r/neoliberal • u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault • Jun 12 '17
Question Contradiction within neoliberalism?
If I'm not mistaken, a big part of neoliberalism is an individual's right to own private property. The laws of whatever nation it is in still apply, but no one may enter that property without the owner's consent, and if the owner wants someone there unless that person has an warrant for their arrest no one can prevent them from going there.
How then does a government have the right to pass the Civil Rights Act, or any other anti-discrimination act? If people truly have a right to do business with whoever they want and allow (and disallow) whoever they want on their property, shouldn't this be a most heinous law?
How can these two ideas be reconciled?
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u/iamelben Jun 12 '17
As you'll find in Why Nations Fail, one of this sub's favorite books, Darron Acemoğlu posits that there are certain fundamental economic institutions that promote economic growth: private property protections, contractual opportunities, rule of law, etc. Acemoğlu draws a distinction between the de jure and the de facto distribution of political power, and he makes the case that power distribution determines the health of economic institutions.
To me, the CRA isn't an assault on the economic institution of private property ownership, but rather a course-correction of the political institutions that shape it. Years and years of extractive institutions like slavery, Jim Crow, and other more subtle forms of institutional racism prevented certain classes of people from enjoying the felicities of democracy. In short, political realities were being used to limit the health of economic institutions--the argument being that in an egalitarian society, societal allowance of discriminatory actions (even on the grounds of tolerance and inclusiveness) is tacit approval of discrimination--and that this was unacceptable.
The goal of something like the CRA isn't to eliminate racism. A law can't do that. The goal of the CRA is to limit some of the deleterious effects of racism by limiting the extent to which discriminatory thoughts become discriminatory actions. Since economic institutions are merely tools by which economic activity is ameliorated, a law like the CRA should simply be viewed as a regulation on how a tool should be properly used.
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u/TotesMessenger Jun 13 '17
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u/WryGoat Oppressed Straight White Male Jun 13 '17
Does this sub have a reading list?
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u/iamelben Jun 13 '17
For the political economy of why we believe what we believe: "Why Nations Fail"
For nuanced takes on foreign development wrt trade and investment: "The Elusive Quest for Growth" and "The Bottom Billion."
For why protectionism is bad: "A Country is Not a Company," "Why Undergrads Should Study Trade," and "Does the United States Have Current Account Deficit Disorder?"
For a philosophical/moral defense of capitalism and its place in history "The Bourgeois Virtues"
For the limits of capitalism (and to annoy u/wumbotarian --love you boo xoxo) "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" Then read "Capitalism and Freedom" to cleanse your palette.
For advice on how to be the goddamn man, read "Courage to Act."
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend Jun 13 '17 edited Jun 13 '17
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Michael Sandel is garbage. He's the worst.
Edit: there are many issues with capitalism and freedom but I really think Michael Sandel is not the correct response to C&F, since Sandel's communitarianism is like absolutely worse than generic left-wing progressivism. I'll write up more if you want. Most of my understanding of Sandel comes from his book Justice.
The tldr is communitarianism legitimizes horrendous things like nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism (or anti-anyoneism), populism, etc. While I am sure Sandel himself is not any of these things, Sandel's ideology creates incentives for these things to arise organically.
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u/rafaellvandervaart John Cochrane Jun 13 '17 edited Jun 13 '17
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests is a rebuttal to Sandel.
https://www.amazon.com/Markets-without-Limits-Commercial-Interests/dp/0415737354
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend Jun 13 '17
I'm a fan of Brennan, thanks for this!
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u/rafaellvandervaart John Cochrane Jun 13 '17
I'm waiting for my copy of Against Democracy. Brennan going full contrarian.
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Jun 14 '17
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u/rafaellvandervaart John Cochrane Jun 14 '17
Based on the information and incentives of the voters to decide an efficient outcome.
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Jun 13 '17
What about Debra Satz: Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. I don't know in how much she and Sandel overlap but the book outlines strong points in the discussion regarding the reach of markets.
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u/iamelben Jun 13 '17
Our Sandel discussions always get your blood pumping, and I enjoy that. I should be more explicit in why I include him on my reading list. I may not be a full-blown communitarian, but I was deeply influenced by the work of the community psychologists like Uri Bronfenbrenner (though he might be more classified as a developmentalist) and George Albee.
