Should a black restaurant owner be forced to serve members of the Ku Klux Klan?

Should a black restaurant owner be forced to serve members of the Ku Klux Klan?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 6.3%
  • No

    Votes: 251 93.7%

  • Total voters
    268
You lost me here. Are you sure about "government permission to conduct commerce on your private property"? We don't need no stinking badges or government permission to conduct business on our own property.

1. You do have to obtain permission because government regulates all commerce unless your circumstances are specifically exempted. Otherwise you must obtain a home officer permit, garage sale permit, etc.

2. #1 is only semi relevant because if you were conducting commerce on your property the courts would force you to answer the charge because you discriminated while conducting commerce.
 
No you do not have that absolute right once you obtained government permission to conduct commerce on your private property. If it was absolute you would not be required to defend yourself if a discrimination charge was placed against you. However the courts will force you to answer such a charge.

The government does all sorts of arbitrary and immoral things. The fact that a government does something does not mean it's respecting individual rights. Quite the opposite, in most cases.

"If it was absolute you would not be required to defend yourself"

That's the core of the silliness. The government used to require slaves stay on the plantation. Does that mean they didn't have a right to freedom?
 
Wait wait, wait, I missed this the first read. Are you saying what I think you're saying?

Ok I am going to skip replying to the legal one since that is not where our discussion will focus. I do not understand your question. What do you think I am saying?

I am saying I do not trust people who would ask me to convert to a belief under a threat of force.

It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a preacher on sunday telling me ahshalakalaka I am going to eternal damnation if I do not repent on all fours right now.

It could be a thief.

Or it could be government telling me what I can or can not do with my property (in the context I use it which is property = land + labor not necessarily arbitrary borders)
 
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What do you think I am saying?
What I was thinking, until you explained yourself just now, was that you meant it would be forceful and coercive to force people to stop believing in and practicing slavery. Here's what you wrote:

Slavery (ie coercion of human beings) should never be an option on the table. I agree. That means eliminating coercion and forcing people to convert to a particular ethical or moral belief under a threat of force.

You can see how it could be read: "Eliminating slavery means forcing people to convert to a particular ethical belief (that of anti-slavery) under threat of force." I just read too much into it. And then your username, with a gun pointing at me asking "Believe Now?" just all seemed to fit together into the picture of you believing libertarians are hypocritical because we ourselves want to use force by "forcing" everyone else to believe our way and to not use force. :) The fact that this is exactly what furface was saying earlier in this thread ( http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=2705598#post2705598 ) made it more on my mind, of course.
 
FYI,
From what i have been hearing from the left... just informing you on what i have heard...;)

1. its not about being forced to serve someone, but about someone being denied service based on the color of their skin. and that no one should be denied service based on skin color.
2. they keep using the example of a hospital, or town doctor.. "so if a black man needs urgent medical attention and goes to the only doctor in town but is refused service based on his skin color he is just out of luck"
or sometimes they use a hotel saying "if im a black man traveling across the country and i need to stop and get a room but the racist owner denies me service i am shit out of luck"

liberal infested waters...
http://rubechat.kfan.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=99108

1) The poll itself is silly. And silly polls are a good way to back yourself into a corner. Look at it this way. Rand and Ron both support desegregation of public facilities and public institutions like the armed forces. So should the military have to let members of Al Qaeda or the Communist party join? Sorry, but there is a difference between immutable characteristics from birth and personal choices. Heck, the Republican party in Kentucky doesn't have to allow Democrats to vote in their closed primary either.

2) Hospitals and doctors are regulated by the government. Governments only allow so many hospitals in an area. So in effect since the supply is artificially limited by the government, the government should step in a fix the problem it helped create. If we were able to have a "McEmergency" on every block then perhaps that wouldn't be an issue, but I wouldn't argue it one way or another.

Instead of fallacious arguments, pick a real one like "Should the congressional black caucus have to admit white members"?
 
What I was thinking, until you explained yourself just now, was that you meant it would be forceful and coercive to force people to stop believing in and practicing slavery. Here's what you wrote:

Slavery (ie coercion of human beings) should never be an option on the table. I agree. That means eliminating coercion and forcing people to convert to a particular ethical or moral belief under a threat of force.

