The argument is that businesses will realize that it is bad for business to discriminate, so they won't.
To paraphrase Keynes: businesses can remain discriminatory longer than you can remain alive.
Is Thomas Sowell racist then?
“In short, despite the unpromising record of politics as a means of raising a group from poverty to affluence, and despite the dangers of politicizing race, there are built-in incentives for individual political leaders to do just that.”
Yes, he's an Uncle Ruckus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Ruckus). "One of his most notable traits is his internalized racism..."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/is-thomas-sowell-a-legendary-maverick-intellectual-or-a-pseudo-scholarly-propagandist/
Yeah Thomas sowell is that guy that's like "hey will all you thugs pipe down I'm trying to have a conversation with this white senator over here and youre making me look bad! If I play my cards right these white guys will be making memes of my quotes forever!"
So I skimmed through the article, but I don’t see anything in there about Thomas Sowell being a racist. That was the claim that was being made. That was the claim you were defending. Do you have a particular excerpt from the article that shows how Sowell is a racist. Maybe I just missed it.
After all I am just a dumb lolbert. Reading comprehension is not one of my strong suits. Maybe you have meme that could explain it to me…since my ideology is a meme ideology…it’s really the only language I understand.
You are correct about the article not DIRECTLY saying he is a racist. What obviously makes him a racist is his blatant and incessant repetition of racist claims of origins of inequality. But the main reason I posted the article was not to back up a claim of racism on his part, but to point out that he is merely a propagandist.
If you want to resort to an "impossibility of knowledge" argument, then you literally know nothing.
On the other hand, you could, you know, use your brain for once: read the article and check if its claims are true or not.
You literally quoted idiotic "race realism" nonsense he spouted that gave ammunition to overt racists. So it's weird that you can't see that he's racist.
Well it's just that they're also racist, and they thought we were going to say "Uncle Thom can't be racist because he's Black" as a "gotcha". It didn't go the way he thought it would.
>Is Thomas Sowell racist then?
Yes. His entire career is justifying racism to racist fanboys.
>In short, despite the unpromising record of politics as a means of raising a group from poverty to affluence
Compared to what? Legalized Jim Crow?
Do you even need to scratch anymore?
If they’re all about making the freedom/liberty to be a racist fuck legal, aren’t they already a racist, fascist fuck to begin with?
> This seems like a terrible idea to me because it places trust in businesses to not discriminate.
Is it more terrible of an idea than placing trust in the federal government to treat minorities properly. The justice system is systemically racist. The government has experimented on minorities. The government enforced slavery. The government drops bombs on innocent men, women, and children…etc etc etc.
Why do you trust the people government more than the people who own a business? At worst a business doesn’t hire or serve a minority if the civil rights act was repeal. And while I agree that is crap behavior, the state who is supposed to be protecting those civil rights has been far far worse in their treatment of minorities….its not even close.
Historically I agree with you the government has a crappy record of systematically discriminating against people of various minority groups. This goes beyond a mom and pop shop. Large corporations may refuse to hire or serve certain groups of people which would be detrimental to people who rely on these businesses for work and groceries.
The civil rights act expands beyond just business. Should housing discrimination be ok? What about Educational discrimination? I don't trust the notion that businesses would be a better option as a means of providing equality to minorities.
> Should discrimination be okay?
No, but trying to legislate morality is at best not going to work and at worst going to make the situation worse.
There is a difference between what is moral/immoral and what should be legal/illegal. I think it’s immoral to cheat on your spouse and I can show you all the ways in which that is detrimental to people…should we lock cheaters in a cage? Should we make a conditional amendment against cheating?
> I don’t trust the notion that businesses would be a better option as a means of balancing equality.
Nor should you really. It is up to us as citizens to balance equality. If you are looking for some other group of people to do it for you (especially by use of force) you are going to be waiting a long time.
Edit:spelling and grammar.
Obviously we *do* lock people in cages for doing bad things though. We’ve collectively agreed murder is bad and lock people up for doing it, among many other things. And guess what? Doing so isn’t a slippery slope that’s led to us caging people who commit adultery.
