Tag Archives: discrimination

Response to a Distressed Libertarian Reader about Discrimination

By William K. Black
Quito: April 8, 2015

Well, the key to getting strong responses from readers is now clear.  All I need to do is violate the standard rule on the three subjects to avoid to increase the chances of polite conversation – sex, religion, and politics.  My series of three articles on Indiana’s original Act authorizing discrimination discusses each of those subjects.  I thank Andrew for commenting on my third installment, which addressed the op ed in the Wall Street Journal urging “libertarians” to come forward to lead the charge to repeal all laws banning discrimination in private contracts.  Merchants, landlords, and employers should all be allowed to discriminate against any group without the necessity of creating a religious pretext for that discrimination.  I urged libertarians who were not nostalgic for the return of Jim Crow and the Klan’s embrace of discrimination to write and express their support for laws banning discrimination against groups in the marketplace.  None has taken up my invitation, but I thank “Andrew” for writing to express his support for the repeal of laws banning discrimination against disfavored groups in the marketplace.

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The Libertarian Plea to Bring Back Jim Crow: An Oxymoron by a Regular Moron

By William K. Black
Quito: April 7, 2015

My April 4, 2015 column discussed the Wall Street Journal’s express endorsement of a right of merchants to discriminate against groups they detest.  I explained that the WSJ was adopting the position of Richard Epstein and quoted Epstein about the policy question he found to be a “very hard question.”  That question was “voluntary” hereditary slavery – he’s in favor of it as a “right” essential to “liberty.”  But he admits that he finds it “very hard” to justify the impact of the “voluntary” contract of slavery on the “externalities” – and yes, he is talking about children as commodities.  I quoted the passage from Epstein’s famous defense of discrimination in his book Forbidden Grounds to show how zany the policy views are that emerge like mold spores as soon as one endorses discrimination by merchants against groups they despise as a means of increasing “liberty.”

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Whining about Indiana’s Retreat from Bigotry

By William K. Black
Quito: April 4, 2015

I’m dealing with the temporary expiration of our subscription to the Wall Street Journal and my resultant inability to read columns behind its paywall.  This caused me to search whether others had made the full text of the WSJ editorial “Liberal Intolerance, Round II” available on line.  I put the first sentence of the editorial in my search engine.

“The political delirium over Indiana’s law protecting minority religious beliefs doesn’t seem to be abating, and the irony is that it may be illustrating why such statutes are necessary.”

It spit out the exact same sentence – but in what appears to be (the world’s worst) web site of U.S. News and World Report in a (maybe) news article attributed to “us,” but starting with an AP credit.  The only change is that the first sentence in the WSJ has become the second sentence in the USNWR.  As the third sentence in the quotation below shows, it is in some ways a personal take on a straight news story sourced to AP, but the USNWR’s web site refers to as being authored by “us.”  I trust you are as confused as I am.  The two pieces differ, but seem clearly to have been written by the same person about the same subject.

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The Homophobic Law and the Indiana Governor Who Dares Not Speak Its Purpose

By William K. Black
Bloomington: March 29, 2015

Sodomy, of course, was once referred to as the crime that dare not speak its name because the combination of fear and hate of straight males for gays was so intense that it was barbaric and even murderous.  It is a measure of how much things have changed that the haters now know that they dare not speak their hate.  They also know that they are losing.  The vast majority of gay Americans live in States with marriage equality and conservatives expect to that the Supreme Court will soon strike down as unconstitutional bans on marriage equality in the Supreme Court.  Some equality advocates are warning that the desperate measures like Indiana’s new law designed to authorize merchants to discriminate against gays are similar to the relatively successful strategy to attack abortion rights.  They are right to warn about the need keep working, but the LBGT rights are not analogous to reproductive rights.  I will discuss only one reason – business.  The paradox is that a law purportedly vital to protect the right of merchants to discriminate against gays is the last thing that merchants want.  Gays make very good customers.  They have income and they buy goods and services.  Merchants want to sell goods.

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Slate’s Civil War about Bigotry and Markets

By William K. Black

Slate is having a healthy, but incomplete, debate about the uproar about Brendan Eich’s resignation from Mozilla.  Eich donated $1000 to the successful campaign to adopt “Proposition 8” in California in 2008.  Prop 8, until it was struck down, banned marriage equality for gays.  William Saletan published a satirical article suggesting that everyone be “purge[d]” who contributed to Prop 8.

Other columnists, such as Mark Stern, weighed in to remind readers about the cruelty of the often homophobic TV ad campaign used by Prop 8 supporters.  Stern makes the point that much of the campaign was designed to picture gays as recruiting straight children.  This column (eventually) discusses why Eich stepped down, but it begins by explaining why neoclassical economists have such a terrible track record in understanding discrimination and its remedies.

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