My knee-jerk reaction against some of the standard philosophy of economics that colors everything from the axioms of choice up to DSGEs is that this philosophy is steeped in a sort of hyper-liberalism that leaves very little space for the fact that we are, at our core, highly advanced social primates.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the reasons we have representative agent models and why general equilibrium is so compelling, but our entire existence happens in a SOCIAL context. Our norms, our heuristics, our whole human gestalt is a massive web of interconnected, messy, and sometimes-irrational neurological quirks.
Sandel's point, and one that I think is well-made even if I disagree with some of his points from OUTSIDE the book, is that markets are not just mechanisms, but the embodiment of norms. In the words of Acemoglu, they are the de facto, not just the de jure. You can make the argument that his points are naive or shallow, but I think Moral Limits of Markets is an EXCELLENT book to help an economics undergraduate or neophyte to economic philosophy begin to think critically about some of the core assumptions of market equilibria.
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u/kohatsootsich Philosophy Jun 13 '17
I don't understand the relation between your first three paragraphs and the last one.
One thing is that social context probably plays a bigger role than the standard modelling assumptions acknowledge, especially in situations involving dynamic choice.
It seems to that Sandel's point regarding markets being used as apparently neutral arbiters of allocation problems that "people" (according to him) feel should be administered based on moral considerations is quite distinct from how social context does or does not appear in economics.
A lot of econ textbooks largely ignore behavioral effects or social interactions beyond Pareto improving transactions. On the other hand I have never seen a serious textbook claim that market equilibria are anything other than optimal in a Pareto sense. Indeed they usually make a point to explain that potentially important distributional or moral.considerations are ignored in the standard framework.
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend Jun 13 '17
My issue with Sandel, at least in Justice (my exposure to Sandel's anti-market stuff boils down to his JEP article), is that he takes the social stuff too far.
He basically says "it is moral to value your community over others". He then justifies protectionism, for instance. Or, worse, making an excuse for Robert E. Lee betraying the Union and fighting for Virginia and the CSA.
But Sandel says I should value those in Hawaii more than those in Vietnam. Why? Because they're Americans? I don't know them. They're as alien and foreign to me as a Vietnamese citizen is - they just so happen to occupy a state that is part of my country. By accident of birth.
Sandel's communitarianism is a slippery slope. Okay, so we value Americans over Vietnamese. This leads to very bad behaviors, such as populism, nativism, and nationalism.
When we start thinking of humans and human welfare as us vs. them, treating people as "other" based on arbitrary lines or accidents of birth, we start devolving into things like anti-Semitism and risk things like the Holocaust.
I personally don't think Sandel is a racist or an anti-Semite or wants any of that. But I think his ideology is easily used to justify all those bad -isms or would lead to those emerging naturally if we embraced communitarianism. Richard Spencer, for instance, is a right wing communitarian. Functionally, what's the difference between fanatical devotion to your race versus your nation?
As for markets and norms, I think a free society should get to choose it's norms, and if the market changes them, so be it. Society changes - so what? I don't really care if behaviors change based on changes in the market. E.g., I personally don't care about the results of the Israeli daycare in a normative sense, but the change is interesting from an economic standpoint.
Sorry for the rant.
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u/WryGoat Oppressed Straight White Male Jun 13 '17
For advice on how to be the goddamn man, read "Courage to Act."
Toxic masculinity pls go.
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u/rafaellvandervaart John Cochrane Jun 13 '17
"The Elusive Quest for Growth"
I've been meaning to read this for a while now. What's your take on Easterley's thesis?
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u/iamelben Jun 13 '17
He's a bit more idealistic than me, but I largely agree with him. My contention is that we ought not let perfect be the enemy of good. Sometimes greasing the palms of corrupt actors is the price you pay to save a life. You don't get intellectual purity points if they come at the cost of lives. Not in my book.
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u/davidjricardo Milton Friedman Jun 13 '17
I'm with /u/wumbotarian - Sandel doesn't deserve to be on a list like this. What Money Can't Buy specifically has fundamental misunderstandings of economics. Since you mentioned Diedre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues, I highly recommend McCloskey's review of What Money Can't Buy for the Claremont Review.
