I’m pretty sure his comments were satirical, and showed fully the ridiculousness of opposition to discrimination.
Let’s assume the restaurant owner is actively seeking his own happiness by only serving white people and a black person walks in the restaurant getting refused service. Should we haul them both off to jail for preventing each other from actively seeking their own happiness? Seems a bit contradictory.
Forget equality, it can never be achieved without coercion, what works is letting everyone pursue their own best interest (as long as they don’t initiate force).
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
it is a claim held by a lot of ‘left libertarians’
[/quote]
Left libertarians? To be frank, the left is always best at getting under my skin.
I know you didn’t mean this question for me, but I’d like to take a stab at answering it. I think the NAP should be upheld because 1) I don’t want to be aggressed against, and 2) I think it’s hypocritical for me, in that case, to think it’s okay for me to aggress against others.
Disregarding (for the moment) the issue of what you mean by “respect” and “happiness”, why is that the basis?
If you’re claiming that rights exist objectively (that is, as phenomena), then you’re wrong. I challenge you to provide reasoning and/or evidence that rights are necessarily things that we find out in the world.
With that said, I’d like to hear your explanation of what you think does not “respect another person as one who should actively seek happiness”, because I really don’t know what you mean by that phrase.
By “public accommodation” do you mean “a building or other structure that is open to the public”? If so, that would include any and all businesses, wouldn’t it?
There’s also the tricky issue of determining whether one is discriminating against another because of the other’s racial background (for example) or because he sees the other as being incompetent, unruly, etc. In other words, it’s often very difficult to distinguish discrimination based on actions from discrimination based on non-actions.
Wouldn’t you have the same problem with people pursuing their own best interest? Let’s assume the restaurant owner is actively seeking his own best interest by only serving white people and a black person walks in the restaurant getting refused service. Should we haul them both off to jail for preventing each other from actively seeking their own best interest?
Every person should respect every person as one who should actively seek happiness. This entails that one should respect oneself as one who should actively seek happiness, according to the principle of individuation; and that one should respect every other as one who should actively seek happiness, according to the principle of liberalization. One should actively seek happiness only because every person should be respected as one who should seek happiness, therefore one should neither define nor bring about one’s happiness in a way that does not respect other people as ones who should also actively seek happiness. Stated positively, one should bring about and define one’s happiness in a manner that respects other people as ones who should also actively seek happiness, according to the principle of collective individuation: every person should respect every person as one who should actively seek happiness.
p.s. I really wanted to save this for another thread, but the example remains relevant to civil rights, so I guess it’s okay.
How does fricking government regulation diminish racism? Racism is a disposition, you can’t ban it, you can’t force people to not be racist. If anything, the constant ethnic-based class warfare has hampered colorblindness.
You don’t have to be a libertarian ideologue to understand that one is basically a continuation of the other.
“racism and sexism would be just as prevalent as it was before the act.”
This is a loaded question. Racism and sexism should not be illegal. You are free to do what you want with your private property.
How do racism and sexism deprive someone of their life, liberty or property?
No, but the black person would have to leave if he is not welcomed there. The black person has the same right to discriminate if he was the owner and refused to service whites. NAP serves all people…
you are stuck in this ‘happiness philosophy’ that wouldnt be consistent if put into practice. Law and rules cannot make people happy. I got you to admit that you like the consistency of the NAP, but it looks like you are actually opposed to the it.
On a further note, you misunderstand individuation because it has nothing to do with happiness… or atleast that was not what Carl Jung, the originator of the term, thought at all. This deals with accepting yourself, in the sense that one should accept their own characteristics that are hidden by the unconscious mind.
Would it be safe to assume that by “respect” you mean “refrain from interfering with”? So if I respect your seeking of happiness, that means I refrain from interfering with your seeking of happiness? In that case, the issue then becomes what constitues “interference” and what doesn’t.
Is there even really such thing as a privately owned “public accommodation”? The terms seems very broad, my house could be a “public accommodation” if I invite some friends over and their friends show up right? But as long as I own property I will always discriminate in regards to who can enter the establishment.
The only public accommodation I can think of is some kind of publicly recognized community/shared space that no single individual really owns. I think Block was talking about this when the whole community mixes its labor with some plot of land it becomes “public” land. Even then, it’s still sort of in the hands of the local community and not some kind of “global” domain.
Your example reveals the typically fuzzy nature of the phrase “public accommodations”. The only non-fuzzy way to distinguish “public accommodations” from “private accommodations” is to say that the former allow (or have allowed!) any non-owner to enter and the latter don’t.
The thing is, what constitutes “the whole community” is also fuzzy, because there’s typically no clear line where one community ends and another begins. Communities can also be contained by other, larger communities.
I think what you’re talking about is actually joint ownership, which is still a form of private (i.e. exclusive) ownership. And really, when “private” is used in the sense of “exclusive”, rather than in the sense of “individual”, all ownership is necessarily private.
