Indiana's freedom to discriminate law

No, you've seen actual arguments, with evidence and links to published research.

The problem you are running into is that your particular imaginary ungoverned world includes some features only available via government in the real one. It's like a sunny science fiction world without much gravity that has a thick atmosphere for flying people to breathe - it's fine if everyone knows it's magical fantasy, not so fine for designing real life asteroid habitats. Something has to hold the air in place.

When you marshal these fantasy worlds in support of the people with Lester Maddox's real world agenda, as in Indiana, it's not fine any more. Black people can't breathe.

And also with what you call private goods, such as education and health care and transportation and sewer and water and so forth and so on. Illustrating the uselessness of the distinction as you attempt it here.

It is a theoretical certainty that stable suboptimal equilibria exist in ideal free markets, and they are an observed reality in all kinds of industrial market economies regardless of their degree of "freedom". They are a property of market exchange in any sufficiently complex economy.

No, it doesn't. Prisons provide significant and necessary infrastructural support for the creation of their markets, and I even listed a couple of these necessary features for your edification (various aspects of accountability in exchange, for example, are rigidly enforced - cheats can't leave town).

I'm not sure what you mean by "the will of the State", but I recommend you pay more attention to the deeds of the State if replying to arguments based on those deeds and their effects.

 

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Feel free to think that government is as necessary as gravity, but this is your personal religious belief and irrelevant for me.

That some libertarian ideas about freedoms may be harmful, if enforced by states as obligatory, is clear. This holds for the freedom of contract as well as for sexual freedom - if one of the free choices allowed in a free society becomes an obligation enforced by the state, we are not in a libertarian society, and the results may be harmful. But this harm caused by the state is not a problem of libertarian ideas.

You may think it is useless, but this is your private point of view. I follow here standard mainstream econonic theory that for private goods the market is sufficient, and gives optimal results. Feel free to argue that mainstream economic theory is wrong, I will even support you in some important parts (Keynesianism is almost completely wrong). But in this part mainstream economic theory is fine, and my only disagreement is that:
1. The role of the public part is in many question overestimated (education, health care, infrastructure).
2. The ability of morals to solve public good problem underestimated.
3. The inability of the state to solve public good problems is ignored.

The problem of (3) is that, on the one hand, the state is not restricted to the market solution. But he has, on the other hand, nothing to guide him about what is the optimal solution. Thus, the solution of the state may put far too much ressources into a particular public good.

This requires, conceptually, that you know what is optimal. So, usually behind this claim of "suboptimality" is some ideological prejudice. Like the particular ideological prejudice in favour of one particular form of forced child labor - learning in a public school.

What else? Some examples of large investments, which make only sense as large investments, and there it may appear difficult to raise enough money for this on a free market. In most cases not plausible, given that free markets are able to collect quite large sums for particular projects.

That some aspects of what the state is doing - as unwanted side effects - even support illegal markets, ok, this is indeed a quite typical consequence of the behaviour of states, that they usually do not take into account most side effects of their actions, and that these side effects are usually harmful.

By the way, the illegal markets exist not only in prisons, but the same illegal market exist outside too. Thus, the infrastructure "provided" by the state in support of these illegal markets is certainly not decisive. (You have a point that I should not have used the word "prove", because what requires a comparison of very different situation can be only a plausible argument and will never be a mathematical proof. But that's all. That the existence of markets even in prisons, where the state actively fights against these illegal markets, is a very strong argument that no support of the state is necessary nor for markets themself, nor for media of exchange.)

This would be a nice recommendation for statists. They usually think that it is sufficient to show that some market outcome is not always optimal, but completely ignore that they have no proofs that what the states provide is optimal, or even better than the market where the market is not optimal.

But fine that you, in this particular case, prove that you understand that it is not clear at all what is "the will of the state", which is certainly quite different from what politicians promise, and that the deeds of the state have also side effects.

 

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according most of the nut jobs of your ideology neither is the harm caused by libertarianism.

than why has Keynesianism been the only market based economic theory that actual functions in the real world. when libertarian ideas are tried the out comes are vastly different than the prediction?

 

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Incorrect question. A correct would be why Keynesianism is the one supported by the mass media and the politics. This is because it is useful as a cover for corporatist economic policy, which is what the big concerns want.

