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> That tendency exists quite strongly in humans, yes. Unfortunate, but true. On the other hand, businesses also have the tendency to want to make money. If I've
by IanCal 11y ago
> That tendency exists quite strongly in humans, yes. Unfortunate, but true. On the other hand, businesses also have the tendency to want to make money. If I've got a business, and I make it hard for group X to buy stuff from me, they're probably going to try to find someone else who wants more strongly to make money and/or less strongly to be a jerk. And that business will get their money, and I won't.
Which is true, although there are a few rubs:
1. It's not so easy to start a business, and if the group you exclude are small there's very little [edit - forgot to finish this sentence, sorry] incentive to open a new business just to cater for a small proportion of people. Depends on the business, obviously.
2. You're ignoring any influence other customers have. If 90% of your customers threaten to boycott you because you (bake cakes for gay weddings || print leaflets for republicans) it'd be good business sense to not serve that small percentage of your client base.
With 2, consider a "realistic" situation. In the future, all sex offenders will have their photos published on some public crime database. Cue outrage that sex offenders are being served in the local bar (or choose the establishment of your choice), they are then banned. Are people going to open up bars with the motto "sex offenders welcome here!"? To make people more wary of this, what happens when it thinks you're a sex offender because of a false positive?
I'm always really concerned when people argue that the free market will remove discrimination, and perhaps they're right in the long term but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that there was a fair amount of time when people in the US were discriminated against because of the colour of their skin (not to get into a discussion about now as it's not too relevant).