Is The Cato Institute A, You Know, Libertarian Think-Tank?

Possibly the “black hole” idea comes from the powerful gravitation exerted from the astronomical bodies; once religion starts, it always moves towards fundamentalism and from Socrates to those…those… alright I’ll use language that isn’t vulgar, those butchers in desserts of Syria and Iraq. Once there political discourse cannot escape religion. Religion becomes politics.

Ilya Shapiro seems like a much more observant narrator of actually existing libertarian conservatism than John Holbo. Of course, libertarianism is a rhetorical engine for rationalizing reactionary sentiments into principles that confirm in all cases gov’t = bad, private = good, (especially where “private” is white male and profitable). Duh.

In defense of Shapiro’s axiomatics, I doubt he would agree with The same is true of private action. In contrast to the state, private actors are deprived of coercion. So “the same” is never true in libertarian paradise, because the state is coercively preventing or punishing to extinction, private coercion. So, a private actor can not coerce a fotog to record her lesbian knot-tying (a completely voluntary form of metaphoric bondage). If paying doesn’t cut it, oh well.

Is this philosophically satisfying? Rigorous? Maybe not. But this is politics, not philosophy. The demand for principles is instrumental; to persuade voters that a representative will choose as they would choose and coerce selectively not themselves but others. And, they are innocent of any ill intent in this.

As a logical matter, an axiomatic system of principles of decision will be a priori indeterminate in regard to the outcome of the decision. This is the problem of pure economic theory: until you start filling in specific parameter values, it is an endless round of, “on the one hand . . . on the other hand, . . . .” You cannot even rely on the law of demand: you simply do not know whether a change in demand will increase or decrease price. But, once you know the outcome, you can explain what happened. Just like on teevee, the blonde lady always knows why the market went up or down. The gods are unpredictable but their message is invariably clear. A vague but reliable engine. Libertarianism is the same. A libertarian never has to say, “because I am an immature, selfish bastard who does not care about other people” Instead, the libertarian can always explain the freedom-enhancing principle behind why he should be able to do as I please.

What does the CT commentariat think of Johnson/Weld?

The most comfortable politicians running, and nowhere near as dopey as previous Libertarians. They can pull votes, ideally from Trump. I hate them.

Johnson made two claims–that the government has a role in banning discrimination, and that religious believers shouldn’t get special exceptions to the law.

I can see why the first one would piss off anti-state libertarian purists. Not so much the latter, though–I can’t see how libertarian purism justifies special exceptions to law based on personal beliefs.

“That said, you’d be nuts to vote for Johnson in any state in which there’s any chance that Trump might win. So don’t do that.”

Beyond “any chance” there are a substantial number of states where this is a very good chance. In light of that fact, I’d ask anyone tempted to relativize the opportunity to vote outside the admittedly vexed binary of Clinton/Trump to some questionable matter of highfalutin principle to gauge the wisdom behind your comment.

“… but it’s not very encouraging for libertarians who want to “vote [their] conscience.”

I don’t think conscience is the right word in this context.

Libertarians are generally racist shitheels who would otherwise be Republicans, but find the social norms constricting. In other words, they want to smoke pot but not pay taxes, because those taxes may be spent on someone who is brown. They are very stupid children.

The thought-experiment is easy and obvious: suppose a crushing form of Jim Crow were maintained, not by the government, but by a powerful, coordinated coalition of private actors who, for good measure, sincerely believe their religion demands no less of them? Would that be acceptable?

If by “acceptable” you mean “the state has no right to intervene to stop it”, then yes, most libertarians would find it acceptable. If by “acceptable” you mean “laudable”, “praiseworthy”, or even just “morally neutral”, most libertarians would not find it acceptable.

The conceptual keynote is, rather, liberty (against coercion.)

“Coercion” has a specific philosophical meaning somewhat different from its ordinary meaning. In libertarian philosophy, it means “crossing a rights boundary”. Hence, shooting a rapist dead would be coercive in the ordinary sense of the word, but not in the libertarian philosophical sense. The rapist is the coercer; the shooter is responding to the coercion within his/her rights.

From here, it’s easy to see why libertarians back the photographer. The photographer offers a service. Customers can choose to purchase the service, and the photographer can refuse to serve customers s/he doesn’t like. Both sides have liberty to choose to enter or not enter the transaction, and neither side loses their rights simply by being rejected by the other. Forcing one side or the other to enter the transaction crosses the right to liberty boundary (i.e., is coercive under libertarian theory) and isn’t permissible.

(NB: There are consequentialist and utilitarian libertarians, to which this rights-based analysis doesn’t apply.)

@3

“In contrast to the state, private actors are deprived of coercion. ”

Apart from Tony Soprano.

I hope we all know and love that episode where the Nozick-reading liberal is pleased with himself to give evidence… until he realises whom he’s giving it against. Then he can’t stop panicking until he’s withdrawn his statement.

Myself, I’m inclined to think that it’s ok for a wedding photographer or caterer to refuse some work even when she has the spare time to do it, but not for a hotel to turn away customers when it has room for them. I’ve not yet got round to working these intuitions up into a set of principles, and I was rather hoping one of you guys (or someone you’ve read) had done the work already.

I am even more puzzled by the parts of UKIP that style themselves as libertarian. From watching US politics, I’ve picked up an impression of what a “libertarian” position tends to look like, and UKIP don’t really seem to resemble it. A social conservative describing themselves as a libertarian seems to me a misdescription, before we even get on to whether I agree with it or not.

On the other hand, a problematic distinction between public and private action is part of my mental image of what “libertarian” means in practise, so if a self-style “libertarian” adopts that position I won’t raise an eyebrow at the label but instead move on to the inherent contradiction in the position itself.

“Any libertarian who isn’t, broadly, fiscally conservative and socially liberal owes a pretty good story about how she got there without mixing in non-libertarian principles/values.”

You should at least mention that this is a totally US-centric view based on the relatively recent appropriation of the (benevolent-sounding) label ‘libertarianism’ for a certain brand of US-specific reactionary ideology. Outside the US, libertarianism has a very different meaning.

1. The idea that private actors can act in a public sphere (e.g. the “market”) without implicating gov’t is specious. Once you accept a customer onto “your property” it isn’t entirely “your property” any more.

2. Gov’t in certain arenas (e.g. healthcare) can increase individual freedom by creating more free time, less risks of various kinds in private transactions, etc.

3. If everyone were allowed to discriminate against a certain type (race, sexual preference, or whatever), then those types would be compelled to move to a new place, a new country, to survive. They are NOT free: they are compelled. Libertarianism depends upon not everyone acting prejudiced, so that the logical outcome of the libertarian farce is obscured.

To adapt Keynes: it’s hard to get a man NOT to believe something sincerely, on religious grounds, if believing it, sincerely, on religious grounds, will permit him to push around his neighbor, whom he dislikes, with legal impunity he would not otherwise enjoy.

Do you mean Upton Sinclair (search on the word understand)?

“What does the CT commentariat think of Johnson/Weld?”

Wait, the VP candidate is BILL Weld, not TUESDAY Weld?

Now I’m disappointed, and will have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary.

This is pretty easy. John himself concluded that absent ‘ a crushing form of Jim Crow’ he supports free association. He doesn’t see the need to make people bake wedding cakes. This might be a difficult test case for John but not for libertarians. As he notes,
‘Shapiro says all the libertarians he knows support the photographer and the Little Sisters.’ Throw in the first amendment, that Justice Stephen Breyer and Judge Merrick Garland are the jurists most deferential to the government on every type of freedom reducing economic regulation, and you can see how libertarians would be pretty concerned. They should be concerned when they hear the libertarian candidate praising any non libertarian set of Justices let alone the two least operationally libertarian Supreme Court Justices.

Again this is pretty easy stuff. Praise the most anti liberty justices and libertarians get upset. Duh!

Praise the most anti liberty justices and libertarians get upset. Duh!

The “duh” part is the equation of regulation with restriction on liberty.

First, nobody from the Libertarian Party gets to whine about their candidate not being perfect in the Clinton/Trump election. The LP picking some qualified candidates who are libertarian compared to the voting public is so obviously the correct decision if you care about winning votes that it really isn’t worth questioning. The difference between a libertarian and someone who’s socially liberal and fiscally conservative: it’s an all X are Y but not all Y are X thing. From Shapiro’s perspective, someone who supports his policies on consequentialist grounds but doesn’t derive their beliefs from libertarian axioms isn’t a real libertarian.

On the cake: I think it is different from something like hotels/renting/employment, even if it isn’t easy to draw a legal line between the two. Whenever service is denied, there’s two harms: a “real” harm from not getting service, and an emotional harm from the insult. As the real harm gets lower and lower, more and more the weight rests on the insult. But the insult is an expressive action!

Government regulation that effectively says “Society now supports X, so while you’re representing Society you will not insult X” can seem ludicrously heavy handed. Not saying that anti-discrimination laws are bad on net, but from a libertarian perspective regulating the insult is a necessary cost given that it’s entwined with the real harm, but from a anti-racist perspective stopping the insult is a good end in itself. So you’d expect real differences in opinion when the insult outweighs the real harm.

@27: (1) Libertarian or not, few people hold an absolutist view of property: “it’s all mine so I do as I please here.” And does every type of commercial relationship require a government to oversee it?

(2) For a libertarian, it would hurt negative liberty (bad) while possibly increasing positive liberty (neutral: positive liberty does not enter his calculations). He would also argue that the government cannot possibly do better than the private sector in fixing market inefficiencies.

(3) That would not qualify as coercion in the libertarian book, since neither the government nor any private actors are using force. Rather, an unlikely unfortunate outcome.

