For the past several months I have gone head to head with a political rival of mine on the matter of civil rights. I feel I’m presenting a principled enough argument and usually keep her on the defensive, but to date I have yet to strike a decisive point against her. I’ve been hoping that I might share the arguments made with a third party, as to gain an outsider’s insight on what I may do to finally overcome her position. The argument breaks down as follows.
It’s my belief that in a free society, it is permissible for the owner of any given private establishment to provide or deny service to anyone for any reasons, however arbitrary. I believe this because if the business owner were to be required by law to not discriminate, this represents an act of aggression against his right to associate with others as he sees fit. Furthermore, the decision of the business owner to discriminate in such a way is almost always at their loss, because ultimately the largest demographic one can attempt to appeal to is the whole of the population, and so this isn’t likely to create a scenario where say, a racist inner circle will choose to shut out their minority of choice and at the same time be in such a position where their actions can affect a large number of people, especially if this minority is equally able to open businesses of their own to cater to whatever group of clientele they see fit.
My rival on the other hand, insists that there is too much capacity to harm another person by enabling others to exclude in this fashion. She imagines a scenario where an entire community would decide to shut out someone they didn’t like for whatever reason, thus isolating him or her from participation in greater economic activity. This particular potential harm, in her opinion, rates very highly on her priority list of powers that must be denied to individuals. Furthermore, she sees no problem with legal aggression against those people likely to discriminate (racists, sexists, etc.,) as they represent a net drain on society.
There are a few points of attack I can think of with her case. The decision to emphasize harm over aggression is a flaw from how I see it, as harm cannot be objectively defined and universally shut out while it is trivial to define the boundaries of aggression. I could also consider her worst case scenario incredibly unlikely given how the discriminated against has many potential options at their disposal if one collected group of people despise him, but this and the previous counterpoint have so far been ineffective. She is also similarly unmoved by the counterpoint that choosing to deny rights to anyone, even if they’re racists, would put her in a camp no better than the very people she wishes to marginalize.
We are both in agreement however, that affirmative action is ineffectual, doing more harm than good for the very people it’s trying to help.
What opinions or insights do you have on this dispute?