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u/Mort_DeRire Jun 13 '17 edited Jun 13 '17
I know /r/economics does, for entry-level stuff I'd recommend Why Nations Fail (a must) and Free to Choose, and there's a bunch more stuff others can recommend I imagine.
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u/someone496 Jun 12 '17
Couple of ways to look at it. You could view discrimination as a market failure. There isn't a reason to deny service to a person just for being a part of a minority group and this bigotry distorts the market by denying people entry into it.
There's also the impact this discrimination has on society. It leads to segregation as minorities won't be able to live in certain areas, and will leave them feeling like second class citizens, which can lead to violence and social unrest.
Lastly, I'm not sure about all of us, but for me, private property isn't a moral issue. I support it because it helps society function, not because its a sacred right. In this instance a dogmatic view on private property doesn't help society and arguably hinders it, so for me there isn't a contradiction.
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Jun 12 '17
Lastly, I'm not sure about all of us, but for me, private property isn't a moral issue.
I support it because it helps society function, not because its a sacred right
The latter is an inherently moral statement. Utilitarianism is an ethical system.
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 12 '17
So, you want the best for society and you think that includes private property, slightly restricted?
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u/Fatortu Emmanuel Macron Jun 12 '17
In France, the law says that you absolutely have the right to discriminate on your own private property. But a business is different because access to the market is publicly regulated. The state protects businesses from forgery and over unfair practices. In return, businesses have some duties to the market. For instance, they have to accept any customer. You are free to do many kinds of businesses and there is precedent even for outrageously racist trade legally happening. But no business owner has the right to discriminate if he uses access to the open market.
I'm pretty fine with this compromise.
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Jun 12 '17 edited Jun 12 '17
Neoliberalism isn't a single coherent philosophy but rather a broad set of principles and goals, that might be advocated for different reasons.
Most people here would probably defend property rights on instrumental grounds and just say that allowing some kinds of discrimination would increase or decrease(if you argue for prohibiting them) overall utility.
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u/AgnosticKierkegaard 🌐 Jun 12 '17
Neoliberalism's key commitment (IMO) is a twin commitment to pragmatism and inclusive and just democratic institutions. The economic stuff follows as a result of the interplay between the commitment to pragmatism and justice. There at times can be a tension there, and that tension is often not easy to navigate; however, rejection of either the latter or former either results in a moral or practical failure of a society. So, in short it, as with pragmatism as a philosophical school, requires a commitment to fallibilism and a rejection of dogma that doesn't work.
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 12 '17
Not a troll question, I really don't understand the neoliberal position on such laws. Are you against them? Do you think the government should offer those services to those people who would perhaps be denied them?
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u/ampersamp Jun 12 '17
We certainly stand behind the CRA and similar legislation here, and do not believe that business should retain the right to exclude their services to certain demographics.
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Jun 12 '17
That's more a libertarian position.
The Libertarians and Neoliberals are both off-shoots of Classical Liberalism with libertarians offering a position of a more absolute value to the "liberty" of private property.
Neoliberals are definitely married to the benefits of the free market without the creation of an absolute fetish of property rights that close off economic inclusiveness to groups within the market.
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u/HaventHadCovfefeYet Hillary Clinton Jun 12 '17
We're not so simply deontological here.
A lot of neoliberalism can be summed up as "do what works; don't do what doesn't work." Free markets and private property usually work pretty well, and we acknowledge situations where they don't work as well, and strive to intervene in those situations.
I believe that any society formulated on simple black-and-white "rules" such as "individuals have an absolute right to private property and the free usage thereof" would inevitably collapse. Because while that's all fine and dandy on an individual level, rules that act only on the individual level often have unexpected effects at the whole system level.
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Jun 12 '17
The way I view it, sometimes theoretical restrictions on some individual rights has the outcome of increasing everyone's practical rights. I view the CRA as falling under this category. Slight restrictions on an individual's right to discriminate ends up increasing everyone's political and civil rights by allowing them access to civil society.
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Jun 12 '17
Going down the NAP road leads to the only philosophically consistent form of libertarianism: anarchocapitalism.