You can see how it could be read: "Eliminating slavery means forcing people to convert to a particular ethical belief (that of anti-slavery) under threat of force." I just read too much into it. And then your username, with a gun pointing at me asking "Believe Now?" just all seemed to fit together into the picture of you believing libertarians are hypocritical because we ourselves want to use force by "forcing" everyone else to believe our way and to not use force. :) The fact that this is exactly what furface was saying earlier in this thread ( http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=2705598#post2705598 ) made it more on my mind, of course.

I have always held a consistent view for non-aggression principles and self ownership. I don't think my voluntaryist views are a secret. I only hammer away at the constitution because the statists won't give up that monopoly on justice but they will accept a belief of original intent due to Ron Paul. The avatar I recently started using points out the hypocrisy of coercion, from my perspective anyway.
 
I have always held a consistent view for non-aggression principles and self ownership. I don't think my voluntaryist views are a secret. I only hammer away at the constitution because the statists won't give up that monopoly on justice but they will accept a belief of original intent due to Ron Paul. The avatar I recently started using points out the hypocrisy of coercion, from my perspective anyway.

Yes yes, it all makes sense now. You phrased your sentence wrongly and I just misunderstood. :)
 
Then you simply don't get it. State rights are a central issue to both Ron Paul and Rand Paul's politics.

The right to live in the type of community you wish is fundamental. It's arguably more important than the much bantered "individual rights."

I see you trolling, mostly on the Rand forums.



That there is the heart and soul of socialism.
 
1) The poll itself is silly. And silly polls are a good way to back yourself into a corner. Look at it this way. Rand and Ron both support desegregation of public facilities and public institutions like the armed forces. So should the military have to let members of Al Qaeda or the Communist party join? Sorry, but there is a difference between immutable characteristics from birth and personal choices. Heck, the Republican party in Kentucky doesn't have to allow Democrats to vote in their closed primary either.

2) Hospitals and doctors are regulated by the government. Governments only allow so many hospitals in an area. So in effect since the supply is artificially limited by the government, the government should step in a fix the problem it helped create. If we were able to have a "McEmergency" on every block then perhaps that wouldn't be an issue, but I wouldn't argue it one way or another.

Instead of fallacious arguments, pick a real one like "Should the congressional black caucus have to admit white members"?


There's nothing wrong with the poll. The presumption from people attacking Rand is that business owners are racist and must be forced to serve people of the race they hate. To put the shoe on the other foot, you must assume the customer is racist.

If neither were racist there would be no issue to discuss.
 
If neither were racist there would be no issue to discuss.

I suppose the perfect inversal would be this:

Should a racist customer(black or white) be allowed to refuse to patronize a business because it's owned/staffed by blacks/whites?

The original question being:

Should a racist business owner/manager be able to refuse service to a customer because he is black/white?

So why not legislate the customers' actions? Businesses are hurt by racist customers just as customers are hurt by racist businesses. Shouldn't we lock up white people who refuse to frequent Joe's store just because he's black? If anything, isn't the damage from that even worse than the other? The damage inflicted by the inconvenience of not being able to sit with white people at lunch is relatively minor. If you were to put a monetary value on it, it would be close to zero, a few dollars at most. A lot of black people probably didn't have any burning desire to sit with the whites anyway, just as many would've been perfectly happy to keep all-black schools if they could've had the same quality and funding as the white schools. Anyway, in contrast, the black businessman who's a victim of racism stands to be completely ruined, bankrupted, and lose his home, his livelihood, his savings, every worldly thing he has. He has suffered ten thousand times more real damage to his life than the guy who has to drive an extra few blocks to the drug store that serves blacks. Yet the racist customers can ruin this man's life freely, even openly organize and publicize a large-scale racist boycott if they like, with no fear of legal retribution. Why?

So many of these stupid fallacies and laws are based on a ridiculously over-inflated view of the power of businessmen vis a vis customers and employees. So customers and employees never get restrictions, always the businessman. No American would dream that it could be just to force a customer to do business in a certain way or with certain people, for any reason, not even social justice or anti-racism! There would never, never be a complaint brought up of "he refused to buy my house because I'm black", no one would care, the seller would get no sympathy, the non-buyer wouldn't face fines or jail, but yet somehow if someone complains "he refused to sell me his house because I'm black", Outrage! Panic! Hysteria!