Where have you found examples where libertarian ideas have been tried?

 

Your freedom of contract idea does not need to be enforced by the State to be harmful, as the theoretical findings you have been linked to and the examples you have been provided - such as racial oppression in the US, or child labor in various places and times - prove.

You fail to follow the standard definitions of private or public goods, fail to account for goods that have both private and public aspects, and ignore the findings of standard economic theory despite being linked to relevant examples. The distinction between public and private goods is useless in this discussion anyway.

You also overlook the essential conditions for the establishment of a market in the first place - that's part of your failure to comprehend standard economic theory. This prevents you from replying with relevance to most of my posts, since they emphasize the necessity of government in the establishment and maintenance of markets free and otherwise: your claim that "the market is sufficient" is meaningless as a response to my posts.

"1. The role of the public part is in many question overestimated (education, health care, infrastructure). " Not by you. You underestimate it - to the point of denial, even.
" 2. The ability of morals to solve public good problem underestimated. " 1) All your references to "public" vs "private" goods are gibberish 2) Morality in real life does not solve structural economic problems - unless of course it informs governance, which does.
"3. The inability of the state to solve public good problems is ignored. " And it will be until demonstrated, in the face of observed reality and sound theory demonstrating otherwise.

No. You are having an extraordinary amount of trouble grasping the simple observation that all these illegal markets, inside and outside of prison, depend on infrastructure of various kinds provided by governments. The "will" or "support" of the State is completely beside the point.

And your deflection into these fringe and ad hoc markets avoids the original matter, which was industrial development: There is no industrial development without a functioning government providing the necessary infrastructure - in theory or in fact.

It isn't. It is occasionally given lip service, but in crisis often discarded, and old errors repeated, as we see in the latest troubles.

Your notion of libertarian ideas has been employed for generations in the oppression of black people, women, and homosexual people in the US. Indiana residents's "freedom" to discriminate is merely a recent example.

Other people's libertarian ideas have had more attractive applications - the US Constitution has had a long run of good influence, for example. But these are adult, sophisticated, reality based libertarian ideas - actual liberty, for actual people, requires good and actively employed government, for starters.

 

Thanks for admitting the part I have emphasized, what remains is your ideology, which only shows that you name every behaviour which does not follow political correctness harmful.

Complete nonsense, and without justification.

I have not even tried to list conditions for the establishment of a market, my examples of illegal markets, which work without and even against the governement, even in prisons where the state has totalitarian control, do not depend on this. They show that your claims of the necessity of the government in the establishment and maintenance of markets are simply wrong.

LOL, of course not by me.

LOL. This is a nice illustration of the morals of statists. Their only form of "moral behaviour" is to run to the police. Usual people have a lot of names for people with this "moral" behaviour, like snitch, dobber, clype, traitor, backstabbber, squealer, informer, nark.

And it is well-known that even if the police likes betrayal, they despise the betrayer.

And it will be ignored even if all this appears. The arguments have been already given, I repeat: There is no evidence and no argument to suggest that solutions by the state are optimal, or even simply better than the market solution. Once you have no base for a theoretical counterargument, you have to ignore it.

LOL, the drug traffic uses cars, and cars use streets, is your point that drug markets need the state, or what?

Here I have to agree partially: Actually, we have no libertarian societies. thus, we have only two possibilities: functional or disfunctional governments. The latter are even worse, and they can and, with high probability will, destroy any industries. A nice example can be considered in the latest member of the Western society of democratic states, the Ukraine, which is in the process of destroying its industry completely. So, actually one needs a functioning government to have industry development.

No. All the seriously harmful oppression of black people as well as guys was supported by the state.

This does not mean that in a libertarian society nobody will be harmed - the libertarian ideal is far away from all those utopian paradises where everything is fine. Instead, there will be a lot of bad things in a libertarian society too, simply because there are a lot of stupid, hateful, bigot people, and they will have freedom - including the freedom to misuse their freedom to cause some harm to others.

No, it doesn't. And, for starters, the American constitution has failed to defend people from the government. It has done a lot of good things, and preserved a lot of freedoms a long time, even today it defends some freedoms, but in its essence it has failed. The minarchist variant of libertarianism has the immense practical problem that it has no way to prevent the increase of government power in small steps.

