Public or Private? (Hint: trick question!)

[magus341]

This meme hit the tubes a long time ago. Libertarians countered with their take on the alarm clock story. Both sides are missing the point. Societies need both violent and voluntary orders to survive. A society with only peaceful organizations would be conquered by outside forces (no military) and not be able to enforce property rights, since

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[magus341]

Your comment was very thought provoking. When I wrote that, I was thinking of goods, in the sense of physical objects or services, not really the legal framework. The U.S. Constitution provides for equal protection under the law. The most important role of government, in my opinion, is defining the structure of property rights and contract enforcement. I don't have any philosophical opposition to laws requiring companies to treat people equally when they are hiring.

In practice, it is hard to stop a racist/sexist employer from discriminating if they put their mind to it. In a large enough labor market, hopefully there will be one or two that will treat people equally, and there is also the possibility for self employment. If a group is underpaid relative to their productivity, companies that hire them will be rewarded by higher profits. That encourages employers who care about profits more than -isms to actually seek out the discriminated group. All those factors are probably not sufficient to ameliorate the effect and such consolation might not be much comfort to someone who is fired for such reasons. I don't really know what to say about this topic. The world is a harsh place sometimes. Maybe regulation could improve it. All I ask is that policy makers try to think through all the consequences and consider that poorly designed laws are worse than no laws at all.

Re: safety - The government does not have any more information than private parties (often less) and so the question is which system is the most effective at distributing information. While companies might be tempted to release an unsafe product for temporary profits, we also have free press, which allows people to catch "cheaters" fairly quickly. I think that perhaps there is a small role for government to do some basic product safety regulation, such as listing chemicals which are safe for use in food. I just have faith that because companies have an incentive to provide safe goods, they will do so. High quality is more profitable than low quality. Trust is often one of a company's most valuable assets. I like the idea of transparency. Adding nutrition information to food labels is a low cost, high benefit regulation. People can see if there are ingredients they don't want to eat or if there is something they are allergic to, etc.