Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decvax!yale!inmet!nrh
From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: (Re:**N) Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <7800352@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7-Jul-85 14:16:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800352
Posted: Sun Jul  7 14:16:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 06:05:48 EDT
References: <259@kontron.UUCP>
Lines: 105
Nf-ID: #R:kontron:-25900:inmet:7800352:000:5538
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Jul  7 14:16:00 1985


>/**** inmet:net.politics / cybvax0!mrh /  3:23 pm  Jul  5, 1985 ****/
>In article <7800346@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes:
>> 
>> Yes.  Unquestionably.  For details, see Walter Williams, "The 
>> State Against Blacks".  In general, acting within the confines
>> of a prejudice not in harmony with reality tends to make you
>> make mistakes (you fail to hire the best person for the job because
>> he's black, you fail to rent to the most desirable tenant because
>> she's not Christian (or whatever).  A competitor, not bound by these
>> rules can take advantage of the situation by attracting people who
>> you refuse to deal with.  Because you have lowered your demand 
>> for these people (by refusing to deal with them) he may pay less, or
>> charge more (he faces less competition for their services or tennancy), and
>> he gets a better employee/tenant than you do.  In short, you labor under
>> a disadvantage because you choose to be less free than your competitors.
>
>I grow very tired of these ignorant, ivory-tower economic predictions.

Williams is a professional economist, as I recall.  He's black.  Do you
claim similar or better credentials?  Or do you claim I misrepresented
his ideas?  Or do you claim you've some better basis for judgement than
he does? 

The fact is that it doesn't matter if the ideas come from the ivory tower.
The other fact is that some grow tired of certain arguments REGARDLESS
of the validity of the arguments.  

>If you are so certain that there is a financial benefit to not discriminating,
>go into a bigoted white neighborhood, build housing, announce (by word or
>deed) that you're a "nigger lover" (they'll call you that), and that you
>intend to outcompete them because of this pragmatism.

I suggest YOU go into the same neigborhood, and announce publicly that
you intend to FORCE people to deal with those they hate.  I suspect
I might get away with contusions -- you'd be dead.  The reason is
that bigoted people are convinced of the rightness of their ideas.
If they think blacks are inferior, they'll be amused by my intent
to hire the best people available regardless of race.  If, on the
other hand, you ride in and tell them that you intend to force them
to hire blacks at gunpoint, they will rightly see you as a menace.  Why?
Because if MY ideas are wrong, I've harmed only myself -- and they
believe those ideas to be wrong.

If YOUR ideas are wrong, it doesn't matter -- you're still holding the
guns.  YOU are therefore the greater menace, as they see it.  Being
a menace to bigots is all well and good, but threatening them at 
gunpoint (when they've done nothing to you) is another.

Now, of course just who gets away with what doesn't matter very much
(bigots act unreasonably -- that's WHY they're bigots).  The point is
that if you force bigots to hire "fairly" and you're RIGHT they stay 
in business.  If I hire the talent away from them at lower prices and
out-compete them, they go out of business, and I (who did not discriminate)
make money.  Even bigots catch on eventually, but you suggest armed
conflict that leaves them nominally in charge, and I suggest out-performing
them, which does not.

>You will very quickly see many of the mechanisms by which discrimination is
>reinforced despite market pressures.  The fact is that there are many forms
>of coercion besides market pressures, and postulating a libertarian society
>without coercion is as realistic as wishing away crime in our own society.
>Vandalism, arson, assault, and a variety of other hate (think Ku Klux Klan)
>are coercive realities that must be dealt with.

Indeed.  Such attempts at coercion should be met with as much nastiness
as can be mustered.  Did you get some idiot, ivory-tower notion that
libertarians would not defend themselves if threatened by such actions?

>The fact is that coercion must be overcome by greater coercion.  

No disagreement there -- libertarians are against the INITIATION of force.

>Economic
>coercion of the sort you suggest is far too mild to defeat pervasive
>informal and amateur coercion for discrimination.  

Economic coercion?  I suggest here no initiation of violence on the part
of my libertarian protagonist.  It is true that the economic realities
of the situation will change things more slowly than political means:
it takes a while for people to go out of business but a powerful-enough
political move can close them in an hour.

On the other hand, the politics of this sort of thing were
pro-discrimination for hundreds of years (From Slavery to Jim Crow to
low budgets for Ghetto schools, while the economics have always been
against discrimination.  It's fine to talk about using politics to upend
things, but politics, while (in some ways) a good servant (sort of) is a
very bad master.  Far better to limit the laws that may apply to people's
lives than to use them to change behavior in a good way ("just this once").

>Several hundred years
>of discrimination show this clearly.  

Excuse me, but several hundred years of government-abetted discrimination
are hardly a good argument against libertarianism, nor against allowing
people to make choices without the government meddling.

>30 years of stronger government
>coercion has produced sudden and dramatic lifting of barriers, as a variety
>of history and occupational statistics show.

You seem to have missed "Losing Ground" by Charles Murray.  In it, he
asks the (oh so "ivory tower") question "Did the Great Society work?"
The answer (surprise!) would seem to be "no".