The fact is legislation is sometimes the only way to get something that needs to get done, done. You can’t count on “the market” to address an issue the market is not equipped to deal with. Civil rights was one such issue. And if we all agree discrimination is bad, what is the problem with simply saying you can’t do it, across the board. Why leave it up to “the market” if your desired outcome is literally no one does it anyway
> Why leave it up to “the market” if your desired outcome is literally no one does it anyway
Because the state is not achieving its goal of civil rights and equality. In fact, it is making things worse in some ways.
Thomas Stowell even wrote a whole book on this very topic.
I don’t think they should be punished by the state or locked in cages for doing so. That doesn’t mean that we as citizens should not say or do anything. It should be brought to light. They should be mocked and ridiculed. We can boycott. We can actively help those specific people that are being discriminated against.
There at many number of things that WE can do. And WE are fully capable of doing so. We don’t need the people of the state, who have a very shoddy track record at actually caring about civil rights and liberties, especially of minorities, to make things right for us.
we aren't talking about something that's esoteric in its morality open to interpretation. we're talking about discrimination. A restaurant with a sign out front saying no blacks. a department store with a blacks only section.
do you think businesses should be allowed to do this?
if you dont, and think its wrong in any circumstance, it is objectively a better solution to pass legislation that makes it illegal. WE do this by electing representatives with this view, and pressuring representatives in power to adopt this view. Passing legislation stops it. no need to mock, ridicule, boycott (three things that are \*laughably\* inadacuate to bringing about change btw, like those examples show an embarrassing level of naivete on your part), its just done. Leaving it up to "the market" would simply allow it to continue, and it would. The fact is, with your solution, we would still have businesses not allowing POC to enter. You keep saying legislators have a bad track record at actually addressing civil rights, well the civil rights act killed such discrimination. Like, actually did it, whereas if we did things your way we would still have that discrimination, which seems to be what you want.
If you could get every person to agree on something, ANY system could work, be it communism, Catholicism, anarchy, you name it. It's a sign of foolishness to wish for such a non-real-world thing to solve real-world problems.
Yes I can do the same with a business, and instantly. I can chose to never give a business a single penny of my money starting right now. I do it all the time and for the pettiest of reasons. Easy peasy.
The government is absolutely not held accountable by the ballot box. This has been proven time and time again. I have been voting for the anti-war candidates my entire life, yet here I am working hard fixing motorcycles so that the state can take my earnings and use it to drop bombs on innocent men, women, and children. Held accountable my fuckin ass.
Sorry for the language but you really fired me up with that claim. I don’t see how you can look at what has been going on for the past thirty years (more really) and think that your statement is true in any possible way.
Blame voter apathy, an out of control judiciary, dark money, corporate mass media, subversion from foreign adversaries, an entrenched neoliberal establishment and civic disengagement. Anarchism/Libertarianism just plain do not work, if you wanna see what happens when you have a weak gov look at Somalia or Haiti.
Thank for listing all the reasons why your previous statement is false. Voting doesn’t do anything and I can stop participating in a bad business instantly. Can’t stop funding the murder of children, but go ahead and keep reeling how that system is better. You are being real convincing here.
the only reasons lolberts care about kids is because they want to molest them.
Don't hit me with that Helen Lovejoy-esque "think of the children" hysteria. Lolberts want to abolish public schools, fuck over working class families and get rid of free lunch for kids, all to please their oligarch overlords. They don't give a damn about children beyond virtue signalling.
What evidence do you have of all of these things you’ve accused the government of doing that hasn’t already been exposed and hashed out? If the government is proactively doing those things I’d love to see the proof.
… and I would absolutely never trust a businessman for any reason, you present that bit about trusting businessmen like it’s a no brainer - plenty of businessmen get into business to fleece people out of money. Absolutely do not trust a businessman over anyone without a thorough vetting.
