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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (122704)	5/20/2010 9:09:04 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

skeeter, >i wonder if rand would have a problem with states outlawing public businesses from discriminating based on race.< By "public" do you mean government or "private businesses open to the public". If it's the former, I think he would have no problem with any state government making laws that prevent discrimination by race at any public entities. He'd probably also be OK with government entities not doing business with private entities that discriminate based on race. If it's the latter, I think he would be in favor of allowing a private owner to discriminate by race in a state with no laws preventing it "in theory". The reason I say "in theory" is that IMO if an owner did that these days, there's a good chance he would be out of business quickly in most places in this country anyway. The culture of America has changed so much that discrimination based on race is not really tolerated. The owner would be boycotted, vilified etc... and his business would be so damaged he would either change it or go under. That's the way these things should work. They should really be about a battle for the hearts and minds of people and their ability to use free economics and markets to implement change. They should not be about one group ramming their values down the throats of another group (even if they are right). When enough people agree on something, no one gets pissed off if you make laws on it. It's when a lot of people still want to engage in a behavior that others find offensive, immoral, unhealthy etc.. and they try to legislate against it that you have a problem. For example playing poker online is illegal in the US. A very good case can be made that gambling ruins millions of lives, distracts young people from their education, contributes to divorce, increases violent crime against others etc... In fact, I agree with that view (even though I play)!! However, even though I think poker is a horrible idea for society IMO it should not be illegal when there are 10s of millions of people that want to play, play responsibly, disagree with the above view, and think it should be legal. By my standard poker should be legal until such time that the opponents convince the rest of us that there are such huge downsides to it, it should be illegal. I think that even though tomorrow I might get mugged by some teenager that just dropped out of school, tapped out his parents credit cards, owes 20K to a local gangster loan shark, and is desperate because he lost it all playing poker.