sc94597 said:
Mr Khan said:
The entire problem with libertarianism is that it thinks freedom is a good in and of itself. It really isn't. Freedom, within limitations, tends to lead to public goods than public bads, which is why the liberal-democratic ideal has been so successful.
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Can this be substantiated deductively or inductively? Most of the later classical liberals used utilitarian arguments, and even today you have consequentualist libertarians (Milton/David Friedman) who use empirical data in addition to deduction (unlike a deontological austrian) to determine more freedom does lead to higher utility. This isn't to say that, libertarians espouse total individual freedom (one doesn't have the freedom to kill a person, harm their property, or enslave them.) Obviously it isn't as clearcut as you make it seem, especially since modern liberal society has many failures of its own both when addressing the problems of subsets and the total set of populations.
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I want to say i've been through this dance with you before, but we can observe that the total freedom to use your property as you see fit (even without the three obvious caveats you mentioned) does not always lead to optimum benefit to society.
Money, for instance, works more efficiently when it's treated as a means of exchange rather than a piece of property: money only does anyone any good when it's moving. Saving is only beneficial to hedge against a future where your income could be diminished (less money moving today for a guarantee of money moving tomorrow). Too much saving, especially among the wealthy and large corporations, and you get the deflationary problems that are plaguing most first-world economies, yet it is rational on the individual level to save.
The difference between things that are rational on the micro level but harmful on the macro level are the gap between total individual freedom and maximum social utility. Environmental damage is another issue. It is rational for corporations to build up air-polluting factories in a business-friendly city. They end up poisoning the air in this city, in a way that does not effect the capital owners of the plants who live half a world away. Air is nobody's property, nobody collects or can collect fees for maintaining its quality under the market system. Some plant owners might be convinced that it would be a good idea for PR purposes to invest in cleaner factories, but everyone in the group has to make that choice, or the polluter will out-compete the non-polluters and it goes back to square one.
Externalities and the micro-macro divide are two of the problems.
The third, in this case, is that libertarianism often doesn't account for non-economic and irrational actions which are built upon social mores. I recall from the 60s and civil rights when a Chamber of Commerce down in Dixie declared "we don't need nigger business." First, it might be irrational to cater to blacks because it would scare off all of the white customers, and then you simply trade a more lucrative market for the less lucrative, preventing private property holders from making the correct decision. But beyond that, the racism was so entrenched in the private property owners that they didn't even consider that element: they just plain didn't want to serve black people.
What recourse, then, does the black community have in this situation? Libertarianism would re-inforce Jim Crow, not abolish it. The most the blacks could hope for would be to essentially build an economy all on their own, their own banks (because white banks won't lend to you), their own shops, their own schools. But because all of the good and worthwhile property has already been monopolized by the racist whites, you're never going to have a chance to get ahead even if you did try to fight your way out of the situation in a libertarian fashion.
In steps the outside government actor, fixing the problem. (yes, obviously, a ways to go and all that, but the laws demanding businesses serve all people help the marginalized group get access to market factors that irrational social factors would have banned them from).
Of course, the latter point doesn't really work with this law. Firstly because it's much harder to tell someone's homosexual rather than black (duh). Secondly because homophobia is nowhere near as astringent today as racism was back in Jim Crow, so you don't quite get the same factor. Some businesses could benefit from catering to homophobes, but most would lose out, so the free-choice selection is more viable in this case, but it's also clear from history that it's not the proper tool in all cases.
This is all i will say on the matter.