Rand Paul has come under serious fire lately for his staunch libertarian stance on the Civil Rights Act.  The basic gist is:  Government doesn’t need to interfere in a business’s right to be racist if it wants.  The market can decide; if people don’t like racism, they won’t shop at or buy from racist businesses.

One site likened his somewhat naive comments to something college students might discuss in a coffee shop…not something politicians would discuss with any seriousness.

So…I’m a kid in a coffee shop…what would I say?

Let’s play the thought experiment:  pretend we let the market decide…and it decides that it wants to be racist.  This is probably the reality anyway, since why would you need to sign an anti-discrimination law if there weren’t any to begin with?

So is it ok for the market to be racist?

If I don’t like the businesses where I live that are discriminatory; I can just move somewhere else, participate in a different market, right?

Hmm…but you forced me to move. Someone else’s discrimination is affecting where I live, where I shop. And that is just me…what about the people that are being discriminated against?

The Libertarian argument that businesses (or anything else they are referring to) should be “free” to do what they like is bunk.  Your freedom is not always yours alone.  It affects other people; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

The extreme example is smoking.  You should not be free to smoke….because your smoke affects other people too.  If you want to smoke at your house or something…ok.  But a ban on smoking in planes, or in buildings, or restaurants is completely appropriate.  If your freedom to smoke means I get cancer, then you should not be free to do it.

Many things are like this.  A more subtle example is the time honored American “freedom” to be rich…really rich.  In America it is ok to be rich (not all countries are so positive about the rich).

But being rich comes at least somewhat at the expense of those who worked to make you rich.  The rest have to watch the rich move to the front of every line, drive nicer cars, live in better, safer houses.  People worry about their plight in life compared to the rich.  The rich simply existing is a source of anxiety which causes ill health.

I’m not saying it is bad to be rich…only that it isn’t in a vacuum.  The rich existing does affect the poor.  The larger the income disparity between the rich and poor, the more the effect.  Most countries have progressive tax schemes at least somewhat due to this.  It is a tax on the rich simply because they are rich (which affects everyone else).

So no.  Racism is not ok.

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