You’re giving the Cato Institute a shred of intellectual honesty it doesn’t have. The kind of libertarianism they’re interested in is simply whatever lets monied interests railroad over the rest of society, and any philosophizing they do is simply to meet that ends. To be fair, not all libertarians are like this, but these ones certainly are.

https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questions-rather-than-ten-answers/

“libertarianism as a series of questions rather than a series of answers or policy positions. Even if I don’t agree with people’s answers to these questions, getting them to ask the questions and confront the issues reflected in the questions would promote the values that I care about.
These are all questions that I think ought to be asked whenever we, as a society, decide whether to task and empower the government to do a thing.”

I heard Shapiro on a law podcast the other day and he mentioned that the second anniversary of his naturalization was coming up, so my guess is that his preference in metaphors might betray a somewhat old-world cultural references. The “black hole” image would be used by many Germans or French people where an American would use the term slippery slope. Gravity being the common factor.

There is no simple, straight-line argument from libertarian first principles to ‘thus, you should dislike Breyer’s legal philosophy.’ Whether it is good to have activist judges or deferential judges, about which things, in what ways, is far afield from libertarian first principles.

For the real-life Libertarians I tend to encounter, living in semi-rural Alaska, there would indeed be a straight line from their political philosophy to the rejection of ever being deferential to any level of government or legal precedent.

As for your thought experiment about a privately maintained Jim Crow situation, I don’t know how they would resolve it. Maybe they would make an argument from morality: I think that their Libertarianism is, to them, an ethically motivated stance. At least outwardly (it can be self-serving too). Libertarian = good, therefore no real evil situation can arise.

To be honest, they aren’t even able to present a coherent Libertarian argument for how road maintenance would work in their preferred system. And the road maintenance example is by no means purely theoretical: I can think of instances where controversies have erupted, because we do indeed have roads for which local property owners have opted out, or not opted into, government-provided structures that are available to organise road maintenance. Or situations where originally privately maintained residential access roads evolved into multi-use thoroughfares (FSVO) with no one to provide adequate maintenance.

Judging from one recent situation, which became widely discussed in the community because the road in question serves the local school, it seems to me that my real-life sample of libertarians applaud solutions in which another private citizen puts their foot down and single-handedly gets the situation remedied, collecting funds (through GoFundMe maybe?) along the way. Which, of course, doesn’t solve the underlying problem. As an out lesbian, I am glad they’re socially liberal, but there are things I wouldn’t trust them with.

This should be added to reading lists:

Illiberal libertarians: Why libertarianism is not a liberal view
Authors
Samuel Freeman in Philosophy and Public Affairs
http://sites.sas.upenn.edu/sfreeman/files/illiberal_libertarians_ppa_2001.pdf

[final paragragh]
. . . Among nations, the United States is distinctive in that it celebrates
as part of its national consciousness the Lockean model (some would
say “myth”) of creation of political society by original agreement
among free (and freeholding) persons, all equally endowed with certain
natural rights. Modify this national story slightly (mainly by substituting
a web of bilateral contracts for the social contract, and eliminating
the duties it entails) and we have the essential makings of
libertarianism. Perhaps this explains why libertarianism is such a popular
and peculiarly American view. However slight these modifications
may seem, their effects are far reaching, for what we have in libertarianism
is no longer liberalism, but its undoing.

But then again, why should religious belief be better than any other sincerely held belief?

In the past, what people used to have scruples about (and ready to murder for, which I think is the real reason) used to be religion-linked. In some way, it still is, at leastasfar as murder is concerned. But there are all kinds of opinions that people can be sincere, passionate and even fanatical about.

Apart from the thinly veiled murder threat of religious fanaticism, whivh we shouldn’t capitulate to, what makes it different?

@46 Exactly. Matt Bruenig had a whole series of posts on libertarianism that really explored how much libertarianism is “we want government to do things, but only things we like”. Unfortunately I think he took everything down after “the incident”.

@50
‘…how no one has to turn to the state to defend property, but how this can instead be done by privately hired law enforcement.’

I guess. But wouldn’t I be able to hire a private anti-homophobia or anti-racism vigilante squad and force the shopkeeper to do what I want? The whole thing is just stupid.

“no one has to turn to the state to defend property, but how this can instead be done by privately hired law enforcement.”

But that is utterly indistinguishable from Feudalism. Does the book even address that problem?

Continuation: (p 147)

. . . What is striking about libertarians’ conception of political power is
its resemblance to feudalism. By “feudalism” I mean a particular conception
of political power, not the manorial system or the economic
system that relies on the institution of serfdom (as in European medieval
feudalism).

I don’t know about anyone else, but that capitalized ‘A’ in the title is driving me nuts.

@58

Thanks. His world sounds like a fun place to live!

Someone up above mentioned their libertarian friends living in semitism rural Alaska. Which would have to be one of the most govt subsidized communities in the USA. Cute.

Do any of you know any actual libertarians? (I mean in the current American sense.) I have met very few myself, except in arguments across the Net. I did at one time work with a crusty fellow who as pretty much of that faith; he was fired from a large brokerage house for hiring too many Black people for his department (some kind of computer operations thing that was deemed too visible for the exercise of his prejudices). Cato, now, strikes me as a phony outfit; they used to advocate ‘Right-To-Work’ laws, which as any consistent libertarian knows is unwarranted government intrusion into employer-employee relations, specifically the rights of association, expression, and contract.

“What about the family? Why should a libertarian state act if somebody decides to abandon their young child or old parent?”

Rothbard in fact argued their was nothing wrong with a parent starving their children to death from a libertarian point of view.

/the asshole

@27: Exactly, libertarians depend upon a convenient definition of coercion and inflate the positive/negative liberty distinction into a convenient principle. If a discriminated class of people were excluded from every sort of commercial transaction, then they couldn’t even get food to eat. They would try to go into a store because they are hungry, and be coerced by the shopkeeper or the local constabulary into leaving the store. This is not merely an “unfortunate outcome”. It is the threat of force. Libertarianism rather conveniently relies on everyone not being a bigot, so that the hungry people can go somewhere else and buy the food — thus this totally coercive situation does not arise publicly (except in wide areas of bigotry), so that the fundamental illogic of libertarianism is usually hidden from view.

Similarly cost-reduction by gov’t institution is said to hurt “negative liberty” — but only because the market system is not defined as a form of coercion. There are several ways to show that the market system is coercive. For example, Jacob Viner pointed out over 50 years ago that if individual A acts in the market in a way that is seriously detrimental to the interests of individual B, but A remains unaware or indifferent to B’s suffering, this does not qualify as coercion to a Hayekian libertarian!

The jump from the faulty “coercion” argument to the faulty “gov’t is inefficient” argument is usually engaged at around this point.

The reasons why gov’t can be more efficient than the market depend upon the specific good or service, and the conditions of supply and demand for that good or service. Those conditions may even change. There is no general rule about this.

merian at 45 is on the right track when she points out that libertarian principles don’t allow for things like road repair. My own challenge to libertarians is how they would handle sewage. Do you force people to hook up to sewer lines? How do you get easements across private property for sewer lines? Or do we forego coercion and let people dump shit on their own property? Libertarians tell me that if it pollutes the neighbor’s well, the neighbor can sue. The libertarian dream, Every Man a Tort Lawyer. Any political philosophy that can’t mange basic sanitation really isn’t worth debating.

What I simply can’t see is how the Shapiro brand of libertarianism, which is very much what regular people (as opposed to public intellectuals) adhere as well, can, ultimately, be compatible with democratic safeguard of liberties. (Let alone public goods.)

I just read some comments on another site where would-be libertarians were tying themselves in knots trying to explain why the (muslim-run) épicerie in this story http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/05/halal-supermarket-in-france-told-to-sell-pork-and-alcohol-or-face-closure-6049397/ should be obliged to sell pork and wine, whereas bakers should not be obliged to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.

@ Alex K #78: You are STARTING from positing — as a fact — the unproven assumption that, “markets merely redistribute the natural coercion of nature, whereas gov’t multiplies the coercion”. The rest of your argument is based upon this assumption as if it were true.

But first you would have to prove it, without relying upon other convenient definitions.

It may be better if you avoid the whole “natural coercion” argument. Unfortunately nature has evolved ever more complex creatures which impose greater extension over the composition and control of matter and energy, thus nature INCREASES coercion. Therefore taking the “nature” trail will land you in a bit of an explanatory pickle, here.

So this destroys you even before you get around to the “proof” that gov’t only multiplies the naturally increasing coercion, so then you’d be into the second derivative of non-quantifiable “coercion”, a numerical nightmare to be avoided at all costs!

On the other question of libertarianism’s convenient reliance upon circumstance, you appear to be positing that there is indeed always a real outside to which “exit” is feasible. But contingencies are ruled out in the establishment of philosophical certitudes.

One bright spot is that you appear to be analogizing and correlating the non-libertarian’s use of gov’t as just another “outside” in a figurative or metaphorical sense. That’s perfectly valid, I guess, but it hardly supports your argument that only one side is less coercive!

I doubt the contention that putting profit ahead of sentiment is “smart”. But enough said. This should be pondered by the “sober inquiry of competent psychologists”, in Mencken’s immortal phrase.

merian: “The “black hole” image would be used by many Germans or French people where an American would use the term slippery slope.”

I’m curious, do you ave any references for this?

Re the private law enforcement thing, there’s an account of how this could “work” in The Star Fraction by ken McLeod, which was object of a CT book seminar some time ago. I thought it was rather silly, like most of the politics in the book. But as I recall, this wasn’t really discussed in the many, and often admiring, CT contributions, to my surprise given how much Holbo and some other CTers enjoy discussing “Libertarianism”.

