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The way to address it is not making racial discrimination illegal. Private discrimination is still ultimately within a person's legitimate moral rights. Using t

The way to address it is not making racial discrimination illegal. Private discrimination is still ultimately within a person's legitimate moral rights. Using the force of the state to ban it, is unjustifiable, and deeply misguided.

lokar 5y ago
Airbnb is a "public accommodation", by law and the choice of Airbnb. If you don't want to rent out your property on that basis no one is forcing you to.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Yes I know the law. The law is ideocratic, in mandating that people act in their private (in the true sense of private) capacity in accordance with a set of ideological values. It assumes that the moral good of a person acting out a particular value justifies using force to control a person's actions. This attitude towards others is sanctimonious and irreverent to people's rights. It is not a legitimate use of the force of the state. Jim Crow laws were similarly ideocratic, in imposing pro-segregationist ideological values onto private citizens. We foolishly went from one form of sanctimonious/domineering ideocracy, to another.
  - Blahah 5y ago
    The state isn't doing anything in this scenario. It's Airbnb and there's no force - people are free to not use it.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      True, but there are laws that Airbnb falls at risk of violating if it does not implement these policies. Without these policies, it is liable to be sued under the Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act for hundreds of millions of dollars. Civil Rights lawsuits are a very large area of legal activity.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Nobody is limiting what you can do in private, but on the public market of goods and services. If you don't want to follow the rules, you don't get to participate. There is no irrevocable "right to profit".
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Something being publicly accessible doesn't make it public in the sense of being a government function. It is still a private function. If someone wants to advertise to the public that they only rent to [race of people], in their private capacity - as the private owner of their property - they should be able to. >>There is no irrevocable "right to profit". Profiting simply means benefiting from an exchange. It is a completely private endeavor and the government should not be depriving people of the right to do it in order to force them to act out a particular set of ideological values. The governance principles you're promoting are those of a secular theocracy, i.e. an ideocracy.
      - otterley 5y ago
        Here we go again. Groups of people who form a society through a government have shared values, and our laws reflect those values (though often imperfectly).
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Yes, and the common value should be non-violence, and the liberty to live one's life within the limits set by that. It should not be exerting totalitarian control over people, via the legal system, to force them to act out a particular set of values in their private capacity. What you advocate is in principle no different than communism, fascism or theocracy. The innovation was in making the individual sovereign.
        otterley 5y ago
        Most of the laws we've made since the founding of the U.S. have been written in the blood spilled by previous generations. They are reactions to failures caused by abuses of freedom. And, yes, there is such a thing as an abuse of freedom. History reveals that people have a nature to oppress each other unfairly in the absence of laws to ensure that does not happen.
  - handoflixue 5y ago
    That's how every law works: we're using force to enforce our values. "Thou shalt not kill" is an ideological value. "Thou shalt not steal" takes as granted the entire ideological framework of property and capitalism.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      The enforcement the value of non-aggression is the bare minimum requirement for a peaceful society. Without this being the shared value, people are not free to live out all of their values.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Answers like this seem bizarrely naive of US history. Before racial discrimination was banned by law, there were entire thousand mile swaths of the country where black people couldn't get any level of basic service, couldn't buy a house. Saying it's within the rights of any individual service provider to do this ignores situations where they all think in exactly the same way. Individuals are subject to systematic problems introducing bias into their own thinking. It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  If there are true public goods that people need to be able transverse their country, then the state should directly provide them, or subsidize private parties to provide them in exchange for the private party entering into a covenant binding them to provide some level of public service. Using the monopoly excuse to categorize broad swathes of private interactions as being within the domain of public institutions (so-called 'public accommodations') is disingenuous, and just a way to get the imposition of a particular set of ideological values on people, by force, through the backdoor. >>couldn't buy a house If people don't want to sell their house to black people, they shouldn't be forced to. Our subjective belief in our moral superiority over someone doesn't grant us a right to use force against them. >>It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be. When the pro-segregationist ideocracy was repealed in Northern States, and the prohibition on mixed establishments was repealed, it gradually led to private establishments de-segregating, to increase business. Many southern politicians were afraid of the abolition of legally mandated segregation for exactly the same reason. In any case, force is not a justifiable method to change people's attitudes on who they privately associate with.
  - mrcrumb1 5y ago
    Am I misreading this or are you implying that if people had absolute rights to discriminate in their private interactions that racism would have disappeared on its own?

