Businesses should be allowed to turn away women, gay and black people

[MicrosoftBob]

What on earth is a 'true libertarian'?

Frank Zappa, but he's long dead

[doodab]

What on earth is a 'true libertarian'?

A corporate lobbyist?

[Sysman]

However why would any sensible business owner turn away 50%+ of the population - it is just rubbish business sense and will cause your business to fail!

But taking that statement at face value*, any product which is sold as "exclusive" or "for the discerning few" is going to fail.


* and out of context too. This is after all General, and the sun is shining and interview tomorrow so I am in a good mood.

[Zero Liability]

True Libertarians are also proponents of open borders and free movement of capital and labour.

How well this bodes with UKIP, heaven help me!

I don't think you understand libertarianism if you think so. Libertarians are in favour of open borders, provided immigrants or employers aren't subsidised on the taxpayer dime. Where this is the case, a libertarian has good cause to be suspicious of open borders. It would seem a lot of the people purporting to be libertarians, and even more of those who are critical of the ideology, have absolutely no understanding of it.

As for the right to refuse/dissociate with certain people, I am completely in favour of it. In practice, it is likely to be exercised only by a handful of individuals, since if nothing else, the profit motive will suffice to provide incentives to most people not to discriminate. Where, in some few cases, they want to turn down particular customers or employees on whatever grounds they may wish, I have little problem with it. I may not personally agree with it but that doesn't amount to a right, on my part, to tell them who they must (not) patronise. That would be ridiculous.

But taking that statement at face value*, any product which is sold as "exclusive" or "for the discerning few" is going to fail.

I don't think that's true. For a market where volume is what matters, you are willingly taking in less profit by serving fewer customers. It should be your right to do so, but it is a matter of fact that if you're an entrepreneur who is motivated purely by financial gain, discriminating may not be in your best interest. Luxury markets, by contrast, are high value, low volume markets, where the good in question may be rare to begin with, or made from rare supplies. If no one else is serving this market, or any other niche market, in preference for the safer waters of mass volume markets, there is profit to be had, and an enterprising capitalist would gain from addressing this portion of the market. The point to be taken away here is that for the majority of entrepreneurs/capitalists, there's little to be gained from discrimination, on account of their business models.

A corporate lobbyist?

According to the Guardian, no doubt. Why such a view should be taken seriously, however, is anyone's guess. I suppose anyone can call themselves a libertarian and at the same time suck on the state's teat. Alan Greenspan is one great example of this.

[Mich the Tester]

But taking that statement at face value*, any product which is sold as "exclusive" or "for the discerning few" is going to fail.

No; an "exclusive" product is sold to anybody who can pay for it, including people with little class or style and who like to have their egos reinforced by phrases like "the discerning few". It's quite a different matter and really rather stupid to tell people 'you're not allowed to buy our "exclusive" product because you're black/gay/a woman'.

[Zero Liability]

I'm actually surprised just how many contractors on here seem to like the idea of State control.

Or is a case of one rule for me and one rule for the little people?

Pretty much. That seems to be the whole idea underpinning most political preferences. Or the bogeyman of "monopolies". Or catastrophising based on the musings of some outdated relic by the name of Hobbes, whose own theories on social organisation are self-contradictory, i.e. the typical "society would end without [x]..."

It's not fooling nearly as many people as it used to.

[xoggoth]

The existence and source of this thread was totally predictable.

[SpontaneousOrder]

The existence and source of this thread was totally predictable.

Ergo free will is an illusion and the matrix is wrong.

[Zero Liability]

Well in that case the trains are only pseudo-private, so I guess it wouldn't make sense for them ostracise particular sections of the public who legislate their practises and existence.

Private enterprise cannot unilaterally create apartheid. Only their customer's (i.e. the public )can.

I don't understand what the neighbours thing means?

With the pseudo-private operators like those providing networks, such as rail, if they were to be genuinely privatised along the lines of a consumer co-operative of some sort, I see them as incredibly unlikely to perform such discrimination. Even in the case of a typical PLC, why it would engage in such utterly pointless discrimination, that would do no service to its shareholders, who are free to move their dime elsewhere, and which may be vulnerable to hostile takeovers on the market for corporate control, I do not know. For this sort of "apartheid" situation to arise you need a good portion of the population to believe in it and indulge in it. Historically, e.g. in the US, it was enforced precisely through government controlled services, and in some cases the government forcing private firms to discriminate. In which case, government control is no panacea whatsoever, quite the opposite. Usually shifts in public opinion precede legislative shifts. More realistically, you will get communities like Orania in South Africa, where people who want to engage in dissociation will do so by forming their own community, and much the same for more cosmopolitan populations. The whole affair is only an issue when you have governments setting one-size-fits-all policies across diverse regions.

That said, I consider this dichotomy between "big business" and government to be a false one.

[doodab]

Why such a view should be taken seriously, however, is anyone's guess.

It should be taken seriously because of the obvious alignment between the US libertarian movement and US corporate interests, and the vast amounts of money behind it that comes from somewhere. It has nothing to do with the state and everything to do with corporate behemoths trying to subvert it for their own ends.