(I just can’t get myself to use the term without scare quotes, see 25 and 40).

TM: I was answering from my own judgement as a speaker of German and French. But admittedly, I may have been overstating it a bit, because metaphors don’t work so cleanly, and for “black hole” and its translations the “… and you can’t escape it and it’ll be destructive” connotation is usually there when it’s not as dramatic at the bottom of a slippery slope. I searched through some newspapers for a few minutes, though, and found for example a German text that argued that the cause of the violence of mass shooters is a personality disorder and not simply adverse experiences (of bullying or rejection). The latter, the argument went, are shared by many, but non-disordered personalities are able to work through them whereas they push the disordered personality gradually towards seeking the violent act. (I also found surprisingly few metaphorical uses of “schwarzes Loch” in German papers — possibly because their style editors discourage the use of the cliche. In French, of course, persistent structural budget deficits are often called “trou noir”, which is different.

Lee, you just confused everyone with “not everybody.” You’re bad at this.

And by the way, all, if you’re super-concerned with people coordinating as a massive group to do horrible things, then I’m kinda surprised I have to point out to such learned folks as yourselves that coordinating massive groups of people is exactly what government does. Holbo’s scenario is virtually impossible without government acting as a coordinating body. That practical reality augurs heavily for libertarianism in the social sphere.

JH, FTFY

Ah, if ever there were a double-edged sword, whose wielder must beware, beware …but yeah Keith was totally right about that logical point….but he’s rubber and I’m glue….no, wait…

Lee,

Sure, in the case of the lesbian couple, they found another bakery. All that was required was at least one bakery willing to serve a gay wedding, and there were many others. The liberty-based order requires only a small minority of rational people in order to work (in most cases). Government-based systems require a rational majority, and we know that such a thing does not exist.

Again, you guys keep looking for this excuse to use government to pick on people who offend you, just as Gary Johnson did. In the meantime, you ignore the actual rational and systemic reasoning for government intervention where it is appropriate….this goes to the heart of my issue with most anti-libertarians…it’s still just irrational collectivism driving their opposition.

But your “liberty-based order” cannot guarantee that a small minority of non-bigots exists, to save the order from stupidity. It is based upon a convenient contingency, not a thorough rule. The question here is not collectivism, it is a law to make sure that no one can discriminate against some kinds in a commercial transaction that is open to others.

What is your definition of “rational”? You seem to be using the word in different ways.

from the OP
Federalist Society types don’t like Breyer.

Reminded in reading ‘Age of Fracture’ that Breyer was a key player behind airline deregulation in the ’70s (pushed by among others Ted Kennedy, for whom Breyer was working). So the libertarians and conservatives both shd like him for that.

[The merits of airline dereg. are another issue, but we won’t go there.]

“But your “liberty-based order” cannot guarantee that a small minority of non-bigots exists, to save the order from stupidity.”

If no-non bigots exist, then the government will not be helpful, either. In general, government enforces society’s preferred bigotry in that time and place.

“it is a law to make sure that no one can discriminate against some kinds in a commercial transaction that is open to others.”

And such a law will either be enforced selectively against outgroups, or enforced consistently, and do grevious harm to civil society.

But for fun, I’ll give you a hypothetical. There are some businesses where women sell sex toys and other some such in parties (kinda like Tupperware parties). Many of those businesses only allow women to be “contractors.”

Should that be illegal, in your view, should they be required to allow men to sell?

Why or why not?

@17 responding to:

The thought-experiment is easy and obvious: suppose a crushing form of Jim Crow were maintained, not by the government, but by a powerful, coordinated coalition of private actors who, for good measure, sincerely believe their religion demands no less of them? Would that be acceptable?

“If by “acceptable” you mean “the state has no right to intervene to stop it”, then yes, most libertarians would find it acceptable…”

This threshold of acceptability I find very questionable. If one who is – not/never been/likely could never imagine being – in an out group is prepared to see an abasement of some significant character visited upon others of such out groups, what does that say about their moral qualification to even enter upon such a discussion.

The requisite empathy is simply lacking.

iow, I’m with the ‘libertarianism is a philosophy of spoilt chidren’ school.

“Fiscally conservative and socially liberal” and whatever purer form Shapiro defines as libertarian do not conform to the real world libertarianism of Cato and the Koch brothers. The duel of non-libertarian “let them eat cake” and libertarian “don’t make us sell them cake” strips the veneer from the underlying lassez faire capitalism of many (most) who call themselves libertarians.

John Holbo @ 101
I would argue (because I’m mostly libertarian) that the lesbian couples’ liberty would be limited, but in a completely acceptable way. No one has the right to associate with others when those others object.

Similarly, the liberty of outspoken racists is limited by the fact that many people disapprove of their actions, won’t hire them, and so forth. The liberty of some men is limited by the fact that no women want to date them. And so on.

I think there’s a conceptually easy place to draw the line for common carrier obligations: if the government regulates the enterprise to guarantee its profitability and universality, then it’s a common carrier.

Dr Hilarius @ 106

I was a bit startled this spring when a colleague mentioned “when I was in high school, we moved from neighborhood a to neighborhood b; we couldn’t move to town X (where she now lives) because Jews couldn’t live there.”

“No one has the right to associate with others when those others object.”

I agree with this, but only in the private sphere. Once you enter into commercial transactions, you are not in the private sphere, you are in the public sphere. And that is determined by “majority rules”, including logical inferences argued from your founding laws (e.g. a constitution). If you don’t like classical political liberalism, that’s your tough luck.

Under “bona fide occupational qualification”, you can avoid the hiring of an outspoken racist because it will prima facie destroy his job performance, by destroying your brand appeal to (nonracist) customers. Case closed in a court of law. If an outspoken racist comes through the door as a customer, you may have a more difficult time ejecting him, unless it is inciteful hate speech or he infringes some other statute.

Libertarians might claim that a repair service willing to do repairs for black families would profit by serving this population and thus the free market would prevent injustice. Any libertarian thinking this has never lived in a small southern town.

Is it your contention that (1) blacks in small Southern towns do not have stoves, or that (2) their stoves never require repair or (3) they do all their own repair work? Or is it perhaps that your father just did not call the right repairman?

Art Deco #113, Since you don’t know who from the public will walk through your shop door, and you are not required to treat them as anything other than a stranger as customer, commerce is pretty much the definition of public sphere, not private sphere.

But no one who has slogged through the years of your silly drive-by sniping in Tyler Cowen’s comment threads (and blessedly rarely at Crooked Timber) will have any expectation that you will suddenly start to make sense.

John Holbo #120: “simple public/private distinction”

I don’t think it’s that simple, but I see a fairly easy rule. I think that the public area depends on what the majority rules or feels about it, and the majority’s tendency is toward inclusion of inclusionary people, and exclusion of exclusionary people. Gay relationships are ruled in because they include more individuals. Racism, sexism, nazism, pedophilia etc. are ruled out because these exclude and/or harm individuals.

It makes a certain sort of sense that the public sphere of commerce should be developing toward inclusion of the inclusionary people, and toward excluding the exclusionary people. It might have gone the other way, but it didn’t.

It doesn’t matter if you are a provider of a good or service on the supply side, or a customer of a good or service on the demand side. If you are an inclusionary person, we like you. If you are an exclusionary person, we don’t want to illustrate your book, and we don’t want you making decisions about who can have a wedding cake.

The free exercise of religion clause in the US First Amendment has been interpreted both ways on this. The best advice is don’t get into the baking business if you don’t want to serve everybody. Similarly, if a holocaust survivor moves to a country where the majority believes that nazism is wholly acceptable, and the holocaust survivor decides to get into the catering business, then catering a nazi wedding is in the future.

Love is the way. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Ian Maitland #124: “if a person associates with others in a conspiracy in restraint of trade in order to deprive”

Once again, the defense of libertarianism conveniently relies on not everyone being a bigot, so that the discriminated-against can buy food and clothing and survive somewhere else, and the fundamental illogic of perfect libertarianism is hidden from view.

Lee A. Arnold # 125.

I have sufficient confidence in the profit motive to make people swallow their bigotry, even assuming they are all bigots (a fact not in evidence). That is why there had to be Jim Crow LAWS. It is why segregation in the South had to be imposed by boycotts, threats, thuggery, strikes, and other forms of collective reprisal and intimidation.

I expressly excepted conspiracies in restraint of trade. That is what Jim Crow was: “We can better understand the nature of Jim Crow discrimination if we think of it as cartel conduct. A cartel story focuses on the material benefits to collective action that monopolize benefits for one group at the expense of another.” Daria Roithmayer, Labor pains: The racist policies that set workplace equality back decades, Salon, Feb. 2, 2014.

= = = Ian Maitland 08.07.16 at 7:18 pm

I have sufficient confidence in the profit motive to make people swallow their bigotry, even assuming they are all bigots (a fact not in evidence). = = =

Suggest you do a bit of research on “sundown laws” and “sundown towns”. Just in my family I have two relative who will not travel by car through the Midwest due to the threats of death hurled at their grandparents and the fear of the consequences of a mechanical breakdown inculcated in their families. It wasn’t just towns, it was entire counties. Including many along the length of Route 66, thus cutting African-Americans off from the entire Chicago-LA road culture of the period.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001715.html

Cranky Observer #s 129 & 130

Entire town. The whole point of libertarianism is to reserve to the individual his or her right to live his life according to his lights, even if we hate the choices he makes. What you describe is cartel conduct enforced by social and sometimes physical pressure that intentionally interferes with individuals’ rights to enter contracts.

As for Hobbes, I haven’t actually or hypothetically granted any government absolute authority so that it can protect my security. Have you?

