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You're mistaken. The South was rapidly desegregating after the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow laws (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Atlanta's bu

You're mistaken. The South was rapidly desegregating after the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow laws (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Atlanta's business and cultural elite famously bowed to pressure from Coca Cola in 1964 to honor MLK in a mixed race commemoration, after the latter warned the city's mayor that they would relocate their headquarters if they did not, and all without any legal mandates backed by the state's apparatus of violence. The momentum of desegregation was massive.

mrcrumb1 5y ago
Except that Atlanta still has problems with segregation today
otterley 5y ago
One example does not a trend make. And there was continuing de facto and de jure segregation both in the South and in non-Southern states until the Civil Rights Act - in restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. And take, for example, exclusionary racial housing covenants, which continued to be written and were enforceable until then—even in California, where slavery was never legal. These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  That was a watershed example. The white elite of one of the leading cities of the South, honoring MLK in a mixed race event, shows where the cultural zeitgest was. There was a very large and clear trend toward desegregation in the South that had been in place since long before the passing of the Civil Rights Act. You note the existence of private segregation as evidence of the lack of a trend, when it is no such thing. A trend doesn't imply that the parameter subject to the trend is, at all points within that trend, at its final state. >>These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Legal means of overturning these covenants could have been created without the Civil Rights Act, and its injection of the state's apparatus of violence onto private interactions, and instituting such legal means could have been done far more easily than instituting the CRA, as land has always been a more legitimate object of state control than other forms of private property - especially in this case, where the state's intervention would have simply absolved non-signers from having to honor a disembodied contractual clause. >>Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. You're not informed on the history. There are profound historical examples of desegregation occuring in the wake of the abolition of mandated segregation. The best example is the Northern States, which had an extremely racist culture at one time too, contrary to what some may believe on account of their earlier rejection of slavery and their war to end it. Every single strongly segregationist society has only ever persisted in such a state with the aid of ideocratic anti-market laws that instituted mandatory segregation, and there's a reason for that: a free society is not in its majority, inherently segregationist. Such a state of interaction is unnatural and inefficient, and in the presence of a right to voluntary interaction in both the civil and economic sphere, is gradually reduced to nothing but the fringes.
  - otterley 5y ago
    Unfortunately you continue to conveniently ignore the most important understanding about the human race: "Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money." It's not just about segregation per se, it's about the bigger problem of oppression. Segregation is just a tool to implement it. And people's ability to distinguish one another for the purposes of oppression is not even limited to skin color. If you travel around the world, you'll even observe people who look totally alike hating and trying to oppress each other. (Go visit the Balkans sometime.) Persecution of minorities -- racial, ethnic, religious -- has been a thing for at least as long as recorded history. This problem simply does not fix itself through free-market solutions.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      The protection of the law with the freedom to contract completely protects people from the oppression you speak of. That is why black Americans, as a demographic, saw crime rates, wages and educational attainment levels rapidly improve until 1960. You take it as a matter of faith that a free society does not work, and the evidence shows that it does.
      - otterley 5y ago
        > The protection of the law with the freedom to contract completely protects people from the oppression you speak of. Except it doesn't, and countless wars, terrorism, and other violence and oppression whose root cause was to exterminate "the other," including Jews, Christians, Gypsies, homosexuals, Rohingya, Tibetans, Uighur, Sh'ia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and others have demonstrated otherwise. I'm through with this discussion.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        In all of those cases, there was no protection of the law, so I'm very confused as to how you think your examples support your point. You're pointing to cases where hatred led to organized violence against minorities. I'm saying that upholding the principle of non-violence, and thereby establishing a free society, is an active defense against the kind of coordinated violence you reference. A free society doesn't eliminate hatred. It stamps out aggression, so that hatred cannot be channeled to destructive purposes.

mrcrumb1 5y ago

Except that Atlanta still has problems with segregation today

otterley 5y ago

One example does not a trend make. And there was continuing de facto and de jure segregation both in the South and in non-Southern states until the Civil Rights Act - in restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. And take, for example, exclusionary racial housing covenants, which continued to be written and were enforceable until then—even in California, where slavery was never legal. These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
That was a watershed example. The white elite of one of the leading cities of the South, honoring MLK in a mixed race event, shows where the cultural zeitgest was. There was a very large and clear trend toward desegregation in the South that had been in place since long before the passing of the Civil Rights Act. You note the existence of private segregation as evidence of the lack of a trend, when it is no such thing. A trend doesn't imply that the parameter subject to the trend is, at all points within that trend, at its final state. >>These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Legal means of overturning these covenants could have been created without the Civil Rights Act, and its injection of the state's apparatus of violence onto private interactions, and instituting such legal means could have been done far more easily than instituting the CRA, as land has always been a more legitimate object of state control than other forms of private property - especially in this case, where the state's intervention would have simply absolved non-signers from having to honor a disembodied contractual clause. >>Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. You're not informed on the history. There are profound historical examples of desegregation occuring in the wake of the abolition of mandated segregation. The best example is the Northern States, which had an extremely racist culture at one time too, contrary to what some may believe on account of their earlier rejection of slavery and their war to end it. Every single strongly segregationist society has only ever persisted in such a state with the aid of ideocratic anti-market laws that instituted mandatory segregation, and there's a reason for that: a free society is not in its majority, inherently segregationist. Such a state of interaction is unnatural and inefficient, and in the presence of a right to voluntary interaction in both the civil and economic sphere, is gradually reduced to nothing but the fringes.
- otterley 5y ago
  Unfortunately you continue to conveniently ignore the most important understanding about the human race: "Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money." It's not just about segregation per se, it's about the bigger problem of oppression. Segregation is just a tool to implement it. And people's ability to distinguish one another for the purposes of oppression is not even limited to skin color. If you travel around the world, you'll even observe people who look totally alike hating and trying to oppress each other. (Go visit the Balkans sometime.) Persecution of minorities -- racial, ethnic, religious -- has been a thing for at least as long as recorded history. This problem simply does not fix itself through free-market solutions.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    The protection of the law with the freedom to contract completely protects people from the oppression you speak of. That is why black Americans, as a demographic, saw crime rates, wages and educational attainment levels rapidly improve until 1960. You take it as a matter of faith that a free society does not work, and the evidence shows that it does.
    - otterley 5y ago
      > The protection of the law with the freedom to contract completely protects people from the oppression you speak of. Except it doesn't, and countless wars, terrorism, and other violence and oppression whose root cause was to exterminate "the other," including Jews, Christians, Gypsies, homosexuals, Rohingya, Tibetans, Uighur, Sh'ia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and others have demonstrated otherwise. I'm through with this discussion.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        In all of those cases, there was no protection of the law, so I'm very confused as to how you think your examples support your point. You're pointing to cases where hatred led to organized violence against minorities. I'm saying that upholding the principle of non-violence, and thereby establishing a free society, is an active defense against the kind of coordinated violence you reference. A free society doesn't eliminate hatred. It stamps out aggression, so that hatred cannot be channeled to destructive purposes.