And you're fairly appalling in either pretending to misunderstand free markets or in your stupidity - Edit 1
Before modification by Cannoli at 27/01/2010 03:01:30 AM
Actually - I have to take back the topic I'm afraid. That's not an 'amusing' argument at all. It's a truly and utterly sick one.
By such standards, the 'free market' should be fine with any and all discrimination.
If you can prove that would happen. Jim Crow was GOVERNMENT policy, not the market at work. By such standards, the 'free market' should be fine with any and all discrimination.
If society decides never to hire black people except for work in the fields then - well that's okay, right? After all, people are just 'following their beliefs'.
Your absurd view of society as monolithic is what is amusing. At some point, black people who did not want to work in the fields would offer their labor elsewhere at an advantageous price, and some business would accept that offer and employ black people in order to gain a competitive advantage. The "society" you speak of is exactly what I seek to avoid by endorsing a free-market! It is LAWS that cause such practices, and these are laws that inhibit trade and work, you imbecile! Why don't you find a post where I endorse only a partially free market? If the free market is truly practiced, and the government ARE prohibited from interfering in it, your scenario would NOT happen! Segregation is NOT a free market practice. How on earth is specifying the conditions under which businesses may serve their customers a free market practice? How is specifying who a employer may hire, and what labor he may employ particular individuals at, part of a free market?If you choose to fire any woman who won't strip at company parties, that's okay too right? After all - if those are your beliefs... Companies that did NOT require such practices would have a competitive advantage in hiring female employees. Unless you think women are too inept for an employer to seek to hire one for her beneficial qualities?
We have constitutions and laws BECAUSE minorities need to be protected. If we didn't the majority will often abuse and marginalize them. Sometimes even enslave or kill them.
What exactly, is a novelty practice like same sex marriage protecting anyone from? The principle you cite is needed to protect people from having to fund such farcical practices because of the fashions among those with power.