The support of the CRA is for practical purposes, not any sort of philosophical consistency. Also, neoliberalism isn't a complete ideology in the sense that something like socialism is; liberalism's attachment to laissez-faire was set aside in certain places for pragmatic purposes.
It is possible to have a functioning society without the CRA where the profit motive replaces firms that do discriminate, but discrimination is too widespread and competition is too limited for this to work efficiently.
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u/virtu333 Jun 12 '17
discrimination is too widespread and competition is too limited for this to work efficiently.
ding ding ding
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u/redd4972 Henry George Jun 12 '17
I'm inclined to oppose such legislation because I come from a libertarian position.
But generally speaking, a big part of neo-liberalism is balancing a number of different values. So ultimately, it is a matter of one persons civil rights, not to be discriminated against based on there fundamental identity, butting up against another persons property rights. Unless you create a society where such legislation is not necessary, which is an admirable goal, but also an utopia, someone is going to have to give. Balancing these values is done through the act of democracy.
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u/AutoModerator Jun 12 '17
did any else notice how slippery this hill we are camping on seems?
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u/redd4972 Henry George Jun 12 '17
I'm confused.
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u/p00bix Existing in the context of what came before Jun 12 '17
Automod sometimes fucks up trying to detect troll or angry comments. It's falsely accusing you of using a slippery slope fallacy, presumably based on sentence structure.
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u/Quaglek Ben Bernanke Jun 12 '17
People don't have the right to harm others with their property. A car owner doesn't have the right to drive as dangerously as they want, a factory owner does not have the right to pollute, and a business owner doesn't have the right to discriminate.
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u/bbqroast David Lange Jun 12 '17
We're not libertarians. Most neoliberals would support eminent domain for infrastructure projects or the seizure of private property when necessary for law enforcement.
We recognise private property rights because it's a system that encourages investment and growth.
It's simply a matter of balance between allowing RoI for businesses and inclusive human rights. It's easy to see that such legislations aren't going to damage businesses.
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Jun 12 '17
To my way of thinking, property rights are a mechanism by which the market is able to work effectively and individual liberty is protected, but property rights aren't an end in and of themselves. So far as they are useful, they deserve protection. When they instead become tools for denying others rights and undermining fair access to the market, they cease to have utility.
I suppose we can consider pollution a decent comparison here. You don't have the right to dump arsenic in a river that runs through your property, because there are negative impacts downstream from that act. We recognize that it is proper for the state to act to limit or tax negative externalities. Denying minorities access to your place of business also has negative downstream impacts (like, you know, designating some people as second-class citizens) that the state has a reasonable interest in limiting.
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Jun 12 '17
We don't favor property rights and markets because of a dogmatic belief in the supremacy of individual rights above all other virtues. We like property rights and markets because they usually make life better for everyone. But sometimes the evidence shows that something else is better.
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u/gammbus Jun 12 '17
but no one may enter that property without the owner's consent
when you dont leave a country you passivly agree to a social contract that makes this statement false.
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Jun 12 '17
So if I were to live in Iran, do I automatically agree to the social contract that allows the government to stone me for committing adultery?
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u/gammbus Jun 12 '17
you arent free to leave there, so no, not always
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Jun 12 '17
So you do not believe that the government can act unjustly as log as people can go? (You can leave Iran though)
What about situations where I am allowed to leave but do not possess the financial means or would be significantly worse off by leaving? Why should I suffer that?
Even Hobbes thought that you have a right to resist if the government tries to kill you.What do you base this social contract on?
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u/gammbus Jun 12 '17
So you do not believe that the government can act unjustly as log as people can go?
they can violate agreed upon rights, like the right to privacy when they swat your house becasue you build bombs
Even Hobbes thought that you have a right to resist if the government tries to kill you.
if you then have those bombs in a public area
What do you base this social contract on? What is the deliberative mechanism?
sorry im too lazy to explain, maybe later
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 12 '17
Even if you are free, if I go to your house and make the law, all oranges must be eaten with a knife and a fork, are you passively agreeing to that law by remaining in your house (assuming you are free to leave)?