Ian Maitland #127, Except that the profit motive does NOT cause all businesspeople to swallow their bigotry.

By definition bigots are, essentially, crazy. Arguments rooted in people doing rationalist assessments of their own best interests aren’t really very convincing when you know that the people whose analysis and conclusions you’re concerned by are irrational.

[again, the distinctive cognitive failure-pattern of all right-wing thought is to neglect the collective effect of actions that are nominally uncoordinated but responsive to the same [social] incentives and structures, both for good and for ill]

What you describe is cartel conduct enforced by social and sometimes physical pressure that intentionally interferes with individuals’ rights to enter contracts.

This?

Question-begging. Learn to recognise it.

John Holbo # 134

Even the devil can quote the scriptures, and if someone used some diabolical or infernal trick to use rules designed to protect liberty against it, then clearly I’d jump in thee direction of freedom.

But for reasons I have given, as an empirical matter, I believe that freedom and domestic tranquility will generally fare best if government does not interfere with people’s choices about whom to do business with and on what terms. So, if the owners of Hobby Lobby warn prospective employees that they believe that some forms of birth control are tantamount to murder and that Hobby Lobby won’t pay for them, and if the employees accept positions at the company knowing this, then it is not our business to interfere with the parties’ choices.

It seems so simple to me. If a cake shop is not a monopoly, it is a minor inconvenience for a gay (or neo-Nazi) couple to go to another cake shop for a gay or (Nazi)-themed cake.

Ian Maitland: ” That is what Jim Crow was: “We can better understand the nature of Jim Crow discrimination if we think of it as cartel conduct. A cartel story focuses on the material benefits to collective action that monopolize benefits for one group at the expense of another.” ”

Well, no. A cartel is formed to enrich its members. Jim Crow did not actually enrich the shopkeepers that participated in it: it presumably denied them business. They did it anyways because of non-economic reasons.

Everyone’s going to be all over this stuff because it’s so easy to argue against. But, as I mentioned before, it’s a classic anti-anti-racism argument. It vaguely seems to make sense at some level, but not really as soon as you look at it. The function of this kind of thing isn’t “to be racist”, it’s to take the side against anti-racism because cultural tribalism demands it. That’s why U.S. libertarianism is pretty much a U.S. phenomenon.

Re: 120 “If Keith’s accurate summation were accurate.”

“It’s sociological nonsense that white male cis-gendered Christians are some persecuted class in the US of Gay.”

The Christian couple was fined $150,000 for refusing to serve a cake to a gay wedding. You can’t get around that. Oppression and persecution occur in different contexts, and different types of oppression can occur simultaneously…blacks can be persecuted in some places, gays in others, and white Christians in others….I’m enlightened enough to acknowledge all of these possibilities, and observe when they occur. I think Mr. Holbo can catch up, with some effort.

In this context, Johnson was using an extreme hypothetical in the opposite direction to avoid facing real injustice against the Christian couple by the State of Oregon. This was a repugnant betrayal of the best that libertarianism has to offer…the ability to stand up against State injustice, even against those who are not popular in a given social context. That’s still disgusting.

In this sense, your ability to recognize persecution against those that your friends see as the out-group is a moral test….Mr. Holbo has yet to pass.

All liberty is affirmative action, for those who would be persecuted by the majority. Heck, in my case, I was “woke” decades before it was cool….I opposed the Drug War back when Hillary and Bernie Sanders were voting for mass incarceration in the 1994 crime bill.

As for Mr. Holbo’s hypothetical, I’ll see and raise him, I agree that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the section banning private discrimination, had good effects….many Department stores in Southern cities, for example, integrated in response to the act, and that was good, and it even helped achieve a better coordinating equilibrium. I think most of the social benefits on the 1964 Civil Rights Act (the section banning discrimination by businesses) occurred in a short amount of time, and much of the social usefulness of that part of the Act was realized within 10 years. The legacy of slavery and the support of Southern state and local governments for anti-black terrorism imposed unique obligations. That was an emergency that uniquely met the standards for deviating from liberty. And yes, that’s pretty much the only case that meets the standards for this kind of government intervention.

Even things where I think they should be illegal like drug taking, sex work, porn etc I would not argue that people should be refused service at businesses if they engaged in these things, and they aren’t even protected categories.

J-D #146:

In this case, the Christian bakers did in fact serve gays; they had served this couple before and would do so again. They just didn’t want to bake a cake for this particular circumstance.

Keith 08.08.16 at 10:57 am
J-D #146:

In this case, the Christian bakers did in fact serve gays; they had served this couple before and would do so again. They just didn’t want to bake a cake for this particular circumstance.

That’s an interesting detail, but I don’t see how it affects the substance of the point I was making. I think that the point I was making is in substance the same if the experience under discussion is not the experience of being refused all service by a shop that extends it to other people but rather the experience of being refused only one particular service that the shop extends to other people. It’s still a case of: maybe only a minor inconvenience to some; maybe much more than a minor inconvenience to others.

The libertarian characterisation of the US’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a “deviation from liberty” shows that libertarianism relies upon convenient definitions. Proves that libertarianism is NOT classical political liberalism. Indicates that libertarianism should be discarded into the dustbin of history — to quote another rather different scripture!

Twisting one’s intellectual inferences to comport with one’s emotional train of thought is the sine qua non of “motivated reasoning” or “social cognitive bias”. We all do this, to one extent or another. Even here in Crooked Timber comments, (where these things are supposed to be sorted out), writers and readers mostly forget it. Here, emotions reign over intellect.

But it seems that libertarians show an especial disregard for the intellectual holes in their fabric. Above, we read phrases that are akin to, “My own rules must apply to everything, but yours are not allowed.” “The producer and consumer sides of a business relationship are in the same sphere (i.e. the private sphere).” “Civil society is at risk.” –Various bunches of malarkey.

So therefore, since morality is about how we treat each other, and how we treat each other is about emotions far more than intellect, (and since most readers cannot tell one from the other anyway), here is my own emotional train of thought:

If a child wanders into your store and you refuse to serve him/her because of skin color or gender preference, then you will create fear and self-loathing in that child. At that very moment, you should be THROWN IN JAIL. Preferably tarred and feathered, first.

The intellectual entrainment, by this emotion of mine:

1. What you do or say in your own house and with your own friends is your own affair: your private sphere. (also, I shall be RSVPing negatively to your barbecue invitation.)

2. A business firm certainly has the RIGHT to TRY to push its own hiring practices, i.e. to try to treat its “in-house” policies, as if these were part of the “PRIVATE” sphere. Its successes in this regard are adjudicated as follows: a.) In the case of firing a CEO who contributes campaign money to haters, the firm may be found to be legally in its rights, if it proves that he hurts the firm’s business. b.) In the opposite case, the case of refusing to employ non-haters, because of their skin color or sexual preference, how far the firm can go has been up to the law, the majority of voters, and the courts to decide.

But that all ENDS at the customer interface, where your business Venn-diagrams into the public sphere entirely. If you discriminate against any potential customer who is not a hater, you should be thrown right the hell into jail.

You protest and ask, “Well, if we are compelled to serve a gay black marxist muslim illegal mexican who doesn’t hate anybody, don’t we also have to serve a nazi?”

For what it’s worth, my own reply, my own intellectual entrainment to my feelings, is that the constitution can be construed that way, but the clear tendency of the majority of voters is toward finding another way to construe it.

So at this time your protesting question isn’t settled. My observation is that libertarianism is the least likely philosophy to settle it. We already allow nazis the freedom of speech, freedom of public assembly, and freedom of guns. The majority of voters is unlikely to want to enable the haters any further. Due to “civil society” and all that stuff.

John Holbo,

“So let’s move on to normative. I don’t agree that it is never right to let businesses pick and choose their clients, in effect. Picking your business associates/partners/collaborators is an important freedom.

Let’s take a simple case: suppose a restaurant has a ‘no shirt no shoes no service’ rule. That’s discrimination. Ought it to be legal to do that?”

If businesses are in demand then they can’t take on all the clients necessarily when the client wants to use the business. You might have enough architecture contracts for the next 12 months and the person wants their house designs by 6 months so you can’t take them on. Your restaurant might be fully booked so you can’t take on another booking that night. Or the client might want a house that isn’t your architecture style so you explain that it isn’t what you do.

Taking on business associates and partners is based on choosing the right applicant for the position, but it is illegal to discriminate against protected categories which I gave you all the laws for above.

Shoes and shirt wearing are not protected categories and it doesn’t count as discrimination in the illegal sense. It is just saying people have to wear shirts and shoes. This is very easy for just about everyone to comply with if they want to go to your business. The only reason they might turn up without shoes and a shirt is if they didn’t plan to go out to dinner and it was a very hot day and then decided at the last minute to go out to dinner. Then they might be cross that they got turned away, but its not discrimination in the legal sense.

Directing customers to behave as if they were in a public place, requiring shoes and shirts (and forbidding profane language or sexual displays) is very much on a par with requiring the business to behave appropriately in public by serving all the customers.

In general (following Mario Bunge, by the way,) all meaningful rights are also implicitly duties. The “right” of association is also the duty to comport yourself in such fashion that strangers can get along with each other. Socialist political philosophy holds that there is no objective justification for some to have more rights than others. (Democratic political philosophy holds that legal rights for persons should be equal.) Libertarian political philosophy holds that human rights are property rights. In practice that works in reverse, because a cardinal tenet is that people have the rights of self-ownership* which reduces human rights (and humanity) to property rights.

Again the real lesson here is that it is folly to pretend libertarians argue in good faith. They are a grossly ideological movement, conceived by theorists perusing economics textbooks in musty libraries.