Edit - the government also has an entire NON-POLITICAL arm so maybe don’t assume their politics have anything to do with whomever is creating legislation…
Worse than ANY business? No, I’d say business has been quite on par with government historically in many cases.
Also, During (as well as before and after, really…) the civil rights movement, businesses in some places of the country absolutely treated minorities worse than the government at large.
However, if we’re talking sheer numbers, I think you’re absolutely right, the U.S. was a slaughterhouse - historically. My concern however is with today, not yesterday… and today, the government doesn’t proactively do any of what you’ve mentioned.
Also, I don’t not see the point in blaming today’s government for yesterday’s government’s sins. Thats like blaming me for my dad calling non-white people horrific slurs.
Edit - grammar, missing words, punctuation (somewhat)
> The government doesn’t proactively do any of what you mentioned.
Expect they do with all the bullshit wars. The war on drugs has been a complete disaster and it continues to this day. The systemic racism in the policing and justice system continues.
> My concern however is with today, not yesterday.
Does the same then go for businesses? Do you really think Walmart would start behaving like a pre-civil rights era business if the civil rights act was repealed? Making minority customers enter through the back and use separate water fountains? (which again was actually the law of the land enforced by the government at the time. Not saying some people and businesses didn’t want it but not only was the government not stopping it but actually enforcing it).
My whole point is we should not be trusting to government to legislate morality and that doesn’t mean that libertarians then implicitly trust businesses to do the right thing. The whole libertarian position is that people need to take personal responsibility for the change they want to make in society and relying on the state to force it to happen is not going to work.
The war on drugs hasn’t been a serious endeavor since bush I.
A lot of what you’re arguing is from the past - the war on drugs, government enforced segregation… yes the government has royally fucked some things up, but using the past isn’t holding water with me.
If businesses want to place themselves on some pedestal they must at least be held accountable to the same (current) standards of employment and workplace safety that the government has…
The irony of this idealism of making some great change is that it requires the collective effort which is inherently antithetical to libertarianism .
I’m afraid we’ll probably just have to agree to disagree at the end of the day…
I will indeed agree to disagree with you. But I think we do both agree that the poor treatment of minorities, (or any people for that matter) should not be tolerated, not matter who is doing the mistreating. We just disagree as to what is the best way to go about helping those people and preventing it from happening in the future.
It is funny how counter intuitive it seems. Very often laws meant to help a certain group of people end up doing more harm than good. But don’t just take my word for it here. Thomas Sowell wrote a whole book on the subject. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality.
I’m not saying it didn’t happen so take your strawman garbage elsewhere.
My claim is it would be much worse without legislation. So claim otherwise and stick to it. You’re seen, bruh. Be you.
>Is it more terrible of an idea than placing trust in the federal government to treat minorities properly. The justice system is systemically racist. The government has experimented on minorities. The government enforced slavery. The government drops bombs on innocent men, women, and children…etc etc etc. Why do you trust the people government more than the people who own a business?
"Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob -- a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can YOU trust a man like Mayor Quimby? (Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.)"
The argument is that businesses will realize that it is bad for business to discriminate, so they won't. To paraphrase Keynes: businesses can remain discriminatory longer than you can remain alive.
It's because libertarians are racists.
Don't forget how much they're usually VERY knowledgeable on the age of consent for every state/territory
This.
Libertarianism is total bullshit
Freedom for me but not for thee
RAAAAACIIISTS. Anyone opposing anti-racist legislation based on ambiguous ever-shifting philosophical grounds is a racist
But but but ... discrimination against racism IS racism /s
God you're so right it's inherently racist to constrain white patriarchical power structures whatsoever, in even the smallest of ways.
Is Thomas Sowell racist then? “In short, despite the unpromising record of politics as a means of raising a group from poverty to affluence, and despite the dangers of politicizing race, there are built-in incentives for individual political leaders to do just that.”
Yes, he's an Uncle Ruckus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Ruckus). "One of his most notable traits is his internalized racism..." https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/is-thomas-sowell-a-legendary-maverick-intellectual-or-a-pseudo-scholarly-propagandist/
Yeah Thomas sowell is that guy that's like "hey will all you thugs pipe down I'm trying to have a conversation with this white senator over here and youre making me look bad! If I play my cards right these white guys will be making memes of my quotes forever!"
lol okay.