lokar 5y ago

Airbnb is a "public accommodation", by law and the choice of Airbnb. If you don't want to rent out your property on that basis no one is forcing you to.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Yes I know the law. The law is ideocratic, in mandating that people act in their private (in the true sense of private) capacity in accordance with a set of ideological values. It assumes that the moral good of a person acting out a particular value justifies using force to control a person's actions. This attitude towards others is sanctimonious and irreverent to people's rights. It is not a legitimate use of the force of the state. Jim Crow laws were similarly ideocratic, in imposing pro-segregationist ideological values onto private citizens. We foolishly went from one form of sanctimonious/domineering ideocracy, to another.
- Blahah 5y ago
  The state isn't doing anything in this scenario. It's Airbnb and there's no force - people are free to not use it.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    True, but there are laws that Airbnb falls at risk of violating if it does not implement these policies. Without these policies, it is liable to be sued under the Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act for hundreds of millions of dollars. Civil Rights lawsuits are a very large area of legal activity.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Nobody is limiting what you can do in private, but on the public market of goods and services. If you don't want to follow the rules, you don't get to participate. There is no irrevocable "right to profit".
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Something being publicly accessible doesn't make it public in the sense of being a government function. It is still a private function. If someone wants to advertise to the public that they only rent to [race of people], in their private capacity - as the private owner of their property - they should be able to. >>There is no irrevocable "right to profit". Profiting simply means benefiting from an exchange. It is a completely private endeavor and the government should not be depriving people of the right to do it in order to force them to act out a particular set of ideological values. The governance principles you're promoting are those of a secular theocracy, i.e. an ideocracy.
    - otterley 5y ago
      Here we go again. Groups of people who form a society through a government have shared values, and our laws reflect those values (though often imperfectly).
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Yes, and the common value should be non-violence, and the liberty to live one's life within the limits set by that. It should not be exerting totalitarian control over people, via the legal system, to force them to act out a particular set of values in their private capacity. What you advocate is in principle no different than communism, fascism or theocracy. The innovation was in making the individual sovereign.
        otterley 5y ago
        Most of the laws we've made since the founding of the U.S. have been written in the blood spilled by previous generations. They are reactions to failures caused by abuses of freedom. And, yes, there is such a thing as an abuse of freedom. History reveals that people have a nature to oppress each other unfairly in the absence of laws to ensure that does not happen.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  That's how every law works: we're using force to enforce our values. "Thou shalt not kill" is an ideological value. "Thou shalt not steal" takes as granted the entire ideological framework of property and capitalism.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    The enforcement the value of non-aggression is the bare minimum requirement for a peaceful society. Without this being the shared value, people are not free to live out all of their values.

nonameiguess 5y ago

Answers like this seem bizarrely naive of US history. Before racial discrimination was banned by law, there were entire thousand mile swaths of the country where black people couldn't get any level of basic service, couldn't buy a house. Saying it's within the rights of any individual service provider to do this ignores situations where they all think in exactly the same way. Individuals are subject to systematic problems introducing bias into their own thinking. It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
If there are true public goods that people need to be able transverse their country, then the state should directly provide them, or subsidize private parties to provide them in exchange for the private party entering into a covenant binding them to provide some level of public service. Using the monopoly excuse to categorize broad swathes of private interactions as being within the domain of public institutions (so-called 'public accommodations') is disingenuous, and just a way to get the imposition of a particular set of ideological values on people, by force, through the backdoor. >>couldn't buy a house If people don't want to sell their house to black people, they shouldn't be forced to. Our subjective belief in our moral superiority over someone doesn't grant us a right to use force against them. >>It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be. When the pro-segregationist ideocracy was repealed in Northern States, and the prohibition on mixed establishments was repealed, it gradually led to private establishments de-segregating, to increase business. Many southern politicians were afraid of the abolition of legally mandated segregation for exactly the same reason. In any case, force is not a justifiable method to change people's attitudes on who they privately associate with.
- mrcrumb1 5y ago
  Am I misreading this or are you implying that if people had absolute rights to discriminate in their private interactions that racism would have disappeared on its own?