The vendor is always the bad guy. The buyer is always the good guy. The customer is the powerless victim. The business man is the omnipotent oppressor. Just a stupid, stupid, Marx/Smith/Ricardo myth. This issue is not only about racism. Like so many other issues, bad economics plays a huge, crucial role.
 
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There's nothing wrong with the poll. The presumption from people attacking Rand is that business owners are racist and must be forced to serve people of the race they hate. To put the shoe on the other foot, you must assume the customer is racist.

If neither were racist there would be no issue to discuss.

There's plenty wrong with the poll as I've already pointed out. You just aren't willing to admit it's a stupid analogy.

Look at it this way. Rand himself said that it's not ok for the government to discriminate on the basis of race. Ron took the same position. Does that mean that the government can't discriminate on the basis of membership in an organization even if membership in that organization represents a threat to national security? Once you realize that you see how stupid the poll is. Also if a customer comes in dressed in a KKK uniform or says he's a klansman you no longer have to "assume" he is racist. It kinda comes with the territory!

But here's the real reason why the poll fails. Let's suppose my son was in a car accident and I had to rush him to the hospital. Let's say I also owned a restaurant that didn't serve KKK members. (Actually I would serve them. If they wanted to give me their money then great! Less money for these jerks to spend on something nefarious. And they'd be eating at their own risk. ;) ) Let's say the hospital director said "We'll only work on your son if you sign this contract promising to let klansmen eat at your restaurant"? Do you think I'd sign it? Hell yeah I'd sign it! I might sue later to get out of the contract because of duress. Then again if this meant I could always go to this hospital (and there was no other hospital around that served blacks) I'd consider that a fair trade. So just from a rational economic sense it's stupid to forgo the right to badly needed services just to avoid serving someone else that you don't like, especially if you're going to get paid to offer the service. Prior to desegregation black people served racist white people all the time in various capacities.

Final point. There are very good arguments that can be made for the position that Rand "kinda sorta - not really" took. This just isn't one of them.
 
I suppose the perfect inversal would be this:

Should a racist customer(black or white) be allowed to refuse to patronize a business because it's owned/staffed by blacks/whites?

The original question being:

Should a racist business owner/manager be able to refuse service to a customer because he is black/white?

So why not legislate the customers' actions? Businesses are hurt by racist customers just as customers are hurt by racist businesses. Shouldn't we lock up white people who refuse to frequent Joe's store just because he's black? If anything, isn't the damage from that even worse than the other? The damage inflicted by the inconvenience of not being able to sit with white people at lunch is relatively minor. If you were to put a monetary value on it, it would be close to zero, a few dollars at most. A lot of black people probably didn't have any burning desire to sit with the whites anyway, just as many would've been perfectly happy to keep all-black schools if they could've had the same quality and funding as the white schools. Anyway, in contrast, the black businessman who's a victim of racism stands to be completely ruined, bankrupted, and lose his home, his livelihood, his savings, every worldly thing he has. He has suffered ten thousand times more real damage to his life than the guy who has to drive an extra few blocks to the drug store that serves blacks. Yet the racist customers can ruin this man's life freely, even openly organize and publicize a large-scale racist boycott if they like, with no fear of legal retribution. Why?

So many of these stupid fallacies and laws are based on a ridiculously over-inflated view of the power of businessmen vis a vis customers and employees. So customers and employees never get restrictions, always the businessman. No American would dream that it could be just to force a customer to do business in a certain way or with certain people, for any reason, not even social justice or anti-racism! There would never, never be a complaint brought up of "he refused to buy my house because I'm black", no one would care, the seller would get no sympathy, the non-buyer wouldn't face fines or jail, but yet somehow if someone complains "he refused to sell me his house because I'm black", Outrage! Panic! Hysteria!

The vendor is always the bad guy. The buyer is always the good guy. The customer is the powerless victim. The business man is the omnipotent oppressor. Just a stupid, stupid, Marx/Smith/Ricardo myth. This issue is not only about racism. Like so many other issues, bad economics plays a huge, crucial role.