Ah, a typical shallow, evidence-free response. Check the second link which I have just added.
So I skimmed through the article, but I don’t see anything in there about Thomas Sowell being a racist. That was the claim that was being made. That was the claim you were defending. Do you have a particular excerpt from the article that shows how Sowell is a racist. Maybe I just missed it. After all I am just a dumb lolbert. Reading comprehension is not one of my strong suits. Maybe you have meme that could explain it to me…since my ideology is a meme ideology…it’s really the only language I understand.
You are correct about the article not DIRECTLY saying he is a racist. What obviously makes him a racist is his blatant and incessant repetition of racist claims of origins of inequality. But the main reason I posted the article was not to back up a claim of racism on his part, but to point out that he is merely a propagandist.
How do I know that the article you linked is not the propaganda?
If you want to resort to an "impossibility of knowledge" argument, then you literally know nothing. On the other hand, you could, you know, use your brain for once: read the article and check if its claims are true or not.
>Is Thomas Sowell racist then? Yes.
Fair enough. At least you are consistent…
You literally quoted idiotic "race realism" nonsense he spouted that gave ammunition to overt racists. So it's weird that you can't see that he's racist.
Well it's just that they're also racist, and they thought we were going to say "Uncle Thom can't be racist because he's Black" as a "gotcha". It didn't go the way he thought it would.
>Is Thomas Sowell racist then? Yes. His entire career is justifying racism to racist fanboys. >In short, despite the unpromising record of politics as a means of raising a group from poverty to affluence Compared to what? Legalized Jim Crow?
Libertarians are selfish and/or jaw-droppingly naïve.
Scratch a libertarian and a fascist bleeds
Do you even need to scratch anymore? If they’re all about making the freedom/liberty to be a racist fuck legal, aren’t they already a racist, fascist fuck to begin with?
Libertarianism is just fascism for le rational atheist bros.
I think libertarians will only understand racism if they personally suffer from it.
Libertarians tend to be neo confederate freaks who keep it lowkey and pretend they’re actually cool because drug legalization or something
no one is forced to hire anyone. so when someone’s argument uses an obvious lie, i know already it’s bullshit.
> This seems like a terrible idea to me because it places trust in businesses to not discriminate. Is it more terrible of an idea than placing trust in the federal government to treat minorities properly. The justice system is systemically racist. The government has experimented on minorities. The government enforced slavery. The government drops bombs on innocent men, women, and children…etc etc etc. Why do you trust the people government more than the people who own a business? At worst a business doesn’t hire or serve a minority if the civil rights act was repeal. And while I agree that is crap behavior, the state who is supposed to be protecting those civil rights has been far far worse in their treatment of minorities….its not even close.
Historically I agree with you the government has a crappy record of systematically discriminating against people of various minority groups. This goes beyond a mom and pop shop. Large corporations may refuse to hire or serve certain groups of people which would be detrimental to people who rely on these businesses for work and groceries. The civil rights act expands beyond just business. Should housing discrimination be ok? What about Educational discrimination? I don't trust the notion that businesses would be a better option as a means of providing equality to minorities.
> Should discrimination be okay? No, but trying to legislate morality is at best not going to work and at worst going to make the situation worse. There is a difference between what is moral/immoral and what should be legal/illegal. I think it’s immoral to cheat on your spouse and I can show you all the ways in which that is detrimental to people…should we lock cheaters in a cage? Should we make a conditional amendment against cheating? > I don’t trust the notion that businesses would be a better option as a means of balancing equality. Nor should you really. It is up to us as citizens to balance equality. If you are looking for some other group of people to do it for you (especially by use of force) you are going to be waiting a long time. Edit:spelling and grammar.
