A simple case against segregation.

[ObserveandReport]

Of course arguing the values of segregation of the state is a moot point on a board of anarchists, so I'll argue against private discrimination based on race. The NAP and a respect for property rights are fundamental to an Anarcho-Capitialist society. Taking on of private obligations is perfectly consistent with that moral foundation. Thus contracts can exist within an AnCap society. If one cannot take on private obligations voluntarily...well it's a non starter. 

 

A charge against a contractor called "unjust enrichment" finds that when one agrees to receive a benefit in exchange for giving something of value, what has occurred breaks the terms of the underlying contract (when they fail to give that thing of value, upon receiving a benefit). One gains a benefit by being in a market which participates and exchanges freely with others, blind to the contributions of individual races. When such a person discriminates against an individual race, they are unjustly enriched because they receive the network benefit of the larger market, but do not return the benefit in kind. 

 

This would not apply to a community that chose to isolate itself from the larger local/global community and simply operated in a self sufficient fashion. 

 

A quick example from ye ol Wikipedia "suppose that A makes an oral contract with B under which A will pay $100 for certain services to be provided by B. Further suppose that A pays the money but B discovers that, pursuant to legislation, contracts for such services are void unless in writing. B refuses to perform. Can A recover his payment? On both approaches, B is unjustly enriched at A's expense. On the "absence of basis" approach, B's enrichment has no legitimate explanatory basis because the contract was void. On the "unjust factor" approach, there has been a total failure of consideration; that is, A has received no part of the bargained-for counter-performance; restitution follows automatically from the fact of invalidity.'

 

This is my best defense of Libertarian anti-discrimination that I can come up with. Does this argument hold up? 

[ObserveandReport]

I was really hoping someone would have something to say about this, as it is still quite relevant when it comes to homosexuals these days.

[shirgall]

What must be done is discrimination on the basis of values, and recognition that race/ethnicity/style is a poor predictor of values.

[dsayers]

they are unjustly enriched because they receive the network benefit of the larger market, but do not return the benefit in kind. 

I was mostly lost due to obfuscating language, but this part really lost me. "Network" benefit? "Larger" market?

 

People exist. "Crowd" and the like are concepts. So in order to determine what is valid in a crowd, you need to look at what is valid for people. As an individual, I am free to dispose of my property as I see fit for whatever reason I see fit. If a person wanted to limit their capacity for profit by deliberately excluding part of their potential market, they are the only one that loses out. Ostracism would account for additional loss from those who feel that "discrimination" is a bad word and practice.

[ObserveandReport]

I was mostly lost due to obfuscating language, but this part really lost me. "Network" benefit? "Larger" market?

 

People exist. "Crowd" and the like are concepts. So in order to determine what is valid in a crowd, you need to look at what is valid for people. As an individual, I am free to dispose of my property as I see fit for whatever reason I see fit. If a person wanted to limit their capacity for profit by deliberately excluding part of their potential market, they are the only one that loses out. Ostracism would account for additional loss from those who feel that "discrimination" is a bad word and practice.

Network benefit- a benefit derived from participating in and deriving goods or services from a vast, interconnected group of individuals.

The easiest example is file sharing. If you are familiar with bit-torrent this is very helpful and you can skip the following until the space: Bit torrent is an effective means of peer to peer file sharing and it relies n multiple sources sharing the same desired content. It downloads from these multiple sources, allowing for much higher download speeds than if it were one person merely uploading to another persons computer all on their lonesome. Each person that has the file and is sharing it is a "seeder" and each person who is downloading the file is a "leecher." Those who leech, but do not seed once the file is downloaded are loathed in the file sharing community, because if each person did this, the efficacy of the entire network would break down. Am I describing the problem of free riders here?

 

The chain of commerce is like the file sharing network in that many people interact to produce goods valuable to all involved. The average non discriminating businessman/worker is like a seeder and the discriminating businessman/employee like a non-sharing leecher. Ostracism is a remedy that I accept. I am arguing for why we ought to ostracize (not for coercion or why we ought to coerce). It seems that shirgall has provided another succinct reason!