 

That's your initial problem: if you did list the conditions for the establishment of a market, you would have a chance of discovering for yourself that they require a government.

Markets are State solutions, in your employment of the word "State" (you use it interchangeably with governance). I agree that market solutions are almost always the best available when they are available, but without a functioning government they are not available.

Absolutely. Are you denying that obvious fact?

You never heard of Lester Maddox, remember? You thought that black people couldn't rent motel rooms because there was a law against it, remember? You don't even know the Jackie Robinson story. You don't know what you are talking about, especially in the key matter of government "support", and you should have realized this by now.

Racial oppression in the US after the Civil War operated mostly without the State, and what geographically limited and temporary State involvement proved necessary was mostly just in support of the "peaceful separation" you recommend. The State largely left the situation alone - allowed the freedom of contract among racial bigots to operate unimpeded, exactly as you recommend.

 

Hm, let's try, one needs people who want to have something, and are ready to pay with something else, and people who have the things these other people want, or are able to produce them. They have to meet each other.

Complete nonsense, they work nicely in failed states too, or in wartime or after a war, usually as black markets.

I do not deny trivialities, but cannot but laugh that you consider this to be a justification of your completely implausible wet idea that markets depend on states. Markets work based on the self-interest of the participants, and use whatever is avaiable. If there are streets, they will use streets, if not they will use other ways to transport things.

But let's admit that there are also markets which really depend on the state. Like the market for bying state permissions for whatever needs a permission by paying bribes. For example, in the Ukraine we have now a market for medical documents which prove that you are unable to serve in the army for medical reasons.

Ever heard about Jim Cow laws?

 

Full of yourself, hm? I'll bet you're really proud of that Edwardian monstrosity of a sentence, too.

 

The word "triviality" does not make things appear by magic.

They do not work without the establishment, by some government, of their necessary conditions.

Other ways like canals, air cargo, railroads, ports, etc? Without a government setting up the physical and legal infrastructure for this kind of stuff, it won't exist. Never has, in theory never would.

Why yes - the white people in a subregion of the US, about a quarter of its land area, found a handful of laws helpful in supporting the "peaceful separation" of the races you recommended - to keep this separation "peaceful", just as you recommend for the role of government. I referred to those laws and related government doings, above.

But racial oppression was far more widely spread and deeply embedded in the the US than that, and this vast majority of racial oppression via "freedom of contract" was not enforced by "the State". It was instead simply permitted by government, allowed, not prevented, on the exact grounds you espouse: freedom of contract for racial bigots (who in this case owned or controlled almost all the economic resources of the society involved).

 

In German, sentences are usually longer than in other languages, and translation does not tend to make them shorter. Sorry, but people like Nabokow, able to write really good in another language, are rare exceptions.

 

And you seem to think that without a government there would be no streets at all.

People interested in exchange exist independent of governements:

This seems to be something like a religious belief.

In fact, the states creates nothing. It taxes the people by taking protection money.

This becomes funny. I have never recommended such laws as Jim Cow laws, but you claim that I even recommended them. And, even worse, such an explicit action of the state which enforces segregation between people who are willing to cooperation somehow disappears, is described by "The State largely left the situation alone".

But that some roads, actually build by unknown road builder firms possibly a hundred years ago, are also used by traders of whatever, becomes a strong support of markets by the government.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. What is supported by the state is what is written in the laws and enforced by the police. Thus, illegal markets are not supported by the state, point. And in all states with Jim Cow or similar laws the state has explicitly supported and enforced racial segregation. In a way which is in complete violation of libertarian principles of freedom of contract - which contains the freedom not to cooperate if one does not want, but, even more important, the freedom to cooperate if above participants want it.

Yes, I have already repeated several times that a libertarian society is not the paradise, but a human society which contains people with all the errors they have today, inclusive racists, homophobes, bigots, idiots, fanatics and other people you will not really like. People which you would probably prefer to put into a reeducation camp forever, but they would be free in such a libertarian society. Free, really free. Thus, free to frustrate you simply by their existence, and free to live as they like.