*Yes, other libertarians hinge their alleged philosophies on the non-aggression principle. But inasmuch as the aggression condemned is violation of property rights, this achieves the same goal, justifying the liberties and privileges of property against the rest of us.

John Holbo @161 If you are going to pretend that anybody’s self-definition of “flaunting” should be taken seriously, then these problem are insoluble. An unveiled face can be deemed “flaunting.” Skepticism about the possibility of any solution in practice always justifies the status quo, inasmuch as it equates personal opinion to arguments to consequences, or rights and duties.

Besides, the really difficult issues with the “decorum dodge” are transgender.

Also, by your standard, one could sincerely “think” that revealing one’s atheism or agnosticism is flaunting…and there would be a serious question of injustice in penalizing the “thinker” for acting on their “thoughts.” Those are not scare quotes, by the way…in your version, it is likely you actually mean “feel,” something not quite under conscious control. Or possibly you mean “believe,” in a sense where believing is more or less an act of will that doesn’t need justification.

Stevenjohnson@162, “If you are going to pretend that anybody’s self-definition of “flaunting” should be taken seriously…”
What about this definition?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell
“The policy prohibited people who “demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence “would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”.”

” I know the intentions are honorable, but do you seriously believe this sort of microscopic regulation of people’s interactions makes the world a better place?”

The reverse case- that a libertarian approach to ordering our affairs would be preferable- is one that very few have attempted to make, and never persuasively.

Whenever the topic comes up, people immediately dive into the weeds of economic theory and abstract legal reasoning in an attempt to use the bulldozer of logic to crush the opposition but no one ever seems to want, or be able to, paint a vision of a libertarian world that is appealing.

I mean, “people are free to shop at another store”- Really? Thats supposed to excite us, and make us yearn for such a world?
Or any of the other standards- You can buy unpasteurized milk, cars without seatbelts, get your spleen removed by a surgeon working out of his garage…Its just hard to hear any of this and take it seriously.

Probably the most convincing is the plaint of “I want to be left alone” which carries some sympathetic appeal, except thats where I note that even in Libertopia, rights are the product of collective consensus and agreement, and defended with collective contributions which are mandatory.

But just like the reference to Australian law, which isn’t applicable outside Australia, referring to a “protected category” is also not universal, as only a handful of legal systems frame discrimination in these terms.

I like John Holbo’s zones-of-grey approach because I, too, find it complicated to draw universally acceptable and enforceable lines. For sure, I think the baker and the photographer shouldn’t be within their rights to refuse service to a same-sex couple. If they offer (secular) wedding-related services then they shouldn’t be allowed to reject customers by who they are. (I’m perfectly fine with them rejecting customers for rude behaviour, or scheduling on religious holidays which they rest on, or even to specialize in a particular religious service — only Catholic church weddings, for example.) But I also think that coming down like a ton of bricks on every violations can be counter-productive. For a photographer, I’d actually rather know which ones the homophobic, racist or anti-Semitic ones are, as working with a photographer requires a modicum of collaboration and, I hope, benevolence. For the baker, if it’s an exception within the community and the lesbian couple would indeed find 200 bakers on the same street who would only have been too happy to serve, fine them $low-hundreds and have them pay a day’s average wages, doubled or tripled because of the inflicted indignity, to the would-be customer, and otherwise let ridicule and negative press do its work. OTOH, if we deal with historic, genocide-like discriminations that are being re-enacted, or groups that find it impossible to find anyone to serve them, fines should rise.

It *is* a good example of how libertarian principles, Shapiro-style, if implemented strictly, invariably lead to reduced liberty for all but the ones who manage to win out. Anyone who offers goods or services to the public will have to deal with the fact that these goods and services will be used by some customers to ends that the provider may find immoral. Just imagine a Catholic baker – soooo many sinful weddings! But not a sin that the baker is responsible for. If, however, your religion really prescribes that you’re not even allowed to knowingly provide a good to someone who will commit what you consider a sin with it, well, that will limit the scope of jobs and business models that are acceptable to you.

I believe that a proper limit to religious liberty is to be set at imposing religious norms on others who don’t share the religion.

But John’s right that most of us would discriminate in some fashion. And I’ve been giving it thought because I know I would discriminate against Nazis. Swastika cakes with Sieg Heil on them would not be sold in my (hypothetical) bakery. Not to a Nazi anyhow — I’d make them for a historical exhibit or a movie project.

So the way I resolve this is that I find it ok to discriminate by opinion, insofar the service is used to foster an opinion. I think it’s ok if a Republican who keeps an inn doesn’t host the Democratic club’s monthly meeting. And I have to be ok that if a baker doesn’t want to make a cake for an ecological or pro-peace cause, that must be fine, too.

The alternative way to resolve this would be to write the law so that I, too, would have to make the Nazi-cake, and take a fine in case a Nazi sues me. Which puts me on the same level as the homophobic baker (eek — not a place I want to be), and then we can leave it to the court of public opinion to decide which of us is a hero for a cause and which of us a ‘phobe.

What about discrimination based on class? A “no poor people allowed here” policy?

Charging a money price for products and services leaves a strict communism behind.

That said, our neoliberal brave new world allows for a lot of unnecessary amplification of inequality. We could have usury laws, for example, instead of payday lenders. But, we don’t. And, the most important thing is to elect Hillary. RNB told me so.

Should a halal or kosher supermarket forced to sell pork?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/04/sell-alcohol-and-pork-or-we-will-shut-you-down-french-town-tells/

Ian Maitland,

“I am familiar with the litany. But don’t you ever pause for a moment and ask yourself whether these reams of statutes and regulations don’t represent a gross overreach by government? I know the intentions are honorable, but do you seriously believe this sort of microscopic regulation of people’s interactions makes the world a better place?
Consider too that for many of these matters (the ones that matter) remedies are already available at tort and contract law. To call these laws duplicative is an understatement by a factor of ten.”

I think they are a very positive development. I don’t think it is microscopic regulation at all, no one in Australia ever reads the statutes hardly at all, everyone just picks up how you’re not meant to act quite easy, and people don’t feel like they are under microscopic regulations at all since they don’t even read the regulations mostly to even know the details, just like most laws, which you follow by custom without having to read them all which would take everyone a lot of time to do like studying law.

The difference is you have to hire a lawyer to use contract or torts law. Not everyone can afford to hire a lawyer, and if you can’t afford a lawyer access to justice is restricted.

“The public sphere sounds very much like what economists call the “private sector.” I can’t find any principled definition of “public” in any of the comments. It seems simply to be the name one opportunistically gives to an activity that one would like to see regulated by government. It is purely incantatory.”

Oh, you use “public realm” all the time in history. I didn’t know it was different in economics.

Public sphere is opposed to the private sphere or domestic sphere which is basically the same thing. So the public sphere is shops, schools, roads, town halls, parks, churches etc. But not people’s houses and gardens.

Manta,

My comment was already long, otherwise I’d have mentioned the French case that’s currently in the news. My initial reaction was “yet another example of stupid French islamophobia”. Though a closer look shows that the story isn’t just quite as simple as that. The store is rented out by a local housing authority (so this isn’t purely “private market”) and its intention is to serve a large estate. It used to be the “mini” size of a large general supermarket chain and the lease was recently switched to a private ( I think ) business. The complaint was that the meat is now mostly halal, no pork is being sold, and no alcoholic drinks. The argument of the housing authority is that the use designation is “general alimentation” not “specialised”, so that would amount to a conflict over what you’d call zoning elsewhere. It’s clear that the new store is going to serve certain locals better, others less well, and make not much of a difference for many.

From my partial knowledge I the authorities are silly to go into this conflict. And yes, the stupidities that French authorities have been doing re: Islam (a reason, effectively, why I first changed careers and therefore ultimately left France… ) and head scarves play a role in my opinion. If they wanted to ensure a certain offer of products is available, they’d have had to figure this out beforehand with the lease taker. (Also, I’m not sure the authorities can force any general business to sell alcohol …)

(Above, read “independent business” instead of “private business”. I meant, not a chain store.)

ZM # 176

I wouldn’t belabor the point, but I think it is important. My first shot at finding an online definition of “public realm” (not common usage in the US for obvious reasons) came up with this: “Public realm is defined as any publicly owned streets, pathways, right of ways, parks, publicly accessible open spaces and any public and civic building and facilities.” Your definition seems far more/too expansive.

The reason it matters is that you (and your ilk) have apparently decreed that if something is in the public sphere or realm, then government is free to minutely dictate what we may or may not do and with whom we may do it. Not only that, but the whole point of classifying certain exchanges as being “public” is to advance your project to extend government control over more and more facets of our lives. It is not just that this is oppressive and bullying. It also has huge social costs in terms of loss of diversity. And, by diversity, I mean real differences, not just skin color, national or regional cuisines or costumes or the balancing of vaginas and penises. All US universities now have to adopt the same policies, rules, governance systems, etc., on pain of being denied federal funding.

Unlike the majority of of the commenters here, I don’t believe that “public” is a magic word that instantly waives one’s human rights (including those in the Constitution). When a citizen starts a business, they don’t leave their human rights at home. Someone should explain that to the liberal justices who want to make so-called economic rights second-class ones.

It seems we agreed that a restaurant can impose a dress code.
For instance, no religious symbols? No kippah, no veil, no cross?
Surely if it’s a trivial thing to get a shirt, it’s even more trivial to take off a veil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_conspicuous_religious_symbols_in_schools

Or maybe something more targeted: only no headscarves.

The idea that justice is merely a collective decision, is disturbing, sort of like how the idea that reality or madness is nothing more than our collective decision is disturbing.

On the other hand, the idea that justice is somehow an independent entity that exists regardless of our acknowledging it is a form of fundamentalism to which we can all appeal, and its difficult to find boundaries to it.

