From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 22:48:58 MDT
Technotranscendence wrote:
> > I'd argue that even the natural inclination of private citizens to
> > promote a class system on this basis would have negative consequences
> > for everyone, in the same way that racism would have negative
> > consequences even in an anarchocapitalist society.
> I don't completely disagree, but in a free market society -- be it
> anarchocapitalist or minarchist -- the costs of racism are more
> localized.
Actually, I think it's a toss-up. When racism/classism is in the
majority, you're correct, the majority can pass laws which restrict even
the minority from treating people equally. But when racism/classism is in
the minority, the majority can pass laws which restrict the minority from
discriminating on the basis of race/class/whatever.
That isn't to say that a democratic-voting society is ever altogether
better than a minarchist/anarchocapitalist society, even in the special
case in which prejudice (of all kinds) is in the minority. I just mean to
say that this is not one of those problems where the free-market
particularly comes out ahead.
> A person cannot, e.g., use the force of law to enforce
> racism, though she might be bigoted herself. This does not mean the
> problem is solved. After all, society is a kind of totality and
> individual actions influence the culture at large. However, I think a
> more free market society would likely become less racist over time --
> or, at least, not as institutionally racist as quickly as a less free
> market one.
>
> Thomas Sowell's _Preferential Policies: An International Perspective_
> gives plenty of examples where racist people actual deal with each other
> through market interactions. E.g., Jim Crow laws in the South (of the
> US) were scoffed at by streetcar owners because they knew they would
> lose Black customers. Sowell concludes that the streetcar owners "were
> [not] any less racist those whites who did not [own streetcars]. Their
> opposition to segregated seating was economic rather than ideological."
> (p21) In other words, the streetcar owners were probably just as racist
> as the next guy, but not willing to pay the price for manifesting their
> racism when it cut into their bottom line. In other words, long before
> Rosa Parks, market forces were working against racial segregation.
I don't think anecdotal evidence will make your case here.
I think it's worth considering the point that a socialist political
economy can make certain trade-offs from the top down that a market
economy wouldn't. For example, the socialist political economy could cut
into the market ("just a little bit", they promise!) to subsidize some
good G more than the market would ordinarily allow.
In some cases, the strategy backfires over the long-term, even with
regards to the amount of G you get. For example, a socialist economy
could cut into technology research to promote a clean natural environment,
only to slow/block the development of cleaner technology, harming the
environment. But I think there are a few goods where the strategy won't
(as such) backfire, even over the long term, at least with regards to
that good considered in isolation.
One generous example "good" might be practical research targeted at
developing AI researchers, and/or enhancing research. Sure, this would
mess with incentives and degrade the health of the economy, but, I'd
expect, not so much that you'd actually get less AI research than you
otherwise would, (especially when you consider that this research is
self-catalyzing; more research will lead to faster research) unlike the
technology/environment trade-off, where you really would expect a worse
environment, all else being equal.
I'd argue that eliminating prejudice is one of those cases where a
socialist political economy could successfully pass laws mandating
non-discrimination and expect to get less discrimination than would appear
in a free-market economy.
Indeed, I think the onus would be on market advocates to show that a
socialist political economy WOULDN'T get less discrimination. Of course,
we could make a sociological argument (a la Hayek) for the market that the
fairness of treatment that might be false or forced, and therefore
ingenuine or of less real value than fairness which results from the free
choices of individuals in a market.
But this argument isn't conclusive... it seems at odds with a very
plausible interpretation of the history of the United States: that only
when laws were passed and we were forced to be fair did we "see the light"
and realize that all races were to be treated equally. This isn't
necessarily the right interpretation, but it has at least as much
evidential support as a naive argument from Hayekian market psychology
like the one I just sketched out.
Of course, arguments in favor of the market are often subtle... maybe I'm
missing something here, and there IS some conclusive reason why even these
laws would backfire, even with regard to prejudice alone... but I can't
think of any.
Now, does that mean that we should be socialists, at least on this issue?
Well, no. Part of the problem of socialism is that it tends to look at
single goods in isolation, rather than as part of a network of
trade-offs.
But I think that, on this particular issue, it's at best a tie between
market and law... And perhaps law might even win in some special cases,
if prejudice were all we cared about and we could be sure the laws would
be written/enforced more-or-less as we imagined them.
[While this might not be the norm, it isn't so exceptional as to think
it'd *never* happen, or that it isn't happening right now in the United
States... maybe we really ARE less prejudiced today on account of the
leadership of our government, like the textbooks say. Which, again, isn't
to say that we aren't worse off on other grounds.]
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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