on the continuing talk of Rand Paul and naivety
It must be nice to live in libertarian land, but then again it would be nice to live in the fantasy world of most naive worldviews. 'Racism isn't a problem anymore' 'we live in a colorblind society now' Fine, we no longer have the blatant officially sanctioned racism where firehoses are turned on peaceful marchers, or fake bafflement is used to look the other way when mob violence stomps out those opposed to that viewpoint. But that is a much different beast than racism being gone. It wasn't way back in the bad days of civil rights that a black was hassled by security for theft for wearing clothes made by the store he was patronizing, or that horrible case in Detroit. I mean hell, the last presidential election I was at work, and there was a serious conversation by some of the cashiers about how the nation was going to go up in fire and race riots no matter what happened. We HAVE come a long way, where even most of the real racists know that they are not seen as socially acceptable anymore, and where many people who held racist views have over time come to realize, if only at an individual level that stereotypes are not as accurate as they felt they were. But one of the greatest reasons for this is thanks to government action in desegregating the military and schools, and in forbidding discriminatory practices in hiring and real estate laws and in what is acceptable behavior for businesses open to the public.
Libertarianism probably could lead to a decent society, if we were all perfect people. But then again, so could Communism, or rule under a benevolent tyrant, or pure laissez faire capitalism, or the various utopian societies that spring up every so often. But we are not perfect, and no system that our imperfect minds can create can wrangle us up into a peaceful state of agreement and cooperation that these need. We have seen the way communism seems to get tied up into a fascist state where the resources flow up to those in command. Our nation has lived through the horrors that very loosely regulated capitalism can bring about, child labor, unsafe working conditions, private companies waging war on their workers banding together for better wages and conditions. No one system is a panacea to the needs of humanity, so we must take what works from them what works and adjust it as we see what needs to be changed.
Private business can provide many things very efficiently, but as we have seen in the past, some things are never going to be profitable. So we socialize things that we see as necessities of society, law enforcement, fire protection, most of our infrastructure and so on. Government is not just there to hire an army, government is there so that when we the people come to realize we have a need that is not being met, or is not being met fairly or efficiently we band together our resources and provide that service. This is the reason that we provided electricity to rural areas way back when, it was not a profitable project for business, but it was realized that electricity was going to become a necessity for modern life and that we as a whole should provide that to those who would not get it as it was too expensive for individuals to pay for themselves and not worth it to the power companies.
Back to the original point, yes, it would be wonderful if the market would punish those who discriminate, and yes in many cases it does. But the problem is there are still places where bigots feel they are safe to harm others, and some times you can't avoid that. Is it fine to say "well, you can just go to another hotel" when the only hotel in town won't have you and the next one is a long drive away? Or if the only gas station in the general vicinity would deny you service and you did not have the fuel to get to the next station? It's one thing to discuss the philosophical ramifications of the imposition on the property rights of the bigots, but, you cannot have the discussion without remembering that there IS a history of this and that allowing open discrimination in business did in fact deny many people the ability to travel, or eat out, or shop where they want. I do not think this is acceptable in society and that the government is right to support the right of the individual to access products and services over the rights of an owner to bar people for discriminatory reason.
Libertarianism probably could lead to a decent society, if we were all perfect people. But then again, so could Communism, or rule under a benevolent tyrant, or pure laissez faire capitalism, or the various utopian societies that spring up every so often. But we are not perfect, and no system that our imperfect minds can create can wrangle us up into a peaceful state of agreement and cooperation that these need. We have seen the way communism seems to get tied up into a fascist state where the resources flow up to those in command. Our nation has lived through the horrors that very loosely regulated capitalism can bring about, child labor, unsafe working conditions, private companies waging war on their workers banding together for better wages and conditions. No one system is a panacea to the needs of humanity, so we must take what works from them what works and adjust it as we see what needs to be changed.
Private business can provide many things very efficiently, but as we have seen in the past, some things are never going to be profitable. So we socialize things that we see as necessities of society, law enforcement, fire protection, most of our infrastructure and so on. Government is not just there to hire an army, government is there so that when we the people come to realize we have a need that is not being met, or is not being met fairly or efficiently we band together our resources and provide that service. This is the reason that we provided electricity to rural areas way back when, it was not a profitable project for business, but it was realized that electricity was going to become a necessity for modern life and that we as a whole should provide that to those who would not get it as it was too expensive for individuals to pay for themselves and not worth it to the power companies.
Back to the original point, yes, it would be wonderful if the market would punish those who discriminate, and yes in many cases it does. But the problem is there are still places where bigots feel they are safe to harm others, and some times you can't avoid that. Is it fine to say "well, you can just go to another hotel" when the only hotel in town won't have you and the next one is a long drive away? Or if the only gas station in the general vicinity would deny you service and you did not have the fuel to get to the next station? It's one thing to discuss the philosophical ramifications of the imposition on the property rights of the bigots, but, you cannot have the discussion without remembering that there IS a history of this and that allowing open discrimination in business did in fact deny many people the ability to travel, or eat out, or shop where they want. I do not think this is acceptable in society and that the government is right to support the right of the individual to access products and services over the rights of an owner to bar people for discriminatory reason.