 

The legal terms were largely irrelevant and in retrospect I should have avoided them, or noted their function in my thought process as an aside. Definitions, simple terms, and good reasoning. I gotcha man. 

 

What must be done is discrimination on the basis of values, and recognition that race/ethnicity/style is a poor predictor of values.

Well said. 

[dsayers]

Ah, I see. I've heard it referred to as network strength. The telephone is useless if only one person has it. But the more people that have it, the more useful they all become. Note though I said useful, not valuable.

 

The chain of commerce is like the file sharing network in that many people interact to produce goods valuable to all involved. The average non discriminating businessman/worker is like a seeder and the discriminating businessman/employee like a non-sharing leecher.

I think your analogy falls apart here. Let's take a car for example. Many people interact to produce a car. Is it valuable to all involved? No. Those involved were exchanging their labor for comparable value, not the car itself. If any step of the car-making process excluded part of the labor pool for reason X (in the context of your thread, ethnicity), then the entire company suffers. For what if the best person for the job is somebody within that set of X? Not only will such a company not have access to that talent, but their competitor does. It's one of the many ways in which a free market is self-correcting.

 

In other words, the case for non-segregation is (as with all other human behaviors) the profit motive.

[ObserveandReport]

Ah, I see. I've heard it referred to as network strength. The telephone is useless if only one person has it. But the more people that have it, the more useful they all become. Note though I said useful, not valuable.

 

I think your analogy falls apart here. Let's take a car for example. Many people interact to produce a car. Is it valuable to all involved? No. Those involved were exchanging their labor for comparable value, not the car itself. If any step of the car-making process excluded part of the labor pool for reason X (in the context of your thread, ethnicity), then the entire company suffers. For what if the best person for the job is somebody within that set of X? Not only will such a company not have access to that talent, but their competitor does. It's one of the many ways in which a free market is self-correcting.

 

In other words, the case for non-segregation is (as with all other human behaviors) the profit motive.

While self-correction and profitability are strong motives, I'm looking for a stronger case. I'm not sure many places in the Jim Crow south would have opted for the more profitable option (I would wager that some still don't so clearly government isn't the answer). The benefit isn't just derived from being a member of one stream of commerce, instead it comes from all industries. More than that that, there seems to be an expectation when being an active participant in the workplace (either owner or employee), that along with trading your goods/services, others will do the same according to things like supply and demand. There is an expectation that McDonald would no more only sell to brown eyed people than would its beverage supplier.

 

The inefficiency is the result as you described, but the harm has impact beyond that. Social cohesion and integration is a extremely valuable thing as Stefan has so often stressed (along with homogeneity). So when these people discriminate in their business practices, real people are being hurt. When SCOTUS was beginning to take cases referring to the 13 and 14th amendments, the question still arose as to whether private business would have to conform. Black travelers would be unable to find lodging in entire swaths of certain states. If we truly want the black community to change and assimilate, the first step is knocking down barriers to those that are trying. White flight precedes property values dropping. Affluent blacks move in and whites move out.

[dsayers]

I'm not sure many places in the Jim Crow south would have opted for the more profitable option (I would wager that some still don't so clearly government isn't the answer).

I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate here. Are you saying that because you think certain people would make a certain decision, that the overarching observation that people respond to incentives and behave based on profit is completely false?

 

when these people discriminate in their business practices, real people are being hurt... Black travelers would be unable to find lodging in entire swaths of certain states

You're trying to establish that there's a problem without demonstrating where the problem is. Let us assume that your claim here is accurate. How do you know that is a problem? How do you conclude that the way to stop "people [from] being hurt" is to hurt other people by forcing them to dispose of their property the way YOU see fit? What's stopping you from putting up the only lodging that accepts blacks and enjoying ALL of the black business for yourself? What's stopping you from raising awareness and encouraging businesses that trade with the no-blacks lodging from ceasing to trade with them? Once you accept that the initiation of the use of force is justified, you stop looking for the real solutions.

[ObserveandReport]

I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate here. Are you saying that because you think certain people would make a certain decision, that the overarching observation that people respond to incentives and behave based on profit is completely false?

