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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (567280)5/21/2010 10:49:27 AM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1577348
 
A common (I'm not sure if its typical but its not rare) libertarian position, is not that such discrimination is ok, but that legally punishing people for it is wrong. Its like many people's reaction to adultery.

That is BTW an opinion I share. People should be free to associate or not associate with those they don't want to (or not). Of course that includes being free to boycott businesses that act in racist ways.

In the absence of society being highly racist, there is a natural check on abuse of such freedom. Being racially discriminatory hurts a business (and that's even if there is no boycott against it). It has a smaller pool of employees (and thus is likely to pay more and/or get less qualified employees), and a smaller pool of customers which can harm its revenue, but reducing sales, reducing prices, or both. (Those factors exist in a highly racist society as well, but if they get extra business from the many racists, that business can make up for the loss from being discriminatory.)

What's particularly odious, is legally required discrimination, or other forms of discrimination by or in response to pressure from the government. Then you not only have the wrong of racism, but also a violation of people's freedom of association. A lot of the discrimination in the past was supported by or even mandated by governments, or was directly performed by government.
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