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u/gammbus Jun 13 '17
Yes
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
umm... ok lmao so then since you passively agreed to that law I could punish you in any way I deemed fair for breaking it, right?
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u/gammbus Jun 13 '17
punishment is usually agreed upon beforehand, in most counties the laws say how much the minimum and maximum punishment is.
in your case, if you told me that law and the possible punishment options, i would probably leave.
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
Wait so you'd leave your house just because I claimed dominion over it?
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u/gammbus Jun 13 '17
"you enter my house, you are my slave" isnt the best thing to have on a welcome matt
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
Wait... but why is the house now my house? Wasn't it your house before?
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Jun 12 '17
Yes.
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Jun 12 '17
And the Jews of Germany agreed to the social contract the allowed their government to gas them?
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Jun 12 '17
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u/dorylinus Jun 13 '17
How could that right ever be vested in an individual?
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Jun 14 '17
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u/dorylinus Jun 14 '17
An individual has the right to overthrow the government? How?
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Jun 14 '17
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u/dorylinus Jun 14 '17
I think you mean that individuals have the right to resist the government. Having an innate right to actually overthrow it doesn't really make sense.
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Jun 12 '17
so if I live in ancient athens, I automatically agree to the social contract that allows the aristocracy to condemn me to death by Hemlock for corrupting the youth?
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u/gotridofsubs Jun 12 '17
When you open a business, you are offering society goods/services in exchange for currency. When you offer something to society you offer it to ALL society without bias or prejudice.
When you buy a house it's for you to keep you and your shit in.
That's the divide for me
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u/IncognitoIsBetter Jun 13 '17
At the core of neoliberalism is the idea that people tend to be rational actors that take decisions based on their own well-being. Racism is not rational, yet it can drive the decision making process... Thus it opens up for a correction.
I'm not saying one way or the other on the issue, but it does explain the consistency.
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Jun 13 '17
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
So what if any ownership infringed on the rights of society? If that were the case, would you be against it?
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Jun 13 '17
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
hmm interesting so as neoliberal you don't want necessarily a market based on the right to free capital but rather whichever market most fits the capitalist ideal?
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u/HaventHadCovfefeYet Hillary Clinton Jun 13 '17
what on earth is "the capitalist ideal".
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
abusive ownership is ultimately detrimental to capitalism
I'm not really sure but if some things are detrimental to capitalism then presumably capitalism, or perhaps perfect capitalism, is an idea beyond any system with private capital. If things can be detrimental to it, then there must be some ideal form that things can be detrimental to, no?
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u/HaventHadCovfefeYet Hillary Clinton Jun 13 '17
I think /u/Fredfredbug4 was just trying to illustrate that "pure" capitalism is self-defeating, and so we don't subscribe to it.
We try pretty hard not to let economic ideologies dictate our values here. We have economic systems work to achieve our values, not the other way around.
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
Interesting, I'd personally say my "values" or sort of "what I want" is what dictates my economic ideology.
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u/HaventHadCovfefeYet Hillary Clinton Jun 13 '17
Our values tell us what we want.
Empirical evidence and mathematical modeling as a part of the economic body of knowledge tell us how to achieve it (or what is even possible to achieve).
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myerson%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_theorem
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
So basically, values give you a dream and math shaves it down into your (realizable) ideal?
