Thursday, May 01, 2014

Discipline and Punish, Libertarian Mix

I was disappointed following this Reason link: Does the Free Market Punish Racism?
I half-expected to find they were making Steven Farron's "Prejudice is Free" argument, that racial discrimination isn't tenable in a free market:

The reason is a fundamental economic principle, which is obvious to common sense. If an individual or business, while engaging in an economic activity—hiring, promotion, lending money—considers any non-economic factors, the person or business will suffer economically—even if the non-economic factors were considered unconsciously.

Alas, it was a video, of some libertarian minx asking this question of anti-Sterling protestors outside Staples Center. The piece opens with a clip of a black speaker declaring the Clippers "our team" to be "repossessed", and the question of property rights is thus dispatched without commentary from Reason. (The opening shot is hilarious--a woman holding a sign saying "Racism is Against the Law"). Likely having had difficulty getting black picketers to expound on Austrian v Keynesian distinctions, the Reason babe ditches that tack to commiserate with the negroes about their "real problems", police brutality and drug laws. "Yeah, it's the Man, man!" Libertarians are so cute on Race.

2 comments:

geschrei said...

Four posts in a week? You're on a roll, my friend!

I'd like to share some snippets from an actual conversation between two tween boys, one black and one white, that I overheard while emptying my recently flooded mini warehouse near the EPA Superfund site in Pensacola, FL (where aforementioned adolescents were apparently part of a mixed-race youth boxing club that met in one of the now-contaminated units):

Black kid: So what you think of what that old guy who owns the Clippers said?
White kid: I agree with him 100 percent. 'zat make me rayciss too?
BK: Naww, he ain't rayciss neither. It's all Magic Johnson's fault. Old dude didn't want his bitch out there being seen with Magic in public. I don't blame him one bit.
WK: Magic's trying to take over the Clippers anyway, no wonder old dude was pissed.

Mouths of babes, and all that. Obviously these two malcontents don't read the editorial page of the Times-Picayune.

Dennis Dale said...

What can I say? I've been mostly blocked for about four years. But the cynicism of those young guys is inspiring.

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