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Anti-Discrimination LawsRobert Snower (rs219@IDIR.NET)Sun, 30 Jun 1996 23:05:59 -0500
>. . . brought William F.Buckley, Jr. to mind-- not a usual occurrence on ANTHRO-L. >Anyhow, Buckey's comment was that conservatives had opposed the initial 1964 civil >rights act on the grounds that it would not work-- that it was an intolerable violation >of personal liberty for the federal government to strike down racial discrimination in >stores and lunch counters and motels, etc. and that people would resist to the bitter >end. In point of fact, conservatives had been wrong, and the 1964 act had worked >rather well. > >One can quibble about "rather well." I note that on the surface antidiscrimination >seems to run parallel to anti-abortion and anti-liquor sentiment, but the outcomes >were different. ------------------------------------------------------ This post points up very clearly a logical conflict that needs resolving. How can one remain logically consistent, and use the violation-of-personal-liberty argument to oppose anti-abortion laws, to oppose anti-liquor laws, to oppose anti-free speech laws, etc., then at the same time deny its use to oppose anti-discrimination laws? We talked about democracy being based on the expression of political personal (self-) interest, and the free market being based on the expression of economic self-interest. Consider economics first: the perfect efficiency of the free market is destroyed by monopoly, for two reasons. When the source of supply is without competition, the individual self-interest of consumer-choice can no longer operate because there is nothing to choose between. Quality of product goes down, the price of it goes up. The consumer is victimized. In the first half of the twentieth century the realizion that monopoly victimizes the consumer generated our anti-trust legislation. Less recognized, to my knowledge, is that monopoly also victimizes labor: the monopoly can set wages arbitrarily low in the absence of competitive demand for the same skills. The operation of the free market requires anti-trust laws. In order to guarantee the operation of economic self-interest, the one category of economic self-interest we must outlaw is that which makes the operation of economic self-interest impossible. We can say something similar of the anti-discrimination laws, as far as economics is concerned. Hiring, firing, and paying wages in any interest which is not an economic interest is equivalent to an uneconomic determination of wages, impairing the efficiency of the free market. Thus, ethnic and gender preferences must be suppressed. Otherwise economic victimization in terms of wages results. A recent post claimed that capitalism exploits labor. Closer to the truth, the lack of (departure from) capitalism, exploits labor. Now for politics. The one political interest which renders the operation of individual self-interest impossible is a group interest to which an alternative individual interest is subordinated. Whether it is ethnic interest, or gender interest, when this interest is given priority over an alternative individual interest, then the democracy of diversity is imperiled. Individual differences of interest lose out to ethnic or gender based divisions. Democracy, the world over, is unable to cope with such divisions. (A political party is not a group interest to which an alternative self-interest is subordinated; it is a group of individuals with the same--a common thread of--individual self-interest.) Thus, the one category of personal choice we must discourage in a successful democracy of diversity is that which destroys the operation of personal choice. Ethnic or gender based choices come under this category. This is the logical basis for anti-discrimination laws which, on the superficial level, violate the principle of individual choice. The stronger, the better. Discrimination bears the same kind of threat to a workable democracy that monopoly bears to an efficient market. R. Snower rs219@idir.net
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