This is clearly not a nice society for people like you.

 

large portions of our current corporate economy? i understand you don't recognize it as being such given the reality is so different than your predictions. want a list. the slashing of corporate taxes, the reduction of regulations, the general contempt towards people who do real work, the putting business owners on a pedastal while demeaning their workers. libertarians ideas economically aren't very different than your typical conservatives. and they always seem to fail from their stated goals. now as for their actual goals...

 

so am i. they aren't that needlessly verbose. that's an excuse not a reason.

 

That's likely, yes - certainly no roads capable of supporting industrial trade.

The means of gratifying their interest and actually arranging such exchanges do not.

It's a theoretical consequence and a global, historical, physical observation.

I have not seen a clear admission from you that the racial oppression of the US, and the enormous harm it did to millions of black people for generations, was a product of your "libertarian" ideology in real life. That's what your "libertarian" society looks like in real life: the rural segregation and urban racial ghettos of post-slavery America, the company coal towns and scrip-paid wage slaves and migrant field hands of the American "libertarian" society, the systematic abuse of the poor by the rich.

 

Laughable. BTW, a lot of railroads have been build privately.

Nonsense, gold and silver exists independent of governments.

And you will not see, because this is completely stupid propaganda nonsense from your side.

But, of course, in a libertarian society there will be also all those you hate, all those you would like to send into reeducation camps or so, those you would prefer to imprison forever, and those you would like to rob would be able to defend their property.

There would be very different gated communities, like white racist communities where no blacks would be allowed to enter, black racist communities where no whites are allowed to enter, as well as anti-rassist communities where no racists are allowed to enter, and many other communities which would not care about this at all, some of them consisting mainly of blacks, some mainly of whites, but others would be welcome too. Each such community could define their constitution itself, forbid whatever it does not want, allow whatever it wants, in a democratic way or following some leader or guru or whatever else - it would not matter, because all participants would accept the local rules volitionally.

Yes, company coal towns would there be too. What is wrong with them? There will be always some mining, there will be workers working in mines, they will always live nearby, and it is a purely practical question if their families will live nearby too or they prefer to work there over the week and travel home on weekends, and if their families work nearby, and the region is not attractive for living, only the workers families will live there - so this will be a miners town. Once the mine is exhausted, the mining town will be given up. Thus, it will be, from the start, only designed as temporary, thus, nobody will build there expensive things which last for a long time. Being a miner will probably never become a really prestigeous job, it was not even in the Soviet Union, which has tried hard, paying them more than scientists and making them propaganda heros, has really succeeded, so that this town will be not for the rich. Such ist life.

Of course, there would be "wage slavery", and "systematic abuse of the poor by the rich", simply because there would be also marxist who like such namecalling.

 

No railroads used for industrial trade and exchange have ever been built without government provision of necessary infrastructure of various kinds.

The means of gratifying people's interest in trade and arranging the necessary exchanges do not come into being because rocks exist that they might want to trade, if they could.

While you speculate on the nature of your fantasy world, I point to the consequences of your ideology in real life. Your world is Lester Maddox's world. The black people did not get to have gated communities, because they were excluded from the resources necessary by freedom of contract among the white people. Everybody in the coal towns accepted the "local rules" volitionally, because the alternative was eviction, miserable poverty, and life as a bum - freedom of contract among the landowners saw to that.

They're miserable shitholes where people have none of the liberties you find desirable, their children's lives are blighted, and their deaths by disease and accident come early. They are the libertarian's paradise in real life.

In the US, especially in the former Confederacy, such towns were often reserved for black people - by freedom of contract among white bigots. Such was life for black people.

 

Given that you will include among the "government provision of necessary infrastructure" also the "service" not to rob and kill the builders, this is true but irrelevant. I have lived in a state where everything produced was produced by the state. So what I have eaten and drunk was "provided by the state". And without using these things "provided by the state" I would be dead now.

Or I would have found other ways to get these things, and survived. As I do now.

I do not doubt that the american railroad firms have used some "services" of the state, in particular the "service" of killing the native land owners. But I'm quite sure that these "problems" solved by the state could have been solved in a different, civilized way too.

Indeed, these means will be created by the people interested in these things.

