, is the society still free? By ancap standards, it's probably not. However, if it doesn't, and people die because they can't afford to breathe, the result is not actually a 'society'. (Before you start rolling your eyes at the hypothetical, understand that the hypo has nothing to do with the point; it could easily be about food during a famine, or, more apt, a village full of white people with a few black families in the middle.)

[/ QUOTE ]

People "roll their eyes" because you're jumping straight to edge case scenarios to justify rules that are proposed for non-edge-case scenarios.

[ QUOTE ]
"Complete respect for private property" gets us to the same tired "move states if you don't like it" argument that ancaps love to bitch about statists for using. The only difference is that you're asking far more people to move because of sheer prejudice (to say nothing of every other reason) than there are ancaps on the planet.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, the difference is quite significant. The state doesn't own the land upon which it imposes its rules. The racist restaurant owner does.

[adanthar]

[ QUOTE ]
Jim Crow wasn't a product of the market. Jim Crow was a product of the state. Jim Crow was a series of LAWS.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, if we removed Jim Crow laws from 1950 Alabama and did nothing else, the South would integrate?

How long do you think that'd take? Longer than ~25 years (one generation)?

[ QUOTE ]
People "roll their eyes" because you're jumping straight to edge case scenarios to justify rules that are proposed for non-edge-case scenarios.

[/ QUOTE ]

What you want is an edge case scenario.

[ QUOTE ]
No, the difference is quite significant. The state doesn't own the land upon which it imposes its rules. The racist restaurant owner does.

[/ QUOTE ]

And? Where's the justification for "complete freedom" in that statement? If a large majority of white men in Alabama are racist, they're within their complete, absolute authority to get the blacks to move? Your ideology's end result is reminiscent of the seagulls in Finding Nemo yelling "mine mine mine mine mine" at every opportunity - it's not actually a 'society' at all.

[JayTee]

[ QUOTE ]
So, if we removed Jim Crow laws from 1950 Alabama and did nothing else, the South would integrate?

[/ QUOTE ]

No one could forcefully prevent it.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Jim Crow wasn't a product of the market. Jim Crow was a product of the state. Jim Crow was a series of LAWS.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, if we removed Jim Crow laws from 1950 Alabama and did nothing else, the South would integrate?

How long do you think that'd take? Longer than ~25 years (one generation)?

[/ QUOTE ]

Who knows? Maybe never.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
People "roll their eyes" because you're jumping straight to edge case scenarios to justify rules that are proposed for non-edge-case scenarios.

[/ QUOTE ]

What you want is an edge case scenario.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you want to come up with rules to cover situations where there's only one canned-air vendor on mars AND there's been a catastrophic atmospheric failure, and you want to put that rule in place all the time, even if there is more than one air vendor and there's no catastrophic atmospheric failure. Yeah, I can't imagine why anyone would roll their eyes at you.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No, the difference is quite significant. The state doesn't own the land upon which it imposes its rules. The racist restaurant owner does.

[/ QUOTE ]

And? Where's the justification for "complete freedom" in that statement? If a large majority of white men in Alabama are racist, they're within their complete, absolute authority to get the blacks to move?

[/ QUOTE ]

Who is forcing anyone to move?