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Further, suppose we brought back only the economic protectionism bits - would that change things and make Jim Crow somewhat more acceptable? (As asked in my sec

Further, suppose we brought back only the economic protectionism bits - would that change things and make Jim Crow somewhat more acceptable? (As asked in my second paragraph.) Suppose we literallytook some sort of randomized occupational licensing. I.e. suppose we have a cutoff of 10,000 taxi drivers, selected via shuffle(applications)[0:10000]. Now suppose we replace that random process with a racist one - first we allocate the 10k slots among white/asian people, and allocate the remainder among non-Asian minorities. Would that be morally acceptable and have the positive economic effects that pron claims? Why is the first process morally acceptable and economically beneficial but the second one isn't?

ticviking 11y ago
if we have meaningful group identities. protectionism established by preventing dis favored groups from entering a market causes both the general harm a random allocation would from inefficiency AND the additional inefficies imposed on the targeted minority. Asking society as a whole to bear a cost of inefficiency in exchange for some safety is less bad than imposing both that and the additional cost on a non-consenting minority. For a methodological individualist it'd be harder to make a case.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  In both cases the costs are imposed on a non-consenting minority - in the first case the minority is chosen by math.random(), in the second case the minority is chosen by genetics. It sounds like you want to appeal to some principle that certain minority groups (those with "meaningful" group identities) deserve special moral consideration? Supposing that nerds or just some protectionist lottery victims created a "meaningful group identity", would that make them deserving of protection? You are right that for an individualist (which I am), this is a lot harder. So I simply wouldn't share your moral conclusions, but I'd at least understand where you come from.

ticviking 11y ago

if we have meaningful group identities. protectionism established by preventing dis favored groups from entering a market causes both the general harm a random allocation would from inefficiency AND the additional inefficies imposed on the targeted minority. Asking society as a whole to bear a cost of inefficiency in exchange for some safety is less bad than imposing both that and the additional cost on a non-consenting minority. For a methodological individualist it'd be harder to make a case.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
In both cases the costs are imposed on a non-consenting minority - in the first case the minority is chosen by math.random(), in the second case the minority is chosen by genetics. It sounds like you want to appeal to some principle that certain minority groups (those with "meaningful" group identities) deserve special moral consideration? Supposing that nerds or just some protectionist lottery victims created a "meaningful group identity", would that make them deserving of protection? You are right that for an individualist (which I am), this is a lot harder. So I simply wouldn't share your moral conclusions, but I'd at least understand where you come from.