1) You can't claim a harm that you don't know about. If you are refused service at a lunch counter (or anywhere else) you know about that.

2) If the service is essential and if the supply is limited then your economic argument fails. Forget lunch counters and talk hospitals. (Note that hospitals are artificially limited by state and local governments through "certificate of need". But they might also be limited through economic reasons). A boycott of an essential service is unlikely. (Hard to do since its essential).

That said, the bigger problem was the Jim Crow laws which artificially forced business to segregate, along with the thread of white boycotts and violence against businesses who might otherwise not segregate. The government has no power against boycotts white or black, but if the Jim Crow laws had been done away with earlier and groups like the KKK been reigned in, the situation might have sorted itself out.
 
jmdrake,

My proposed inversal solves completely the problems you found with the question in this poll. Your two objections do not really make a dent in it.

1) Knowledge of harm. So, the customer tells you. I already addressed this: "Yet the racist customers can ruin this man's life freely, even openly organize and publicize a large-scale racist boycott if they like, with no fear of legal retribution." A customer can walk up to the counter and tell you "I'm not shopping here because you're a honky" or even half the town can take out full-page ads announcing a boycott of Joe's Hardware because Joe is black. Furthermore, the lunch counter or hospital could refuse to serve you without telling you why, they could just quietly not serve blacks without advertising it. So "knowledge of harm" can be present or non-present in both scenarios. Anyway, in the racist customers scenario we find the exact same behavior as in the racist Woolworths scenario! They are both refusals to do business based on race. The only difference is, in one the racist is the seller and in the other the racist is the purchaser. Morally, should it make a difference? Does it? Can you explain to me in a geometry-style proof why according to your theory vendor-racism should be crushed by the state while consumer-racism should be a permissible behavior?

2) "If the service is essential and if the supply is limited then your economic argument fails." Sorry, but this is just a completely unsupported, insubstantiated, fiat declaration and so I can find no reason whatsoever to believe it, thus, sadly, it is impossible for me to argue against it. You have to at least give some plausible reason why someone, somewhere might be inclined to believe a statement for me to refute those reasons. And I am too tired right now to be inclined to make up those reasons for you. But I can vaguely point you in the right direction that this assertion 2) has something more or less to do with that grossly over-inflated view of the power of businesses over consumers I talked about.
 
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jmdrake,

My proposed inversal solves completely the problems you found with the question in this poll. Your two objections do not really make a dent in it.

1) Knowledge of harm. So, the customer tells you. I already addressed this: "Yet the racist customers can ruin this man's life freely, even openly organize and publicize a large-scale racist boycott if they like, with no fear of legal retribution." A customer can walk up to the counter and tell you "I'm not shopping here because you're a honky" or even half the town can take out full-page ads announcing a boycott of Joe's Hardware because Joe is black. Furthermore, the lunch counter or hospital could refuse to serve you without telling you why, they could just quietly not serve blacks without advertising it. So "knowledge of harm" can be present or non-present in both scenarios. Anyway, in the racist customers scenario we find the exact same behavior as in the racist Woolworths scenario! They are both refusals to do business based on race. The only difference is, in one the racist is the seller and in the other the racist is the purchaser. Morally, should it make a difference? Does it? Can you explain to me in a geometry-style proof why according to your theory vendor-racism should be crushed by the state while consumer-racism should be a permissible behavior?

The argument still fails. Let's say the government passes two laws. One says vendors can't say why they are refusing to serve black customers, but they are free to arbitrarily refuse anybody. The other says customers can't picket businesses and cannot say why they are not buying something. What now? There is now no knowledge problem for the businesses. They don't know why black customers (or white customers) don't come in. Could be not enough advertising. It could be for a variety of reasons. But if a business refuses to serve any black customer it will be obvious.

Look at it another way. Say if we were talking about voting instead of businesses. Do you think that people should be compelled to vote just because the government shouldn't be allowed, without cause for something other than race, deny them the right to vote? Using your analogy, the government should be compelling people not only to vote, but to vote for candidates outside their race.


