http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/22sat4.html?ref=opinion
“It was only government power that ended slavery and abolished Jim Crow, neither of which would have been eliminated by a purely free market.”
Cause you know, in a free market, defined as voluntary exchange free of coercion, there will be so much… slavery.
In reality, it was government that instituted slavery and Jim Crow…
Exit question: is the NYT this dumb, or are they just intentionally and knowingly lying?
Yeah, that damned free market cannot end laws that the government enacts… only government power could supersede itself and abolish its enfranchisement of slavery and segregation.
*rolling eyes
If you think about it, it is true. It just happens to make our point (that government is the problem).
Clayton -
Thank you government for ending your racist laws.
All hail the government.
I hear an axe grinding.
There’s no name on the article…
It’s the lead editorial… the opinion of the entire editorial board.
Here is a letter I sent to the editor: Leviathan Contra Leviathan.
Er, were you aware that the Jim Crow laws were enacted once the Federal troops were removed from the Southern States? You know, the troops who were there to uphold the 13th Amendment rights of ‘freedmen’? The moment Big Brother stepped away, all his little brothers decided they could and should do whatever they like.
80 years of racial segregation and hardship followed. Google the Redeemers. Not a sterling argument for the removal of the Federal government in such cases.
Also, the ‘instutition’ of slavery was made in concession to the Southern States during the time of the Convention, who declared that they would not join the Union unless slavery were allowed. The clauses in the Constitution stating that ‘all other persons’ (that is, non-white citizens) were to be counted as three-fifths of a white person are clear indication of the intent of the document, and the very reason the South wished to cling to this notion was because it was profitable.
I think you’ll find that was the chief defense of it for decades. Yes, it most certainly did take the Federal government, under the Presidency of Lincoln, willing to go to war to put an end to the practice altogether. The Constitution was held to be out of date and inadequate to uphold liberty in the land, and thus was made a 13th Amendment to it.
Seriously. Perhaps it escaped your notice that slavery was a TRADE?
Lodatzor - are you in the right thread? The discussion is about whether slavery was part of the free market, which of course it isn’t cause it is coercive.
" Not a sterling argument for the removal of the Federal government in such cases."
To the extent that the federal government was protecting against rights violations, nobody is arguing against that.
Texas is passing this. They want to change “slavery” to “the triangular atlantic trade”
Then I must be misinterpreting the part where Libertarians want the Federal government to butt of out local affairs, return to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and believe that anti-discrimination laws are infringements upon liberty.
Rand Paul might not be a racist, but he’s sure going to make a lot of them happy.
[EDIT] - thread was not about Rand Paul…never mind.
Three cheers for government opression and your wonderful public school interpretation of the civil war!
In all seriousness here, if a certain segment of the American population wants to partake in stupidity and lose profits, let them.
I wouldn’t try to pull the argument, “Well Lincoln ended slavery” argument here. That’s untrue first of all and you won’t come off as a very bright person if you continue to push that ubdoubtedly false point.
You should know that in no means do I support slavery or any idiot stupid enough to advocate such a horrible thing. But, the answer here is clearly not the federal government or a civil war that cost the lives of 600,000 individuals.
Well, you can say that, but I myself am not inclined to think to highly of your argument, either.
Seeing as the article being cited, and the ensuing discussion absolutely was about ending slavery and Jim Crow, I feel that the ‘public school’ version of the Civil War is all that is appropriate. Unless you feel there are other facets which are relevant other than the fact that Lincoln’s Federal government was the instrument used to abolish the practice of slavery in States which had chosen not to conform to this (surely libertarian) idea?
What, exactly, is that but the use of force to defend liberty? Presumably this was unnecessary because the pragmatism of losing out in trade would have surely eventually won over the minds of the Southern owners who were getting rich from owning slaves?
But, seeing as we’re coming back to seriousness, if the loss of profts to private owners who choose to discriminate were such a potent device for ending the problem, why, in 80 years of experiment did nothing change? You can blame Jim Crow only so far, because after all, they could have been repealed any time the profit-motivated traders wanted.
What was the hold up?
“Then I must be misinterpreting the part where Libertarians want the Federal government to butt of out local affairs, return to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and believe that anti-discrimination laws are infringements upon liberty.”
Most libertarians around here want no federal or state tyranny. Stop straw-manning libertarians. However, of course if a state-government is infringement upon rights, it would be nice if the Federal government stopped that. But anti-discrimination laws do not infringe rights. Slavery does, of course. And Jim Crow laws did too. So don’t mix rights-infringments with non-rights-infringements.
EDIT:M I made a typo above! I meant to say "anti-discrimination laws do infringe rights. Getting rid of slavery doesn’t infringe rights - it protects them.
It was protecting rights that it first took away. Stop apologizing for the state and familiarize yourself with libertarian doctrine. The central pillar of libertarianism is the right to property (your body is your property).
Alright, I’ll take your word for it.
Um, how? And for what, if their involvement is only to be mocked, denied and (hopefully to some) repealed decades later?
If anti-discrimination laws do not infringe rights, what is the problem with them? Either I am in error in that I thought you were against them, or you meant to type something else.
If you meant to say that discrimination itself does not infringe upon rights, then I would heartily disagree. I would also point out once more that if the argument is that allowing dicrimination to exist will eventually eradicate it, then why did it lead to enforced segregation which was only undone by, once again, the long arm of the Federal office?
What apology was given? I came to the Mises Institute for the very familiarization you speak of, and had hoped that here at least the argument had evolved beyond: “You’re a Statist apologist!”
I did not make any ‘apology’ for the State. I stated that the Federal government was instrumental in enforcing a right which quite assurednly should have been there in the first place. The fact that the original government was in error does not change the fact that the same error was quite happily clung to by the very people who asked for it, and refused to give it up unless forced to.
But it did... Scroll down to see the table. In fact it has only gotten worse since then due to the minimum wage, which allows employers to express their racism. Why hire a black dude for $5 an hour when you can get a white dude for the same price?