ironically, i find the many of the funniest comics are the black americans, who can get away with all manner of irreverence without copping a racism charge. cartoons, too, have managed to slip under the discrimination radar (“south park” etc.)

lawyers and comedy don’t mix happily.

In fact, it’s illegal to accepting money you know that the buyer has stolen, unless of course the buyer is the government.

I could never accept the government’s dirty money and I could never accept to partake in his bloodshed and destruction of mankind.

I’d rather stay a poor and honest civilian and private business man than a “rich” government contractor.

And the government makes it very difficult to be accepted for doing business. It’s like trying to register on a website online and always be prompted back because you entered something wrong or forgot to enter an information, only millions of times worse.

When you finally get accepted, it’s very difficult to get paid. The government is the worse customer there can be.

But by principle, I refuse to serve someone who loots and kills to get his revenue.

There is no crime here – and no true tort either.

Yes that even means that discrimination (on employment or on trading with) should be allowed against short, bald men with Jewish family names.

If someone does not want to emply me (because of the above) that is their choice – ditto if they do not want me as a customer in their shop.

The issue is that stark – libertarians can not support “anti discrimination” stuff.

I really don’t see how a “business” or “enterprise” can be treated under the law in any manner?

A business or an enterprise has no place to be treated under the law at all, regardless of the entire system of law referred to as “corporate” law. Law can only apply to individuals. It is the action of individuals that cause harm and injury.

Part of the failure of our judicial system is supporting a system that “prosecutes” or “defends” business or enterprise. It is individuals that should be liable, not some abstract entity.

What is it exactly that a business or enterprise can do that is either legal or illegal that was not in reality done by an individual or group of people?

when the individuals that are responsible for the harm or injury that is attributed to abstract entities are made to face the responsibility of their actions, we will have quite a different world. This is the real problem in our judicial system.

I don’t think anyone visiting this website is equal to the average person on the street. The average person would look at you funny if you mentioned the term “Austrian economics” probably thinking you’re talking about Austria! I’d guess that most (“average”) people literally never even briefly consider whether it is “just, moral, and appropriate to use force to correct others’ wayward beliefs.”

Beyond this, I don’t think we really disagree. I probably should have specified that I think equality under the law applies to “enterprises” or organizations specifically because they are owned and operated by individuals. At the corporate scale it’s harder to see this, but scaling down to a business operated by only a single person, it becomes a little clearer.

I can just see it now, they hook you up to an MRI and show you pictures of men on men. If your brain scan shows activity in the area of revulsion, it’s the can for you.

You state, “I hope that people find discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, physical “handicaps,” and other arbitrary criteria morally repugnant.”

With great respect for your usually good articles, you have fallen right into the Venus fly trap of political correctness here. You have uncritically swallowed the false and dangerous egalitarian idea that discrimination (on the grounds mentioned) is necessarily a manifestation of irrational bigotry, and therefore morally repugnant.

If you genuinely find all discrimination (on the grounds you mention) to be morally repugnant then I presume you must be perfectly okay with a local fire department staffed entirely by quadriplegics. You would certainly have no qualms about hiring a babysitter who is a practicing Satan worshipper. Also, you must also be a 100% no-preference-either-way bisexual. No? Perhaps you are discriminating more than you realize.

In fact, there are innumerable instances where discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or physical handicaps (that’s right: handicaps, not “handicaps”) is perfectly rational and morally legitimate.* These are not arbitrary criteria for decision making. Some of these characteristics are causally related to characteristics of legitimate concern to people (e.g. physically handicaps may cause poorer performance in physical tasks that an employer requires or values) while others are correlated with other characteristics of legitimate concern (e.g. race, sex and age are all correlated with criminal behavior). In either case, this leads to well known instances of rational discrimination on all the grounds you mention, a phenomenon that has been amply documented by economists and others.

While it is true that there exist many instances where people discriminate on these grounds in an arbitrary or unjust manner, the assertion that all discrimination on the basis of these characteristics is irrational is contrary to the principles of rational inference. I sincerely hope you will re-think your position on this issue.

Cheers,
Ben.

* For anyone interested, I have previously written about this topic at length in an article for The Independent Review: http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_13_04_4_oneill.pdf

When the government hires contracters and employers, it is entering into a contract. The government can by the article’s own logic, agree to whatever it wants to. It can be a bigot or it can be an anti bigot. No one is forced to contract with the government. If I am going to buy a pencil from your factory, I have a right to to ask you if you would hire a gay and then decide if I want to purchase the pencil based on that. Government is instead turning this simple question into a law because they can and because they are lazy.

Government by definiton possesses superior force and is using it in this situation. They are incorporating their preference into law. We have given them this power by granting or submitting to superior force.

The better idea would be to only directly contract with government. In other words, only hire government to do the things that only government can carry out without any outside help. What these things would be are up to the people, but as long as government only hires employees and not firms, corporations etc. this problem would never crop up.

“The [politically correct crowd sees] business not as a privately funded and owned enterprise that should be treated equally under the law, but as… exploitative…”

I think that’s a fair generalization. But a quibble here. Equal treatment under the law applies to “human beings,” not to an “enterprise” or organization. Well, it ought to.
I think that if more courtroom deliberations were rooted in this approach, we would find a way to crush the silly paradigm of judging a “company’s behavior” rather than a person’s.
It’s much more difficult for do-gooders to institute policy when individuals recognize such laws as directives on who they personally should hang out with.

As powerful as the argument is, if it’s too far above your target audience’s head, it is going to be ignored at best–and turned into something else at worst. In this case typically it’s turned into a supposedly racist, sexist, or sexually discriminitory argument that is then used to villify whoever presented the point.

I don’t know if logical arguments like this are very useful against the sea of ignorance we’re up against, sad to say.

How about right now. In the education community it is a very touchy subject to ask questions about prior performance and possible termination. Basically, if a teacher has lost their license you can consider that. Other than this looking too far into prior performance, etc you run risks. Suppose they were terminated for inappropriate conduct towards a student. They did not lose their license but were released from their contract. Heaven help if either you ask the wrong question or the previous employer were to tell you about it.

We are already headed this direction.

The slave was denied his right to the property that is inherently his own — his person, his body.

The back-of-the-bus rider was denied equal access to the only publically allowed transportation line on the street, yet was forced to subsidize it with her taxes.

Whether a war was necessary for the former, or millions descending upon the Washington mall for the latter, is question I ponder without easy answers.

I am convinced, however, that government as (using your term) “catalyst,” rather than as individual “guardian,” has resulted in Leviathan as we now know it.

“a substantial percentage of the taxpayers would not like that their taxes be used to do business with the discriminators.”

I bet my soul that there is a substantially higher percentage of the taxpayers that don’t like that their taxes be used to bailout wall-street and fund wars overseas.

I bet a lot more people would rather higher a pro-straight company than bailout wall-street and fund wars abroad.

So your argument is false.