Which is why I think framing everything in terms of “rights” or “liberty” makes discussion more difficult; It strips away other desirable goals such as community solidarity, dignity, and the flourishing of the human spirit, which help guide our decision-making. It turns every decision into a simple binary of either more or less liberty, as if nothing else mattered.

In the examples above, asserting that a business owner has a right to refuse service, doesn’t tell us anything about whether that would be a delightful state of affairs, or whether it would be miserable; The argument merely tells us that it should happen because of an abstracted preference for liberty.

Declarations of human rights list rights enjoyed by every human being. It is the responsibility of governments (FSVO) to implement them so that human beings actually enjoy them. This may happen either via requirements imposed on governments to organise certain services (justice system, educational system where this is public, etc.) or limit government’s actions (freedom from unreasonable arrest and detention etc.) or require government to impose limits on the action of private citizens or entities (sex discrimination, protection of the family, protection of children etc.).

I’m unclear what you mean by morally obtuse, but can only observe that your notion of “exercising one’s religion” seems extremely large. Indeed, you haven’t indicated any potential bounds on it. So are the following also within allowable bounds of exercising one’s religion, and if not, what principle would be used to limit them:

Human sacrifice, where the sacrificial individual is a volunteer from within the congregation
Human sacrifice, where the sacrificial individual is a purpose-reared infant
Carrying a flaming torch wherever one goes, and thus defying orders of wildfire prevention experts and health and safety rules; any difference if the torch-bearer is the owner of the company or the owner of the property, which we imagine to be covered in dry coniferous forest, where open fire carries a risk of a large wildfire
Refusal to interact with females; for a company owner, will not hire women
Refusal to pay taxes

All these explicitly for religious reasons.

You speak of Christian principles as if they were one single well-defined thing. They aren’t.

I might agree with your positive claim. But not with your normative claim. You’re saying that there are no rights unless the collectivity agrees to them? But if only the collectivity creates rights, then who gave the collectivity the right to create rights in the first place (i.e., before or independently of the collectivity)? It seems to me that your normative claim (if that is what it is) is self-contradictory.

Sure.

There’s a proof by contradiction that rights aren’t created by the claimant, either. It’s actually a pretty good test / exercise, so I recommend you try running it up yourself.

Now. If as you claim the collective can’t create rights, and the individual can’t create rights neither…

They can have no hope of remaining free of the taint of promoting sin, except if course by getting out of the business of buying labor.

Or by dictating the minutiae of their workers’ lives, which is of course the path they wish to follow.

Boundary issues, which — I assert — stem from a failure to understand their workers’ existence as independent moral actors.

[Like I keep saying, the common thread that links all right-wing thought is “it would make sense if you had an empathy disturbance”: same origin as “if you don’t like it, chose something else”, ignoring the constraints that people are under and the necessity to pick-and-chose.]

Collin Street # 190

That’s a nice point that I left myself exposed to because I did not spell out my conclusion. My conclusion is the reverse of the corollary you offer. It is that if collectivities can pluck the right to create rights (by consensus and agreement) out of thin air, then so can individuals. Therefore I think it is a mistake for Chip Daniels to claim some special moral authoritativeness for rights agreed to by collectivities (which I think is his point).

As a normative matter, I don’t think that the source of the rights (collectivities v. individuals) can be dispositive. Rather our rights are what our powers of reason very imperfectly establish. Rights thus grounded in reason are legitimate rights even if every member of the collectivity opposes them.

Ian Maitland: “I suppose that being part of the world we may some time inadvertently perform some acts that very indirectly and remotely and inadvertently help enable some crime. But that is a far cry from serving as the government’s paymaster in facilitating murder. There is an immense literature on causation in the law that addresses this point.”

I find it hard to accept that you’re offering this bit in good faith. You see, we can accept that the Greens believe contraception is murder without granting that their belief is correct, legally or otherwise. In fact, under the law, it isn’t murder; so legal precedents on causation are entirely irrelevant.

In fact, the Greens are making a moral claim: That providing access to contraception through one form of compensation is an affront to their religious views, while providing access to contraception through another form of compensation is not an affront to their religious views. Why should we take this claim seriously?

Also, too, if the Greens were in fact Christian Scientists, could they claim a religious objection to providing any health insurance at all? Would you support that claim? Why or why not?

Ian Maitland # 204

I meant “does that excuse you FOR shooting him.”

Ian Maitland,

“I wouldn’t belabor the point, but I think it is important. My first shot at finding an online definition of “public realm” (not common usage in the US for obvious reasons) came up with this: “Public realm is defined as any publicly owned streets, pathways, right of ways, parks, publicly accessible open spaces and any public and civic building and facilities.” Your definition seems far more/too expansive.”

Well one of my undergraduate majors was History and “public realm” is common usage. It is contrasted against the private or domestic sphere.

Actually probably in pre-modern times there was not as much distinction between these , there was still some since you have the King’s two bodies one of which is his private body which uses latrines and the like, and the other was his public body as the King which was held to be a corporate body accountable to everyone in the realm.

But by the Victorian era there is a huge distinction between the public and private realms, and this is particularly played out with gender norms since largely women were relegated to life in the private sphere, while the public sphere was dominated by men and their business and civic activities. Of course women did a lot of shopping and church going etc and working class women worked in the public realm, mostly middle class women who didn’t work stayed in the domestic sphere and it was considered uncouth for women to be in the public sphere, so there was some blurring of public and private.

By the mid 20th C there was more blurring again and less distinction, women took up more roles in the public sphere so there was not a gender distinction between the spheres as much anymore, you see this blurring particularly in slogans like “the personal is the political” etc.

The definition you have found is sort of right for Urban Planning which I am studying now.

In Urban Planning and Design the public realm is parts of the built and natural space open to the public, or else viewed by the public like the outside facades of buildings etc.

Businesses are a bit like building facades in that there is some mix of public accessibility and private ownership. So there is less government control than over parks and roads and railways, but more government control than over what goes on in people’s houses.

“Not only that, but the whole point of classifying certain exchanges as being “public” is to advance your project to extend government control over more and more facets of our lives.”

No its not. In history it refers to the non domestic sphere, like businesses, schools, civics, churches etc. This is descriptive since these are all public activities and spaces and institutions, not domestic ones.

“When a citizen starts a business, they don’t leave their human rights at home. Someone should explain that to the liberal justices who want to make so-called economic rights second-class ones.”

Everyone gets their human rights all the time. If they are denied their human rights at any time they can take whoever denied them to court about it.

If the businesses want other rights that aren’t human rights like the right to discriminate against protected categories of people, then that is not a human right at all, and actually it would contravene other people’s human rights.

Economic rights are the rights of property ownership, and property ownership in America is constitutionally only legal if it meets the Public Use test. If it doesn’t the government can confiscate the property. So it is lucky for businesses in America that the government makes them so many useful regulations to follow so they meet the Public Use test, rather than the government not telling them how to meet the Public Use test and then just confiscating property when unregulated businesses don’t meet the Public Use test.

bruce wilder # 200

“The Greens are making the claim that, as employers, they should be able inhibit their employees’ access to medical care by limiting the scope of legally mandated insurance.”

With respect, Bruce, that is inaccurate and unfair. The Greens’ actions were completely consistent with the way they have run their company for almost (?) 40 years. Hobby Lobby stores are closed on the Sabbath. The company is widely recognized for its social responsibility. Last time I looked, I think Hobby Lobby paid its in-store salespeople $15 an hour — the minimum wage endorsed by Bernie.

I don’t know how to say it plainer than I already have. The Greens didn’t want to be part of the process of enabling their employees’ to commit what they consider to be murder. The issue in the case was not WHETHER employees would have access to abortifacient contraception but HOW they would have access to it. The Court suggested a workaround that would leave the Greens out of the process.

Hobby Lobby is not the only employer in (any) town. It is in a very competitive market (retail). The company’s values were well-known to employees. True, no one could have foreseen that Obamacare would conscript corporations to deliver health care. But the Greens’ objection relates only to a minuscule fraction of the medical package that the insurance will provide. It should be possible to devise a workaround. And liberals still want to force the Greens to violate their deeply held beliefs or sell or shutter their business?

And none dare call that bigotry?

ZM # 207.

See Keith # 208. In all my years in law school and business school I never heard of the Public Use test. How would your square it with the takings clause of the Constitution, not to mention the contracts clause? If it exists, it is limited to very specific applications like private use of public property (not private property).

Indeed, if I recall right, an early draft of the Declaration of Independence’s phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” was “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Property.”

Ian Maitland:

I do not see how the Greens are being forced to violate their religious convictions. They are not required to seek any particular medical treatment for themselves.

Obamacare is convoluted enough, imo. But, Hobby Lobby also does not have to self-insure. If having an insurance company for this tiny slice of the package salves their tender consciences, it is ok by me.

John Holbo,

In reverse order:

“In short, how do we know which kinds of discrimination are ‘unjust’? This is a matter of dispute, not a thing that is universally agreed, nor a thing that can be settled by simply consulting settled law.”

Nope, in Australia it is pretty much universally agreed. Only a small and shrinking minority don’t agree. Especially in my State Victoria, John Quiggin’s State Queensland has more people who disagree. And I already showed you all the laws we have which are as settled as any legislation is.

Research found that the modernist classification of these categories of people was wrong and unfair and based on pseudo-scientific claims like measuring skulls, or saying women can’t do anything since they get hysterical due to having reproductive organs, or [insert pseudo-scientific claim].

In our personal experience we encounter people of other races, women, disabled people, gay people etc and find in our encounters they are just like any other people pretty much, and the differences are not differences that make them inferior types of people.