 

You're trying to establish that there's a problem without demonstrating where the problem is. Let us assume that your claim here is accurate. How do you know that is a problem? How do you conclude that the way to stop "people [from] being hurt" is to hurt other people by forcing them to dispose of their property the way YOU see fit? What's stopping you from putting up the only lodging that accepts blacks and enjoying ALL of the black business for yourself? What's stopping you from raising awareness and encouraging businesses that trade with the no-blacks lodging from ceasing to trade with them? Once you accept that the initiation of the use of force is justified, you stop looking for the real solutions.

I'm advocating for ostracism and noncoercive remedies as you suggest. The only addition is that perhaps civil suits against such proprietors should swing in favor of those discriminated against. Sorry if I wasn't clear. This is/was the very problem that brought cases before the Supreme Court throughout the 50's. I think it was a mistake to leave it up to government to fix the problem (civil law/courts would presumably exist in one form or another in an AnCap society). 

[dsayers]

civil law/courts would presumably exist in one form or another in an AnCap society). 

How do you know? How do you arrive at the conclusion that a society that accepts that people do not exist in different, opposing moral categories would abide a tool that requires as much? In my last post, I specifically addressed that you're calling for the initiation of the use of force to solve a non-problem that does NOT involve the initiation of the use of force. You have not established how the scenario you claimed is problematic. And you haven't fleshed out how initiating the use of force is justifiable in response to that scenario.

[ObserveandReport]

When I said "one form or another" this could mean Stefan's dispute resolution organizations, or civil courts such as those in Brehen Law. You have not established that a civil court system necessitates opposing moral categories, however you have asserted it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_law Theareas of law that would or could survive would be private law. Torts, contracts, etc. Specifically the violation of a contractual obligation to participate in the networked economy you benefited from is the wrong I allege. Contracts do not need to be written or explicit. Rather courts can infer them and they can be implied by conduct. You might object that benefiting from other's even handed participation does require your participation to be equally non-discriminatory. That seems like the discriminating actor is acting in bad-faith. Please copy and paste where I suggested the initiation of the use of force (show your work). You call it a non-problem. To the extent that integration and and assimilation are retarded, it is a problem worth solving. 

[Mister Mister]

Sorry but this is all hypothetical.  Of course I agree that, in a free society, discrimination by private groups based solely on race, is a bad idea for several reasons.  One, you are limiting your talent pool, two, it's going to be bad PR and you could be subject to ostracism and boycott even by the race you favor.  As Shrigall put, you want to discriminate based on values.  No reputable scientific organization is going to reject a theory because the proponent is Arab, just like no professional basketball team is going to reject a really great Chinese player who is 7'2" with a great shooting touch like Yao Ming.  BUT, if we do discriminate based on values, we will not find anything close to equal representation of the races in many areas.  Most of the best basketball players are going to tend to be black, most of the best scientists are going to be disproportionately Jewish/Asian/White, and so on.

 

But the problem we are dealing with today, is not whether or not we can choose to discriminate or segregate based on race, but that the State is mandating FORCED integration.  Just as with so many things, the State tries to make up for historical injustices by applying force in the other direction, which creates a whole new set of problems.  I went to a school, for example, in a district of mostly upper middle class whites and Asians and Jews, where blacks were bused from outside the district, to keep the diversity numbers up for funding.  So you had two different populations of kids basically, with completely different needs, that most likely, a free market would come up with different solutions for, and there would be a kind of natural segregation, which would have been better for everyone!  Instead, there was a lot of conflict, not least of which was applied towards the black kids who may have been more ambitious, and intelligent, and didn't conform to the stereotype.  In my opinion, these are the kinds of real issues in this area that we are dealing with today.  Then there is affirmative action, phony discrimination lawsuits, and all the rest of it.  It reminds me of two kids in a class who aren't getting along, and instead of allowing them to separate from one another, or getting at the core issue, the teacher just sticks them together and escalates "YOU TWO ARE GOING TO GET ALONG OR ELSE!!!"  It's not a solution, and only breeds resentment and further strife.

