David Horowitz wrote: The difference is that the law interfered with the market and enforced segregation. Which is precisely the point.When the market is allowed operate what happens is that the Greensboro lunch kitchen bigot refuses black business, and his competitor who doesn't beats him out. JW reply: It seems that you presuppose that the people of Greensboro were opposed to segregationist laws and would have gladly dined in integrated harmony had the law allowed. I would suggest that law or no law, the lunch kitchen bigot (or not) could have weighed the number of bigots who were likely to eat there against the number of others had he integrated and picked the higher number (rational capitalist decision), a point that Peter Levy also made. Another option is that the owner weighed the income to be made from integrating against the cost of being bombed, burned and shot at by his neighbors (again a rational capitalist decision, as well as a more primal one that goes beyond pure economics to a case of physical survival). Not that I say that either of these were the reason, but in theory they are possible alternatives. As for your point that the market works when the law insists on equal opportunity, one can argue that any law that regulates the market, particularly as to who one must or must not sell to, is a perversion of the free market system. Both laws mandating segregation as well as those mandating integration in the market place render that market no longer free and under the control of non-market forces. Truly free markets and free enterprise are features of anarchy. David, are you favoring anarchism? :) -- Jerry West Editor/publisher/janitor ---------------------------------------------------- THE RECORD On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast An independent, progressive regional publication http://www.island.net/~record/
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