We also have secondary experience such as reading books or watching films about or by these types of people.

We also develop some scepticism about the practice of categorisation itself, and what utility categorisation has, and what relevance it has and when it is useful and has relevance and when it does not.

This education started in childhood education in Australia if you are my age and born in the late 1970s. I am not sure for people who are older than me. People who are younger than me are educated about it from childhood education too.

The minority of people who don’t agree are probably mostly older, which was something that was brought up in posts about Brexit in the UK and how racism or anti-immigration sentiment was part of that. These people didn’t have an education about this issue starting from childhood education like my generation, so even people without university level education are educated about the history of discrimination and why discrimination is wrong and unfair and dangerous.

“But how can one tell which is which, in any given case? Your only suggestion – the plummy voice – does not help.”

You use the plummy voice to show people you are being humorously archaic, you are right it is not explanatory. But customs are important as well as explanations in forming and performing social norms. I suppose if people don’t know the explanations then they might think the custom isn’t based on anything.

We are educated about this since childhood education in Australia. We don’t have rote learning about it, we learn about it in a variety of ways and are meant to think for ourselves about it, and most people end up agreeing. There are ongoing social and political conversations about it. John Quiggin might know more about why people disagree since he lives in Queensland where more people disagree than where I live.

“Suppose someone says that discrimination against gays is just “recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another”, plus rating their relative quality. Straight better than gay. What’s wrong with that?””

I already know this since I have learned about it by now. If the person hasn’t learned about it by now, then you might ignore them and change the subject, you might disagree with them, or you might try to educate them about it and change their minds. If you try to educate them and change their minds it might take a long time, unless you can get them to have a Eureka! moment and quickly educate them somehow. There are probably people who specialise in doing education about this in workplaces and schools etc.

It is wrong because there is nothing inferior about people who are homosexual. The science was all pseudo-science and Sodom and Gomorrah is all about male rape even if you want to be strictly religious in your arguments you can only argue male rape is wrong. The Jewsish people passed through the Cities of the Plains and got raped and got out and decided they hated homosexual acts after getting raped and outlawed them. They did not pass through a lovely pleasant city full of loving married gay couples who were very nice and invited them for dinner and hospitably gave them places to stay. And I too think male rape is wrong in the Navy and wherever else. It isnt the same as being homosexual.

You could have a long discussion about it with the person, why they came to their conclusion and why you think they are wrong and see if you can educate them and change their minds.

@ZM 08.09.16 at 2:36 am

Sounds as if you’re suggesting that discrimination against ‘women, non-white races, gay people, people with disabilities, etc.’ and their categorising as inferior was somehow an invention of ‘the modernist project’ beginning in the 17th century. Apparently, in the good old Middle Ages, women, gay people, people with disabilities and various oppressed traditional identities were just fine. This is toxic reactionary mythmaking. I’ll grant that white-vs-non-white racism developed late, in parallel with colonialism, but that’s simply because that was when the white-vs-non-white distinction became more relevant than others, not because it was the fault of the evil ‘modernist project’.

You make everything too broad John Holbo. I live in Australia in the 21st century, I’m not doing a survey project on discrimination through space and time. This would take me years and several volumes.

If you want to argue that I’m wrong in some particular thing you can, but you can’t ask me to argue with everyone who ever existed through out space and time and all their various opinions. It’s too broad.

Minorities are also murderers and burglars and yes we do ignore their views about murdering and burglary and send them to gaol.

F Foundling,

I had a professor who thought maybe women had a better lot in the dark ages due to the general lack of regulations. It’s hard to say from the recorded history since there wasn’t much literacy and recording of things.

In pre modern and early modern England women were not treated equally, but it wasn’t to do with modernist classifications. I think homosexuality became a category in the modernist era like race, I think there were just homosexual acts before that, not a category of person. Disability is the same, for instance mental illness was just episodes of madness or melancholy or raving, not a category.

The sorts of discrimination we are talking about is about modernist classifications of types of people as inferior. It’s not to do with how things were understood in the Middle Ages which were a long time ago

I don’t think you would have current anti-discrimination views and policy and laws before this modernist classification of people as inferior, since you can’t put the cart before the horse.

But arguably you could have skipped the modernist classification of people as inferior, you can see strains of this in Shakespeare and Montaigne and other writers, but it didn’t prevail. The Tempest seems to be directed at James I and VI for not addressing this politically, as Prospero reads too many books and gets usurped where he goes to an Island representing America and alters the life of Caliban then has to take him back to Europe with him since he is not fully indigenous and hybrid. It’s quite interesting since its against hybridity like The Winter’s Tale, but also anti-colonial. Sort of like a 1600s Brittish version of third world nationalism.

“Minorities are also murderers and burglars”

Too Donald Trump for me, ZM!”

I don’t know what you mean by this.

I certainly don’t mean that people in minority groups are murderers and burglars — I mean that a minority of people commit murders and burglaries.

Do we have to have lengthy arguments with all the murderers through out space and time about murdering being wrong because a minority of people commit murders?

No we don’t. We don’t have to spend lots of time explaining to them how murder is wrong, they should know it anyhow unless they got raised by wolves. If they don’t know it and kills someone then they go to gaol and get rehabilitated hopefully or just stay bad and keep insisting murder is good and the prison authorities have to decide whether to keep them in gaol forever or release them on parol.

But we don’t have to argue all the time about how murder is wrong just because a small minority of people insist on murdering people.

Dostoevsky wrote a book about it, people can write books about it, but we don’t have to be drawn into always having to argue that murder is wrong due to this small minority of murderers, we just prosecute people who commit murders.

Apart from Black Lives Matter which has to spend a great deal of time explaining how murdering black people is also wrong, and you can’t murder people just because they are black, it’s discrimination and still murder.

So a minority of people insisting on something wrong, does not mean we are under any obligation to countenance their arguments, we can try to educate them or explain things to them, but we don’t have to countenance the possibility they are right or else you would be forever countenancing murder not being wrong which we don’t do.

So why should I countenance a minority of people saying discrimination is not wrong?

Discrimination has led to murder, torture, rape, imprisonment, child stealing, theft of property, etc so its not some benign choice like preferring a bowling hat to a beret.

Just because a minority of people insist on something wrong not being wrong, I don’t have to countenance it unless you are going to argue I have to countenance murder is good because some minority of people commit murders.

A minority of people insisting on doing something wrong, does not mean I am obligated to forever be countenancing their arguments. I might engage with them to change their minds or since I like arguments, but I am not obliged to consider they are right, since I am not obliged to consider murder is right.

If you will have me obliged to consider murder being right, you will have to explain to me why I am thus obligated.

And if you will have me obliged to consider discrimination is right, you will have to explain to me why I am thus obligated in that case as well.

Because I don’t feel under any such obligation.

“I am arguing that you are wrong to say ‘all discrimination is wrong’. Because either this is just wrong, if we are counting in the plummy voice sense. Or it is circular, if we are ruling it out, leaving only the sense of ‘unjust prejudicial treatment’. Because we already know that injustice is wrong. We only disagree, potentially, about what is unjust, ergo wrong. ”

I am not counting in the plummy voice sense, but we don’t use discrimination any more to mean that apart from affecting archaism. Or unless you are old enough to have lived when that was the main meaning of discrimination and you buy a lot of nice wine or art or something. “How very discriminating darling!” no one says that apart from if they are old or being humorously archaic or trying to impress art dealers maybe (?).

It isn’t my fault that injustice is wrong, so discrimination is wrong. I can’t help it if unjust things are wrong and discrimination is unjust and wrong.

I already explained why it is unjust and wrong, because of modernist categorisation of people into types and the categorisation of some types into being inferior based on prejudice and pseud0-science and also because of concurrent lack of thinking all humans are possessed of inherent dignity and rights based on their humanity and nothing else.

I don’t even think that you actually think discrimination against women or non-white races or homosexuals or people with disabilities is just or right.

If you want to argue that you can, but it seems to me all you are telling me is I have to countenance the views of someone who isn’t even commenting but who existed at some point in space or time and holds that discrimination is right.

I can’t argue with air.

“But Black Lives Matter isn’t really a movement that has a significant presence in Australia, right? Your argument against discrimination against blacks only applies in Australia, right? (You could start a BLMIA movement, I suppose, remaining agnostic about BLM.)”

No it doesn’t. I just happen to live in Australia. I am perfectly happy to tell people in other countries that discrimination against black people and murdering them is wrong too.

“More generally, I am not arguing that minorities are necessarily right, I am objecting to your implication that they are necessarily wrong, i.e. you can safely ignore what they think. Surely that is not generally the case. So how can we be sure it is the case in this case, i.e. regarding what counts as wrongful discrimination and not?”

I of course do not think that minorities are necessarily wrong. I never said that at all. I just said that I don’t necessarily have to countenance the rightness of every single minority view point.

How can I be sure that the minority who say discrimination is right are wrong in this claim?

1. The scientific evidence for their claims is pseudo-science and full of faults and prejudice

2. Discrimination is not a morally neutral thing — whole classes of people have been enslaved, colonised, tortured, murdered, raped, displaced, etc due to discrimination

3. Humans are not inferior period. Some people commit crimes and should go to gaol. Maybe some people who are psychopaths can’t change I don’t know. I personally find such people creepy but it is based on their behaviour. But humans are not inferior in the way that discrimination posits according to sex, race, sexual orientation, (dis)ability. Maybe some people are better at mathematics, or building houses, or cooking, or whatever. But people are not inferior as humans based on these pseudo-scientific categorisations. They are completely flawed and dangerous.

You think that Nazis are not a despised minority in US? Should a baker be compelled to serve them?
(Some ma retort “but they are despised by their beliefs! they can simply stop being nazis”: but the same argument applies to Muslims.)