[dsayers]

You said that blacks couldn't find lodging within entire swaths of some state. I challenged you to explain how you know that to be problematic. I have not seen any such explanation. So tell me how you know that a woman must allow the use of her vagina to who YOU think she should.

 

I will admit that I'm not entirely clear on what you're talking about because your use of words like network sort of fail the five year old test. So from my perspective, where you mention initiating the use of force is when you imply that you're looking to force people to dispose of their property how YOU see fit because YOU think that the ways they (could) dispose of it now is problematic. Without actually explaining how it's problematic or how your idea for correcting it does NOT involve the initiation of the use of force.

[ValueOfBrevity]

...A quick example from ye ol Wikipedia "suppose that A makes an oral contract with B under which A will pay $100 for certain services to be provided by B. Further suppose that A pays the money but B discovers that, pursuant to legislation, contracts for such services are void unless in writing. B refuses to perform. Can A recover his payment? On both approaches, B is unjustly enriched at A's expense...

Individuals in a free society have strong incentive to join an arbitration agency (DRO) to deal with contracts. 

Contracts not in writing would be as valid as they are in current legal system: "He said; she said." 

 

Additionally, business' have a very strong disincentive to discriminate. They want everyone's money. If they are willing to take a loss in profit in order to disassociate, then that is their right. Free societies cannot exist without the freedom of voluntary (dis)association.

 

 

 

 

 

[shirgall]

https://i.imgur.com/DJspvP5.png

[ObserveandReport]

You said that blacks couldn't find lodging within entire swaths of some state. I challenged you to explain how you know that to be problematic. I have not seen any such explanation. So tell me how you know that a woman must allow the use of her vagina to who YOU think she should.

 

I will admit that I'm not entirely clear on what you're talking about because your use of words like network sort of fail the five year old test. So from my perspective, where you mention initiating the use of force is when you imply that you're looking to force people to dispose of their property how YOU see fit because YOU think that the ways they (could) dispose of it now is problematic. Without actually explaining how it's problematic or how your idea for correcting it does NOT involve the initiation of the use of force.

If you're trying to drive through a state and you know you might not find lodging that is a problem. Have you never had a flat tire? An accident? Any number of reasons? Network, a vast number of people connected by similar activities, each having to doe with others. The "internet" doesn't pass the five year old test, but you understand it just fine, or maybe you don't. Imagine the internet but strictly for commerce. The fiberoptic cables are roads and distribution centers servers. 

[dsayers]

If you're trying to drive through a state and you know you might not find lodging that is a problem. Have you never had a flat tire? An accident? Any number of reasons? Network, a vast number of people connected by similar activities, each having to doe with others.

I think you're compartmentalizing on both counts here.

 

Your claim was that it was problematic to the point of being "unjust enrichment" because the proprietor and would-be patron are amid the same market. You have yet to flesh this out despite numerous challenges.

 

I know what the word network means. I don't know what the phrase network benefit means. I've made this clear and challenged your every attempt to make it fit your initial conclusion. It's as if you refuse to revise your position.

 

I highly recommend you check out Stef's Introduction to Philosophy series. I think you'll find particular value in the part where he explains how bananas are not fundamentally different when you place any number of them beside one another. Likewise, there is now "crowd" or "network benefit." If patron A is free to trade for lodging from proprietor B, that also means that proprietor B is free to refuse to trade with patron C for whatever reason he sees fit. You have yet to refute this claim other than to say that because B and C exist in the same market, B is required to trade with C. This is an unchosen positive obligation and therefore must be an unethical proposition. For more on this, check out: 

[ferro18]

Of course arguing the values of segregation of the state is a moot point on a board of anarchists, so I'll argue against private discrimination based on race. The NAP and a respect for property rights are fundamental to an Anarcho-Capitialist society. Taking on of private obligations is perfectly consistent with that moral foundation. Thus contracts can exist within an AnCap society. If one cannot take on private obligations voluntarily...well it's a non starter. 