As if they would be unable to provide them themself. I hope you will not start to propose theories that blacks are mentally unable to do some things whites can do. This would be even worse than the worst kind of racists claim. So, they have, of course, less ressources, after being free from slavery they have only their own working power, but they can create them themself, using their own work - a lot of people have managed similar things after loosing all. Not?

You may argue that the subdivision of labor is, today, so that blacks would be unable to do all themself. But, sorry, this is not necessary at all, in a world where most people are not racists and, thus, ready to sell those blacks whatever they want, and in a situation where this is not forbidden by the state, even a few non-racist traders would be sufficient.

And, by the way, there was no necessity for blacks to create gated communities to defend themself from too many white people. The usual black ghetto is sufficient for this.

Yes. So what? Do you have a better proposal for them? (Except starting a revolutionary civil war, to rob the rich ones, of course.)

They are, of course, not a paradise. Because libertarianism is not about paradise. We leave this to statists, who claim that the state will create the paradise.

Libertarians do not promise a paradise. If you appear after ship sinking on a small rock island in the ocean, with nobody searching you, you will probably die, even if you create a libertarian society there. And if you appear to be a poor guy 200 years ago, even creating a libertarian society would not give you an IPhone, and even the kings have not had a Mercedes.

If they were reserved for blacks, that means, freedom of contract was restricted.

 

Not without a government.

The means they will create is called a "government".

No, they couldn't. This actually happened, you doorknob. It's not speculation.

This is wrong, in theory as well as historical fact. The key variable is not how many people are racist, but how much of the community resources the racists own - and the principle applies to all despised groups, including simply poor people in a world in which a few rich people control too much of the community's resources. The rich who own too much can - and will, if history is any guide - agree among themselves to prevent the poor from gaining wealth or exercising liberties by denying the poor the necessary means. Freedom of contract for those who own all the good land and water, own all the houses and all the trees one could make lumber, own all the tools and the means to make more tools, and so forth, is tyranny over those who own nothing.

No, it wasn't. The people who owned all the community resources were perfectly free to make any contracts they wanted to make with black people. Those were just the contracts they, in their freedom, wanted to make with black people.

Western civilization, with liberties protected by law, and that law enforced against the owners. Curbing the freedom of contract of the wealthy.

They are shitholes - far less prosperous and free and good to live in than an ordinary town in a Western civilization.

 

You quite often make cheap claims, without any supporting evidence, which are, therefore, irrelevant.

No, one does not need to create a government to create a market.

A lot of people have created markets even against the will of the government. There is also such a thing named world market, which exists also without a world government.

Governments are nothing but the gangs which control, with their weapons, a given territory. That's all. They use this military power to extract taxes. Of course, the people have not found a way yet how to get rid of these criminal robbers. But they don't create anything - they only control all they can control to extract as much as possible from their victims.

Yes, this is the point. So, all reduces to your wish to take away the property of one group and to give it to another group.

You may think that the group who owns most of the things has obtained it in unjust ways. And you will be, almost always, right. But this does not change the fact that a redistribution of property is quite problematic, because those who own a lot do not like this idea, and will defend their property. The result will be, usually, war and destruction. Therefore such a redistribution with force leads, usually, only to more poverty - at least for the 99% of the winners.

No, what gives them power is the ownership. Freedom of contract is, instead, useful for all people, and in particular to the poor.

In this case, the only problem is the distribution of property.

Of course, living in a Western civilization of 2015 is better than living in a Western civilization of, say 1870 or so. Simply because the whole society became richer.

And, of course, to live as a rich man is better than to live as a poor man. In almost every society - with some exceptions for revolutions, where it is dangerous for live to be rich, because it makes you a preferred target not only for robbery, but also for murder based on ideological hatred.

Curbing some freedom only for some class makes your ideal very different from a liberal one, which is based on equality before the law. But the ideal of equality before the law is, anyway, today only an ideological ballast of the past, actually the ideal of the Left is moving more and more toward racism (preference for blacks) and sexism (preference for women).

Which is what has to be expected for the living conditions of the poor. I would be surprised to hear that the places where the poor live are more prosperous and good to live than ordinary places to live. (But they may be, of course, at least in some aspects more free.)