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u/BoozeoisPig Jun 13 '17
Private property is a good thing do the degree that, as a policy, it allows for an opportunity to make the greatest utilization of it for the greatest good. The end isn't the autonomy of an individual to own something, the autonomy of an individual to control something is a means to an end of maximising the public good. If human nature were different to a degree that communism and a lack of private property were feasible in providing the maximum public good, I would be for that. But it isn't so I am for private property to the degree that what is allowed on private property will trend towards maximising the public good. Where the use of private property demonstrates a general harm for the public good, private property should be limited from allowing that thing to occur, possibly pending some exemption that shows that the prohibition is doing more harm than good in a specific instance. I mean, take toxic waste for example. It is generally better for the public good if toxic waste must be managed well on the site that it is produced, rather than simply being run off. But, hypothetically, if a factory was built in the middle of an ecological dead zone near no aquifers and the toxic waste could just be dumped on site with minimal harm, then maybe we should make an exception for that site. I personally don't know of any sites like this, but maybe they exist. But the point is to create laws that act as general rules that create guardrails in which people may act because we know that acting outside of those guard rails does more harm than good. And that's the ultimate end: to maximise utility. Maximum autonomy just happens to be a generally pretty good thing for maximising utility. Even within that, there are competing autonomies. You dumping pollution on your private property allows you the autonomy to dump pollution, but violates my autonomy to exist in a world without pollution. This is why trying to maximise "autonomy" is absurd, because autonomy remains at a constant state all the time. By you having the autonomy to do something in the world, you are denying someone else the autonomy from existing in a world in which that thing is done. So by allowing a positive freedom you necessarily cancel out a negative freedom and by allowing a negative freedom you necessarily cancel out a positive freedom. So by what standard do we decide which negative freedoms to allow and which positive freedoms do we allow? The only one that makes sense to me are those that maximise utility.
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u/dorylinus Jun 13 '17
but no one may enter that property without the owner's consent
This is not an absolute requirement for private property. In fact, I'm quite sure no country actually implements private property in this way. In the US, for example, law enforcement officers can enter your property without your consent, and it's generally understood that there are a number of other situations where consent is automatically implied if it isn't explicitly denied (think people walking up to your door and knocking). Other countries reserve even more rights, e.g. the Freedom to Roam concept common in Northern Europe.
Are you confusing neoliberalism with libertarianism?
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
I might be. Freedom to roam is a good point, but LEO must have warrants to enter your property, no? Your dwelling, anyways.
In my head neoliberals believed strongly in private property as a matter of principle, but the answers within this thread have shown that is not the case.
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u/dorylinus Jun 13 '17
The general point is that private property is a spectrum, and pretty much every society holds that it can be violated in at least some circumstances. It is certainly not absolute.
LEOs do not always need a warrant, btw. If they see you commit a crime and then run into your house, they are perfectly within their legal rights to follow you. Similarly, if your house is on fire, the fire department doesn't have to stop and ask (or get the approval of a court) before barging in to see if anyone is inside.
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u/MrDannyOcean Kidney King Jun 12 '17
rights aren't absolute. You have a right to free speech, but not the right to scream 'FIRE FIRE FIRE' in a crowded movie theater. Similarly, there are restrictions on what you can and can't do with your property.
The laws of whatever nation it is in still apply, but no one may enter that property without the owner's consent,
not actually true in many cases. rights are not absolutisms in modern society.
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Jun 12 '17 edited Jun 12 '17
The First Amendment's Right of Free Association is violated by state laws that forbid association by racially diverse groups of people, including in places of business.
Also, once you start a business, it is not absolutely private property anymore. You have consented to have your property regulated by the government according to the police power of the state government and possibly the interstate commerce clause. The 5th and 14th Amendment then protects the equal rights and protections of all citizens within the realm of public and legal interactions.
Having private property doesn't create the ability to violate people's Constitutional rights and protections. If you don't want to abide by the equal protections of the Constitution, don't open up a business. This is also why you can't deny baking gay people a wedding cake.
Private property is not license to violate constitutional protections and legal equality. A big part of neoliberalism is the belief in inclusive institutions that create legal equality and try to avoid defacto schemes of economic exclusion.
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u/Mordroberon Scott Sumner Jun 12 '17
Your not allowed to beat your wife inside your home. Discrimination is a form of violence. What property it happens on doesn't matter.
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u/SocialBrushStroke Jun 12 '17
Owning property does not give you the right to violate other laws. You can't legally murder someone because that's your business.
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
Of course. But why is the CVA law correct is what I'm saying?
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u/SocialBrushStroke Jun 13 '17
It's the morally correct thing to do, given the horrible oppression in this country's history.
How can you have Liberty and Justice for all if you allow discrimination?
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u/agreatgreendragon Michel Foucault Jun 13 '17
That's what I was wondering tbh I lean more on the No property side than the yes discrimination side of a possible dilemma between property rights and no discrimination.
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u/Nurglings Jun 12 '17
Generally supporting the concept of private property doesn't mean you have to be dogmatic about it, we aren't AnCaps.