Many of the zealous Ron Paul libertarian arguments make sense to some extent, but fall apart when you factor in how common human flaws will factor into their vision on a large scale.
The 'other kinds of oppression' would be things like forcing people in charge of a private business to serve customers they don't want to serve, which they see as an unjustified sort of coercion. They believe that people should be left alone as much as possible, so long as they aren't actively causing harm to others. I halfway agree with them, except I go the extra step in recognizing how cultural feedback loops reinforce people's prejudices until they eventually manifest into harmful action. I believe in free association, but at the same time recognize that people tend not to learn to get along unless forced into circumstances where it's necessary to do so. So it may seem on the surface like an unnecessary infringement on a guy's rights to tell him he can't operate an openly racist pub, but it prevents the overwhelming likelihood of far greater rights infringements that occur when racists have a safe haven retreat where they can go to reinforce and embolden each other's prejudices.
And then there's the economics... where they believe endless competition is the answer to everything. If everything were dictated by market forces without artificial constraints, then there would be greater freedom due to consumer choice between competing businesses. If one business does something dirty that harms someone else for their own profit, then consumers respond by taking their business elsewhere. This operates completely on the assumption that capitalism is a competition which can't be won, which is very, very clearly false. Also the assumption that consumers are practically omniscient and eternally diligent. Finally, that consumers will even care, if they are indeed aware, when a business that operates in many communities abuses one in order to gain advantages in others (globalization).
They say that government intervention hinders natural competition and creates monopolies. I say that such things are a natural result of businesses gaining enough power to exert influence through government, and are a symptom of the 'free market' being an unsustainable synonym for Turn 1 in the game of Monopoly.
I'll just give the consolidated version of why I just can't comprehend how the appeal of libertarianism can survive any rational consideration at all. In a perfect world, yes, but we don't live in one. Segregation happened; there are still people who want it. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 (and all the other State and Federal Ones) and several court rulings, are the only things that stopped it. I will glaze at anyone who says they should be revoked until they eventually shut up, and I think everyone should do the same, because anyone has to be either bigoted or incredibly ignorant to want this.
Initially, fine, ok, I get the appeal of "you leave me alone and I leave you alone and as long as neither of us hurts anyone, great." Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream, at best, especially when talking about repealing the Civil Rights Acts. Even if you somehow assume the, "we each have control over ourselves and our own destinies" thing (which works how when other people necessarily make choices effecting us, never mind the environment), denying someone goods and services on the basis of race or sex alone,
is harming them..... They may not be able to get it anywhere else, or they may have to pay an unreasonable premium to get it somewhere else (which causes a loss of money to them and forces them to unnecessarily spend more on one necessity to get another). What exactly would you do if suddenly all the grocery stores in the whole state wouldn't sell you food? Or let's say you're in a rural area and you'd have to go 70 miles round trip to get basic groceries with gas at $4/gallon?
"But I don't get to be an asshole and decide to make everyone's life harder on the basis of their skin color or sex!!!" [whine]
Too bad, because this "right," is contradictory to your own philosophy of "leave everyone alone as long as you don't harm anyone," because you're harming the people you won't serve. To exist in society, you have to be able to use its institutions: grocery stores, physicians, professionals, repair services, apartments, housing, employment, etc. Letting people have license to exclude people from these is an invitation to exclude people from society for no real reason, especially in rural areas or areas where a all owners of a type of business will gang up.... "I don't get to be a racist/sexist prick so we should repeal and undo the civil rights movement.... It infringes upon my rights to be these things!"
Really? <--- This is a market failure if ever I've seen one.
"It should be cool to exclude people from society due to the prejudice of others...."
I think I'd like to vomit now....
In a perfect world, no one would want to exclude people on this basis, but they do, so we have to deal with it and that means having an enforcement mechanism.... Any "rights" lost to this particular mechanism are "rights" no one should've ever had in the first place.
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 853914 times)