2) "If the service is essential and if the supply is limited then your economic argument fails." Sorry, but this is just a completely unsupported, insubstantiated, fiat declaration and so I can find no reason whatsoever to believe it, thus, sadly, it is impossible for me to argue against it.

That's because you are ignorant of how the hospital system works. You can't just go out and build a hospital. You have to first have a certificate of need from the government. If you even try to even expand your hospital, if you don't have a certificate of need the state regulators can shut you down. I know this because I personally knew a hospital administrator that this happened too!

Now you might say "Well the state shouldn't be able to do that." But they can. That's "states rights" at work. The only way the federal government could step in and stop this is through the interstate commerce clause. But that's the same clause used to justify the part of the CRA that everyone is complaining about.

Tying this into the discussion, if you lived in an area with a hospital that only served people of a different race and if the state regulators were not willing to give a certificate of need for any other hospitals then you'd be out of luck. Even if you knew people who were willing to build a hospital to serve you, they wouldn't be able to do so.

Last point. There are ways to argue your position. You just haven't stumbled on them yet.
 
Absolutely not. This question is clever.

I'm curious. Why do you think the average black person would even care? Like I said in an earlier post. If a klansman wanted to buy food in my restaurant I'd be happy to take his money. And I think he'd be stupid to eat my food.
 
The argument still fails.
Oh really? And which argument is that? Let's be specific, and thus, meaningful, shall we? The argument that in the racist customers scenario we find the exact same behavior as in the racist Woolworths scenario? Because that was, obviously, the main argument made in that paragraph. Why, I even bolded it. Do you contest that argument?

Let's say the government passes two laws. One says vendors can't say why they are refusing to serve black customers, but they are free to arbitrarily refuse anybody. The other says customers can't picket businesses and cannot say why they are not buying something [if it's for racist reasons]. What now?
Well, yeah! What now? Now the same identical behavior by customers and businessmen is treated the same identical way. So why is it that no one on planet earth would support such a law limiting customers in this way? I think it's because of an anti-business bias and a ridiculously over-inflated view of the power of businesses. Do you disagree?

BTW, I am thrilled to see Jacob Hornberger wrote an article making this exact same point, and am very proud that I could independently come up with the same thought as him.


Look at it another way. Say if we were talking about voting instead of businesses. Do you think that people should be compelled to vote just because the government shouldn't be allowed, without cause for something other than race, deny them the right to vote? Using your analogy, the government should be compelling people not only to vote, but to vote for candidates outside their race.
There we go! Exactly! It's the same principle, isn't it? There should be a quota/affirmative action program begun to make sure that every voter supports a "fair" proportion of minority candidates. If it's evil and horrid to hire too many whites, surely it's even more evil and horrid to support too many whites for elective office. We must stomp out this sin of discrimination everywhere we can, by any means necessary.

Next up: mandatory miscegenation.


That's because you are ignorant of how the hospital system works.
I am ignorant of many things. Though you have no basis for knowing whether I am ignorant or not on this subject, as it happens I am in fact ignorant of the details of running a hospital, at least more so than you seem to be claiming to be. So you have guessed rightly. Of course, when one knows a great deal on an esoteric topic, it is usually a safe guess that any person picked at random will be quite ignorant about it compared to oneself. Whether this makes it a sensible practice to go around calling everyone ignorant is another matter. A matter for the courts to decide, I suppose. Everything else is.

You can't just go out and build a hospital. You have to first have a certificate of need from the government. If you even try to even expand your hospital, if you don't have a certificate of need the state regulators can shut you down. I know this because I personally knew a hospital administrator that this happened too!

Now you might say "Well the state shouldn't be able to do that." But they can. That's "states rights" at work.
I have a dream, that by focusing on one topic at a time, without bringing in other bizarrely irrelevant side issues, internet forum posters will be able to think more clearly about the topic at hand.

Last point. There are ways to argue your position. You just haven't stumbled on them yet.
Apparently, the correct way involves hospitals. Perhaps the Panic of 1819 and mandatory pet licensing could also be brought in to make things clear.

I'm still waiting for my geometry-style proof of why the state is justified in crushing vendor-racism, but not in crushing buyer-racism, if that is your position. If not, perhaps you could explain your position. Or, you could explain to me more about hospitals.
 
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