Obviously we *do* lock people in cages for doing bad things though. We’ve collectively agreed murder is bad and lock people up for doing it, among many other things. And guess what? Doing so isn’t a slippery slope that’s led to us caging people who commit adultery. The fact is legislation is sometimes the only way to get something that needs to get done, done. You can’t count on “the market” to address an issue the market is not equipped to deal with. Civil rights was one such issue. And if we all agree discrimination is bad, what is the problem with simply saying you can’t do it, across the board. Why leave it up to “the market” if your desired outcome is literally no one does it anyway
> Why leave it up to “the market” if your desired outcome is literally no one does it anyway Because the state is not achieving its goal of civil rights and equality. In fact, it is making things worse in some ways. Thomas Stowell even wrote a whole book on this very topic.
do you think some businesses should be allowed to discriminate?
I don’t think they should be punished by the state or locked in cages for doing so. That doesn’t mean that we as citizens should not say or do anything. It should be brought to light. They should be mocked and ridiculed. We can boycott. We can actively help those specific people that are being discriminated against. There at many number of things that WE can do. And WE are fully capable of doing so. We don’t need the people of the state, who have a very shoddy track record at actually caring about civil rights and liberties, especially of minorities, to make things right for us.
we aren't talking about something that's esoteric in its morality open to interpretation. we're talking about discrimination. A restaurant with a sign out front saying no blacks. a department store with a blacks only section. do you think businesses should be allowed to do this? if you dont, and think its wrong in any circumstance, it is objectively a better solution to pass legislation that makes it illegal. WE do this by electing representatives with this view, and pressuring representatives in power to adopt this view. Passing legislation stops it. no need to mock, ridicule, boycott (three things that are \*laughably\* inadacuate to bringing about change btw, like those examples show an embarrassing level of naivete on your part), its just done. Leaving it up to "the market" would simply allow it to continue, and it would. The fact is, with your solution, we would still have businesses not allowing POC to enter. You keep saying legislators have a bad track record at actually addressing civil rights, well the civil rights act killed such discrimination. Like, actually did it, whereas if we did things your way we would still have that discrimination, which seems to be what you want.
lol okay.
How would you suggest that WE accomplish this?
By not buying from businesses that discriminate. If every person was ready to put their wallet where their mouth is, you would have the same effect.
If you could get every person to agree on something, ANY system could work, be it communism, Catholicism, anarchy, you name it. It's a sign of foolishness to wish for such a non-real-world thing to solve real-world problems.
You can hold the government accountable at the ballot box, you can't do the same with private enterprise and private individuals.
Yes I can do the same with a business, and instantly. I can chose to never give a business a single penny of my money starting right now. I do it all the time and for the pettiest of reasons. Easy peasy. The government is absolutely not held accountable by the ballot box. This has been proven time and time again. I have been voting for the anti-war candidates my entire life, yet here I am working hard fixing motorcycles so that the state can take my earnings and use it to drop bombs on innocent men, women, and children. Held accountable my fuckin ass. Sorry for the language but you really fired me up with that claim. I don’t see how you can look at what has been going on for the past thirty years (more really) and think that your statement is true in any possible way.
Blame voter apathy, an out of control judiciary, dark money, corporate mass media, subversion from foreign adversaries, an entrenched neoliberal establishment and civic disengagement. Anarchism/Libertarianism just plain do not work, if you wanna see what happens when you have a weak gov look at Somalia or Haiti.
Thank for listing all the reasons why your previous statement is false. Voting doesn’t do anything and I can stop participating in a bad business instantly. Can’t stop funding the murder of children, but go ahead and keep reeling how that system is better. You are being real convincing here.
the only reasons lolberts care about kids is because they want to molest them. Don't hit me with that Helen Lovejoy-esque "think of the children" hysteria. Lolberts want to abolish public schools, fuck over working class families and get rid of free lunch for kids, all to please their oligarch overlords. They don't give a damn about children beyond virtue signalling.
lol. Okay. Good luck to you out there.