What in your argument would protect the right at a restaurant of, say, a Jew to wear a kippah and not of a Nazi to wear a swastika? (Or do you think that both right should be protected, or that neither should be?)

John Holbo,

“But, so long we can agree to agree that it isn’t discrimination that is bad, but unjust discrimination – i.e. injustice – and so long as we agree that it isn’t just in Australia but everywhere that the claims of justice have strength, then all we have left to do is figure out: what justice is.”

No, the actions and speech that constitute the recent meaning of discrimination (Discrimination Type B) not the archaic meaning of discrimination (Discrimination Type A) are wrong.

Discrimination Type A is maybe okay depending on what the discrimination is but archaic, and Discrimination Type B is wrong.

Justice is much broader than Discrimination Type B being wrong. This will turn into a very long thread if its going to turn into a discussion on “what Justice is”. I don’t mind, maybe it will get to over 1000 comments if it does.

“We all agree murder is unjust and wrong, of course, but some people (see above) do not agree that it is wrong for private business owners to refuse to bake cakes for gay weddings.”

No. Some people, namely murderers, also think murdering isn’t wrong. If they have a conscience then they repent and go to gaol and reform, some murderers are psychopaths and don’t appear to have consciences and don’t genuinely repent although sometimes they trick people and get out of gaol and murder someone else.

“I appreciate that Australian law has something to say on the subject, but thankfully we agree that is irrelevant, since we are not planning to stop our claims at the Australian shoreline – or 3 mile international waters limit line.”

It isn’t irrelevant. The other countries could look at Australian laws in determining their own Anti-Discrimination legislation if they don’t have enough laws already. Then Australian law could influence other jurisprudence outside of our jurisdiction. Australian law can be as relevant as anything else is.

“So why is it unjust to refuse to bake cakes for gay weddings but not unjust to refuse service to the shoeless and shirtless?”

Everyone can get shoes and shirts since we don’t live in Dicken’s England. If you don’t own any you can get them free from charities, and how can you afford dinner if you can’t get free shoes and shirts? If someone can’t afford food this is a worse injustice than being refused service for not wearing shoes and shirts. But the government provides income support and charities provide food too. If you go back to colonial Australia Indigenous people often didn’t wear shoes or shirts, and now I think of it they shouldn’t have been refused service for not wearing shoes and shirts due to their culture. But they wear shoes and shirts now where I live. If you go up North I am not sure what restaurants do about shoes and shirts since its so hot and humid and there are more Indigenous people. It would possibly be discrimination refusing to serve an Indigenous person who went in a traditional outfit without shoes and shirts since its their culture.

Some people have homosexual orientations. This is not the same as a choice to wear shoes and shirts apart from for people who don’t wear shoes and shirts for important cultural reasons, then they shouldn’t be discriminated against either.

It is very wrong to tell people to be heterosexual to get a cake. Its too much to ask of someone for a cake. The shop is a public business and should serve everyone apart from very drunk and disorderly people who try buying cakes or dangerous people with knives and a glint in their eye or something.

“Let me tell you what I think: I think it has to do with harm hereby done to gay people.
Does that seem like a good starting point? Nothing about the inherent wrongness of discrimination, because that is just false; and nothing about the inherent wrongness of thinking some people are inferior.”

No. It isn’t about harm, its about Discrimination Type B being wrong. It also causes harm to people, but say someone said they didn’t think they were harming anyone being Discriminatory Type B, it would still be wrong. Discrimination Type B is incorrect and wrong in and of itself.

Also there are just and reasonable harms, like sending criminals to gaol and publicly shaming criminals and bad people and so on.

You could publicly shame a gay person or a murderer, and it would harm either of them I guess, but it would only be wrong to publicly shame the gay person, not the murderer. The same goes with putting them in gaol, it would be wrong to put the gay person in gaol for being gay, and right to put the murderer in gaol for murdering someone.

So its Discrimination (Type B) that is wrong, not the harm, or else murderers would all complain about being harmed by being put in gaol and publicly shamed, and what could you do then? You’d end up lawless with a bunch of murderers running around causing havoc and no one knowing right from wrong anymore, and going back to scratch having to argue about why murder is wrong every ten seconds.

Actually maybe America has gone backwards in law abidingness the last few decades, now you have to argue about killing black people being wrong all the time like being in a country torn apart by warlords or something. Boston Legal is very different from L A Law. I don’t think this happened in Australia.

“After all, people are allowed to think what they like. Harm. Reasonable?”

No I don’t agree with this. People should try to think the right thing as much as they can and other people should help them. Thinking wrong things can end up in doing wrong things. It was thinking that happened before Nazi Germany, so the thinking led to the atrocities. If people corrected all their wrong thinking beforehand, think of all the lives that would have been saved and pain that would have been avoided. The quality of one’s thoughts is very important since it governs everything else.

(please delete earlier version of this in moderation for using the name of African country torn apart by warlords)

ZM @237 “People should try to think the right thing as much as they can and other people should help them. Thinking wrong things can end up in doing wrong things. It was thinking that happened before Nazi Germany, so the thinking led to the atrocities. If people corrected all their wrong thinking beforehand, think of all the lives that would have been saved and pain that would have been avoided. The quality of one’s thoughts is very important since it governs everything else.”

ZM, believe it or not, I think you have a good point. Since cognitive psychology tells us that people have very strong irrational collectivist biases, then strong regard for personal liberty, including the liberty to act on beliefs others find repugnant, is the most useful way to correct our most fundamental wrong kinds of thinking. It is therefore your moral duty to be a libertarian.

John Holbo (233): Why don’t we go back to your opening post: it questioned whether the Cato guy was being a classical liberal in opposing state interference in the great cake controversy.

The conceptual keynote is, rather, liberty (against coercion.) But since some coercion may be individual liberty-enhancing, some government may be ok.

Can we keep to the liberal line of argument and stifle utilitarian Jeremiads for now? The state can prevent harm to the gay couple, no doubt. My question is, will that entail significant harm to the baker? If yes, a liberal should argue against such interference.

The answer probably depends on the details. If there was no explicit anti-discrimination statute before the conflict, and the state demands the baker bake the cake, and the baker is deeply traumatized by being forced to provide that service (let’s say “he was born that way” to keep religion out), it sounds like a case against state meddling. (I anticipate this in return: a natural-born killer is also “harmed” when not permitted to murder. Alas, bloody Jerry’s creeping back in, grinning: “You see how interpersonal utility comparisons are necessary sometimes.”)

Now if there’s an a priori, clear and explicit rule against such discrimination, I suppose it will simply drive conservative Abrahamists, as well as other bakers who don’t like catering to gay events, out of the wedding cake business and, if that niche is a major contibutor to the average baker’s bottom line, out of business altogether. It’s a different type of harm… I don’t know what classical liberals would make of it.

@241 “let’s say “he was born that way” to keep religion out”

This is the major problem with so many liberals and progressives.

For so many people on this thread, being “born a certain way” is privileged over freedom of conscience. This is an error that privileges tribal and sexual identities other other kinds of identities. What makes (at least some) people who they are, is that they believe, and that freedom to follow your higher callings is relatively more valuable to society, anyway, in my view.

@243: It’s only for the sake of argument that I assume opponents of gay marriage to have been “born this way.”

Keith,

“ZM, believe it or not, I think you have a good point. Since cognitive psychology tells us that people have very strong irrational collectivist biases, then strong regard for personal liberty, including the liberty to act on beliefs others find repugnant, is the most useful way to correct our most fundamental wrong kinds of thinking. It is therefore your moral duty to be a libertarian.”

I don’t think I have to be a libertarian to agree that people should be speak out according to their consciences. I just have to say people are obliged to speak out according to their consciences.

Yes I agree that discussions are useful too, but I still don’t exactly see why I need to be a libertarian to think discussing things is useful either.

“For so many people on this thread, being “born a certain way” is privileged over freedom of conscience. This is an error that privileges tribal and sexual identities other other kinds of identities. What makes (at least some) people who they are, is that they believe, and that freedom to follow your higher callings is relatively more valuable to society, anyway, in my view.”

To be honest I have some sympathy with this in terms of protecting cultural and religious belief from infringements, but overall I think that discrimination is wrong and this outweighs my sympathy for maintaining cultural or religious differences in this case.

The Judeo-Christian prohibition against homosexual acts is pretty much against male rape judging by the Sodom and Gomorrah story, it doesn’t tell us anything about how to relate to loving homosexual couples because that is not what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah.

And also I think Australia is ahead in this discussion in comparison with America, and I think that you can’t really enforce laws without engaging in ongoing public discussion about the issues, particularly when there is significant change involved from discrimination being legal and practiced by the State, to being made illegal. Without education and public discussion this change is confusing for people. And you have to open up space for people to say some things which are discriminatory if they are there beliefs, in order to have the public discussions.

Collins Street
Yes.
But note: “including the liberty to act on beliefs others find repugnant” – like in belief in their right to shit in the streets? Seriously? This seems also a big hole.

And “It is therefore your moral duty to be a libertarian.” – where does this come from logically? Collectivist biases are not the only biases and countering biases is not the only effect of libertarianism.

His argument is even weaker than you credit it with being.

Consider for a moment gays in the 1960’s. Homosexuality was a crime. Bars were routinely raided. And yet gay friendly businesses still existed in places like SF. Surely the principled libertarian position should be seen as defending gay rights against a hostile tyranny of the majority, one with far worse consequences then calling a different baker.

Jim Crow required the coercive power of the state to sustain segregation. Plessy v. Ferguson was a criminal case, the State of Louisiana enshrining discrimination into law.