 

A charge against a contractor called "unjust enrichment" finds that when one agrees to receive a benefit in exchange for giving something of value, what has occurred breaks the terms of the underlying contract (when they fail to give that thing of value, upon receiving a benefit). One gains a benefit by being in a market which participates and exchanges freely with others, blind to the contributions of individual races. When such a person discriminates against an individual race, they are unjustly enriched because they receive the network benefit of the larger market, but do not return the benefit in kind. 

 

This would not apply to a community that chose to isolate itself from the larger local/global community and simply operated in a self sufficient fashion. 

 

A quick example from ye ol Wikipedia "suppose that A makes an oral contract with B under which A will pay $100 for certain services to be provided by B. Further suppose that A pays the money but B discovers that, pursuant to legislation, contracts for such services are void unless in writing. B refuses to perform. Can A recover his payment? On both approaches, B is unjustly enriched at A's expense. On the "absence of basis" approach, B's enrichment has no legitimate explanatory basis because the contract was void. On the "unjust factor" approach, there has been a total failure of consideration; that is, A has received no part of the bargained-for counter-performance; restitution follows automatically from the fact of invalidity.'

 

This is my best defense of Libertarian anti-discrimination that I can come up with. Does this argument hold up? 

First of all we need to remember that when you talk about collective concepts those are not individuals but rather they’re sums of individuals they’re not individuals themselves, there’s no individual called market in which you can find all people who’s willing to trade. For instance the market it’s not a trade partner, you wouldn’t sign a contract with the market or call the market your friend. Individual races  aren’t individuals, when some individual inside the race makes a bad deal or lies or steals or does something  that is punishment worthy, the whole race will not get punished but rather the individual, collective terms as market, races, religions, nations aren’t capable of any kind of action or free will and with that  they also don’t deserve  the rights (Profits, being ought either money or moral responsibilities ) nor the obligations( Must be reciprocal, must not lie nor deceive in its trades, must be held responsible of its own actions) rather these terms are a measurement (a sum) of direction a pointer to the directions  which the individuals are taking they’re not good or bad nor fool nor wise because these descriptions are descriptions of the actions of the individuals and not the actions of the market because market doesn’t have actions.  The market is not an individual but rather the sum of people willing to trade we can say that an individual is part of the market but  we can’t say that the market is part of an individual; why is that; well if an individual makes a decisions this decision will affect more or less the market and the direction it points, but  whatever the decision this individual does the market won’t have the choice of being affected or not  by this decision( because as we say before the market is not capable of decision) the market will be affected by the descion of this individual now the market may change its direction pointer and some people might think that it is wise to follow such pointer but they will be choosing to follow that pointer and in the same way they can chose not to.

Now this will totally operate the same way in a small community even in a community of two the community will be affected more or less by the action of 1 of its 2 integrants but the community will not act to affect the integrants with in itself.

The example you put out from Wikipedia is not about free market if someone say he would do something in exchange of you doing something else but he lies and doesn’t do it you can hardly call that a trade but rather a theft. Now when you say where getting benefits from individual races if we are discriminating those races then we aren’t trading with them where’s the benefit we’re getting?

Now you could say something like “well what if it’s contribution helps you because it arrives at you through other people even if you’re not trading with them directly” I’ll say in that case they already got their benefit

Example:

If you were an electrician whose business runs from producing electricity through fossil fuel and let’s say you had a black oil provider from a country like south Africa and let’s say before you had this oil provider your electricity was a lot more expensive and now that you have this black men from south Africa proving you with oil you can lower the prices of your electricity by 75%. Now let’s say I’m a person who wouldn’t do trades with black people  for whatever reason and I’m also happen to be one of your clients and thus my electricity bill also goes down 75% then if it weren’t because of you making this business with the south African men I wouldn’t get the benefit of the reduction of my bill yet I’m not the only beneficiated the African men would get it’s benefit from selling more oil, you would get your benefit by the increment in clients due to the lowered price and I will get my benefit and will benefit us all. But what you cannot say is that because of the voluntarily arrangement of you and the south African men I ought to the black people of our town to provide them with a benefit because I received one from another individual whom only happens to also be black.