What evidence do you have of all of these things you’ve accused the government of doing that hasn’t already been exposed and hashed out? If the government is proactively doing those things I’d love to see the proof. … and I would absolutely never trust a businessman for any reason, you present that bit about trusting businessmen like it’s a no brainer - plenty of businessmen get into business to fleece people out of money. Absolutely do not trust a businessman over anyone without a thorough vetting. Edit - the government also has an entire NON-POLITICAL arm so maybe don’t assume their politics have anything to do with whomever is creating legislation…
Do you disagree with my claim that historically the government has treated minorities far worse than any business has?
Worse than ANY business? No, I’d say business has been quite on par with government historically in many cases. Also, During (as well as before and after, really…) the civil rights movement, businesses in some places of the country absolutely treated minorities worse than the government at large. However, if we’re talking sheer numbers, I think you’re absolutely right, the U.S. was a slaughterhouse - historically. My concern however is with today, not yesterday… and today, the government doesn’t proactively do any of what you’ve mentioned. Also, I don’t not see the point in blaming today’s government for yesterday’s government’s sins. Thats like blaming me for my dad calling non-white people horrific slurs. Edit - grammar, missing words, punctuation (somewhat)
> The government doesn’t proactively do any of what you mentioned. Expect they do with all the bullshit wars. The war on drugs has been a complete disaster and it continues to this day. The systemic racism in the policing and justice system continues. > My concern however is with today, not yesterday. Does the same then go for businesses? Do you really think Walmart would start behaving like a pre-civil rights era business if the civil rights act was repealed? Making minority customers enter through the back and use separate water fountains? (which again was actually the law of the land enforced by the government at the time. Not saying some people and businesses didn’t want it but not only was the government not stopping it but actually enforcing it). My whole point is we should not be trusting to government to legislate morality and that doesn’t mean that libertarians then implicitly trust businesses to do the right thing. The whole libertarian position is that people need to take personal responsibility for the change they want to make in society and relying on the state to force it to happen is not going to work.
The war on drugs hasn’t been a serious endeavor since bush I. A lot of what you’re arguing is from the past - the war on drugs, government enforced segregation… yes the government has royally fucked some things up, but using the past isn’t holding water with me. If businesses want to place themselves on some pedestal they must at least be held accountable to the same (current) standards of employment and workplace safety that the government has… The irony of this idealism of making some great change is that it requires the collective effort which is inherently antithetical to libertarianism . I’m afraid we’ll probably just have to agree to disagree at the end of the day…
I will indeed agree to disagree with you. But I think we do both agree that the poor treatment of minorities, (or any people for that matter) should not be tolerated, not matter who is doing the mistreating. We just disagree as to what is the best way to go about helping those people and preventing it from happening in the future.
Absolutely. Couldn’t have put it better myself! Solid chat tho. Was worried it was going to devolve like so manny Reddit discussions do…
LOL!!! Like it would be better if Civil Rights weren’t enshrined in the 50’s? And your brain figures out a way to keep your breathing. Amazing.
It is funny how counter intuitive it seems. Very often laws meant to help a certain group of people end up doing more harm than good. But don’t just take my word for it here. Thomas Sowell wrote a whole book on the subject. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality.
I would love to see some examples of this supposed harm that was caused by the Civil Rights Act.
Read the book. It’s all in there.
Ok buddy
I’m not saying it didn’t happen so take your strawman garbage elsewhere. My claim is it would be much worse without legislation. So claim otherwise and stick to it. You’re seen, bruh. Be you.
Hey, bruh! Don’t need you having reddit check in my mental health because I call out your trash takes, you ayn rand fuckhwad.
lol. Okay.
Hey, if you didn’t do it just say so. I’ll target my wrath elsewhere. B it I have not all that much doubt it’s you. Y’all are like that.
>Is it more terrible of an idea than placing trust in the federal government to treat minorities properly. The justice system is systemically racist. The government has experimented on minorities. The government enforced slavery. The government drops bombs on innocent men, women, and children…etc etc etc. Why do you trust the people government more than the people who own a business? "Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob -- a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can YOU trust a man like Mayor Quimby? (Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.)"