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Seems me to me that ultimately up to the owners to decide who they want to accept. If they turn down too many people with variation X, its their loss, and someo

Seems me to me that ultimately up to the owners to decide who they want to accept. If they turn down too many people with variation X, its their loss, and someone else will make money on that.

potatolicious 10y ago
"The Invisible Hand will right all moral wrongs" is an argument that is unconvincing and historically hasn't been true. As is the idea that market forces will overall select for less discrimination. After all, it has been a massive market opportunity to include women in the workforce since almost the dawn of civilization, and yet it's taken centuries for the allegedly rational market to realize this (and even then, not fully). Ditto in the height of the Civil Rights era there was a massive market opportunity for restaurants that were willing to serve people of color - yet this largely didn't happen. The market - and its participants - are frequently irrational. Or maybe more accurately, sociopolitical forces have the power to skew market behavior in huge ways. This is also why I'm also often skeptical of attempts to cast equality as an economic good - it frequently is, but basing a worldview around it seems dangerous, precisely because the market often selects against justice.
- fiatmoney 10y ago
  "Ditto in the height of the Civil Rights era there was a massive market opportunity for restaurants that were willing to serve people of color - yet this largely didn't happen." That's untrue. Black areas had high density of businesses that catered to blacks, and by large discrimination was legally mandated, not a market outcome. Business groups were in general in favor of dismantling segregation because it increased their potential market.
- googletazer 10y ago
  I'm not such a huge supporter of the invisible hand deciding "who gets what and why" (funnily enough there is a good book about markets by that name), rather I think freedom of association is important, especially when it comes to hosting someone in your home. However, if you're doing it all the time (running a business), you just won't do as well as the next guy who doesn't discriminate. By the time the next guy has an opportunity to use the capital he made to buy you out, it might be decades away, so imo on a long time scale, the problem is self correcting. And I do agree with you that sometimes the market does select against justice. At the same time, prices are still the best indicators for a long of things that don't involve life or death situations.

Seems me to me that ultimately up to the owners to decide who they want to accept. If they turn down too many people with variation X, its their loss, and someone else will make money on that.

potatolicious 10y ago

"The Invisible Hand will right all moral wrongs" is an argument that is unconvincing and historically hasn't been true. As is the idea that market forces will overall select for less discrimination. After all, it has been a massive market opportunity to include women in the workforce since almost the dawn of civilization, and yet it's taken centuries for the allegedly rational market to realize this (and even then, not fully). Ditto in the height of the Civil Rights era there was a massive market opportunity for restaurants that were willing to serve people of color - yet this largely didn't happen. The market - and its participants - are frequently irrational. Or maybe more accurately, sociopolitical forces have the power to skew market behavior in huge ways. This is also why I'm also often skeptical of attempts to cast equality as an economic good - it frequently is, but basing a worldview around it seems dangerous, precisely because the market often selects against justice.

fiatmoney 10y ago
"Ditto in the height of the Civil Rights era there was a massive market opportunity for restaurants that were willing to serve people of color - yet this largely didn't happen." That's untrue. Black areas had high density of businesses that catered to blacks, and by large discrimination was legally mandated, not a market outcome. Business groups were in general in favor of dismantling segregation because it increased their potential market.
googletazer 10y ago
I'm not such a huge supporter of the invisible hand deciding "who gets what and why" (funnily enough there is a good book about markets by that name), rather I think freedom of association is important, especially when it comes to hosting someone in your home. However, if you're doing it all the time (running a business), you just won't do as well as the next guy who doesn't discriminate. By the time the next guy has an opportunity to use the capital he made to buy you out, it might be decades away, so imo on a long time scale, the problem is self correcting. And I do agree with you that sometimes the market does select against justice. At the same time, prices are still the best indicators for a long of things that don't involve life or death situations.