5 ms·

> don't generally include dining in private establishments anymore than they do dining in private homes That's an interesting hypothesis but it doesn't stand u

> don't generally include dining in private establishments anymore than they do dining in private homes That's an interesting hypothesis but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. A private establishment isn't a home (indeed, there are often zoning laws against conflating the two, lest business interfere with neighbors' domestic tranquility). Owning a business, including the protections under the law and the separation of the fate of the business from the fate of its owner, are protections granted under the law that are privileges, not rights. They are contingent and revokable. The same governing authority that lets government demand you not dump toxic waste in the river behind your factory lets it demand you serve every citizen who can afford your fees and has not transgressed in a non-protected way against you. I agree that in the '30s we reinterpreted the general welfare. I like to tell people we're basically on US version 3 now. To our credit, we pulled this one off without the bloody civil war it took to hammer out version 2. But like the change to version 2, it was also quite necessary; we'd tried ad-hoc'ing a functional nation of millions together using massive individual liberty and we got ourselves a Great Depression for our troubles. > Segregation in publicly funded institutions (so far as these are themselves legitimate) is unacceptable The bus boycott wasn't about that. Nor were the lunch-table sit-ins. These were all parts of the civil rights movement. > I'm not nearly as sure as you are that it would be a markedly more violent one. As I said, you have more to learn from a closer study of the history of the civil rights movement. It was never about mere government equality; this is a government of the people, and those who fought for equality rightly recognized they would never get it without the hearts and minds of the people changing (something that, history has since shown, is a slow process but one that can be accomplished modulo outliers). > Any obligation or consent should always be explicit. Oh, it's quite explicit. Form a corporation, and here's the whole set of federal, state, and local laws you're now obligated to comply with. It's quite a bit more than the private citizen complies with. ... and you've completely dodged the fact that though we are born naked, the skin we're born into matters in this society, still. While that is still true, we impose obligations on our citizenry to make it less so specifically because we believe people should have the freedom to do that which injures no-one else... Such as share a lunch counter with a stranger in a restaurant that serves the public.

thegrimmest 4y ago
> A private establishment isn't a home A private unincorporated business isn't meaningfully separated from its owner, financially or otherwise. > The same governing authority that lets government demand you not dump toxic waste in the river But they derive this authority from the defence of the commons, which is fundamental to liberty. The whole point is that "we the people" agree to be governed within these constraints. From where does government derive the authority to make demands on whom you serve? > hearts and minds of the people changing Forcing people to change their hearts and minds is abhorrent and divisive. I wouldn't say it has been all positive so far as outcomes are concerned either. > Form a corporation, and here's the whole set of federal, state, and local laws you're now obligated to comply with And these laws are enabled by the very same overreaching interpretation of "the general Welfare" that I addressed in my previous comment. > and you've completely dodged the fact Sorry, I've included it in an edit to the parent. > share a lunch counter with a stranger in a restaurant that serves the public. The person being injured is the owner of the restaurant that can no longer exercise their liberty to choose whom they serve. The exercise of this liberty harms no one else.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > From where does government derive the authority to make demands on whom you serve? ... from we the people. Same legal process that passed the other laws those years and nothing in the Constitution countermanding it. For what it's worth, you will find that most of the equality laws you're concerned about don't apply to private unincorporated businesses. They do, generally, scale with the impact of corporation has on the society around it. > The exercise of this liberty harms no one else. I assume the "else" here is necessary because it clearly harms the person who is being denied the ability to buy a meal purely because they have the wrong skin tone for this town. Would you agree that is a harm and if so, by what right do we stand by and let that harm perpetuate? (Note: "they could just go somewhere else" is a non-starter because we lived through that, and a separate but equal was not good enough).
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    It's not a harm. The point is that you're not entitled to buy a meal. You have to figure out how to meet your needs on your own, by negotiating with the outside world. You're not entitled to have them met. This couldn't have been more obvious in 1800 but seems to have been forgotten somehow. > they could just go somewhere else This is exactly how voluntary association works. As I've said before, we've not lived through desegregated public life and no opinion on private business. I suspect the actual outcomes would vary widely by location, which is the point of limited central authority. Who are you to tell someone hundreds of miles away how to live?

thegrimmest 4y ago

> A private establishment isn't a home A private unincorporated business isn't meaningfully separated from its owner, financially or otherwise. > The same governing authority that lets government demand you not dump toxic waste in the river But they derive this authority from the defence of the commons, which is fundamental to liberty. The whole point is that "we the people" agree to be governed within these constraints. From where does government derive the authority to make demands on whom you serve? > hearts and minds of the people changing Forcing people to change their hearts and minds is abhorrent and divisive. I wouldn't say it has been all positive so far as outcomes are concerned either. > Form a corporation, and here's the whole set of federal, state, and local laws you're now obligated to comply with And these laws are enabled by the very same overreaching interpretation of "the general Welfare" that I addressed in my previous comment. > and you've completely dodged the fact Sorry, I've included it in an edit to the parent. > share a lunch counter with a stranger in a restaurant that serves the public. The person being injured is the owner of the restaurant that can no longer exercise their liberty to choose whom they serve. The exercise of this liberty harms no one else.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> From where does government derive the authority to make demands on whom you serve? ... from we the people. Same legal process that passed the other laws those years and nothing in the Constitution countermanding it. For what it's worth, you will find that most of the equality laws you're concerned about don't apply to private unincorporated businesses. They do, generally, scale with the impact of corporation has on the society around it. > The exercise of this liberty harms no one else. I assume the "else" here is necessary because it clearly harms the person who is being denied the ability to buy a meal purely because they have the wrong skin tone for this town. Would you agree that is a harm and if so, by what right do we stand by and let that harm perpetuate? (Note: "they could just go somewhere else" is a non-starter because we lived through that, and a separate but equal was not good enough).
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  It's not a harm. The point is that you're not entitled to buy a meal. You have to figure out how to meet your needs on your own, by negotiating with the outside world. You're not entitled to have them met. This couldn't have been more obvious in 1800 but seems to have been forgotten somehow. > they could just go somewhere else This is exactly how voluntary association works. As I've said before, we've not lived through desegregated public life and no opinion on private business. I suspect the actual outcomes would vary widely by location, which is the point of limited central authority. Who are you to tell someone hundreds of miles away how to live?