However, I think that a lot of land might be formally unowned in stateless societies - at least in an individual sense. Instead, a group of individuals may have certain use-rights in a piece of land. Such use-rights would be the equivalent of easements in today’s world. The idea is that pre-existing (homesteaded) use-rights could not be legitimately interfered with by anyone else.
Yes, I have a hard time seeing the need for a “public” land, it’s either unowned and can be homesteaded or it’s owned by someone or some group. Simple. Anytime someone tries to claim you “ought” to serve someone (on the grounds of equality or whatever) they are presupposing a certain level of ownership you have over your own property.
Autolykos,
Yes, you understand me well.
As a preliminary clarification, we can understand happiness as the ongoing attainment of one’s needs and desires. Needs can be food, clothing, shelter, and companionship; while desires can be anything from travel to trying out a new food. For a preliminary clarification of respect, we can understand another person in terms of her body, property, and authority. Her body is quite simply that, her corporeality; her property is matter or energy that she has applied toward the ongoing attainment of happiness; her authority is her ability to create original literary or artistic works, to enter and exit relationships, and to give or refrain from consent. We respect another person by acknowledging that her body, property, and authority are meaningfully situated with respect to her ongoing attainment of happiness; that is, they are involved in her ongoing projects. Insofar as we legitimately interact with another person, we maintain her consent with regard to actions involving her body, property, and authority, just as we maintain mutual understanding of them. Rape is an example of the failure to respect another person’s body. Theft is an example of the failure to respect another person’s property. Forgery—such as “identity theft”—is an example of the failure to respect another person’s authority. In all three cases, an illegitimate disturbance of the person’s ongoing attainment of happiness takes place; and such a disturbance entails a failure to respect another as one who should actively seek happiness.
I would hope so, but I’m actually not sure that it does.
My use of “public accommodation” is a reference to Title II of the Civil Rights Act. http://citizensource.com/History/20thCen/CRA1964/CRA2.htm
I’m also thinking the feds should investigate American citizens who turn down job offers from (or fail to apply at) minority-owned businesses.
Imagine you’re of Chinese extraction, live in San Francisco, and own a laundry. Your business is booming, you need additional personnel, So you place an ad in the newspaper. Don’t you deserve to receive an equal number of inquiries from all races? What if a Mexican guy who knows everything there is to know about laundry discriminates against you by not applying? It’s a good bet he has bad feelings about Chinese people, and he must be punished.
We’re letting a LOT of discrimination pass when we look only at employers and not at potential employees (which we all are) who outnumber employers at least 100 to 1.
It’s actually easier for me to envision a working private system of roads with civil rights than it is without them. For example, in a racist area in a system of private roads, it could well be impossible for a black person to get from one place to another, whereas where civil rights are enforced for the public accommodation of roads this would not be a problem.
<< It’s actually easier for me to envision a working private system of roads with civil rights than it is without them. For example, in a racist area in a system of private roads, it could well be impossible for a black person to get from one place to another, whereas where civil rights are enforced for the public accommodation of roads this would not be a problem. >>
Wouldn’t private roads require the paying of a toll? I work near a privately-owned toll bridge in Detroit, and I’ve never heard of black folks being denied the opportunity to pay the toll and cross the bridge. (There was a guy who got shot about halfway across, but that’s another story.)
What worries ME is that people don’t go to the right areas when they drive. They tend to discriminate against places they don’t like, and against the roads that go to those places. I’m especially suspicious of their REAL reasons for avoiding certain “high crime” neighborhoods and “no decent motel” towns.
Anyway, that there’s a lot more discrimination out there than most people realize.
Can you explain to me how, in your view, A forcibly removing B from A’s property because of a factor presumed to be outside of B’s control (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation) interferes with B’s seeking of happiness?
I think your clarification has a problem, namely it doesn’t seem to take intertemporality (i.e. timespans) into account. For example, in your view, if I defend myself from someone who I believe is trying to kill me, I’m not respecting that person’s seeking of happiness. Of course, he’s certainly not respecting my seeking of happiness, but you’ve provided no way to determine whose seeking of happiness takes priority. However, the other person definitely stopped respecting my seeking of happiness before I stopped respecting his. I think this is an important distinction and part of the basis for the Non-Aggression Principle.
“Serves the public” in Title II seems to mean the same thing as “is open to the public” in my post. Although there are qualifications to this in Title II, that of “affecting commerce” seems to provide no distinction at all - as far as I can tell, any establishment that serves the public can be said to “affect commerce”.
<< “Serves the public” in Title II seems to mean the same thing as “is open to the public” in my post. Although there are qualifications to this in Title II, that of “affecting commerce” seems to provide no distinction at all - as far as I can tell, any establishment that serves the public can be said to “affect commerce”. >>
Congress included the wording about commerce only because they were using the “commerce clause” as an excuse to force their will on citizens who were simply minding their own business.
Nobody should be forced to “serve the public” any further than he intended to when he made himself available for business transactions, and he should have the freedom to decline further business at any time. There’s no reason to take his service of one person as a promise to serve the next. For example, my selling of one car (such as my own) to another person shouldn’t obligate me to sell cars for the rest of my life to everyone who comes to my house and demands one.