The UK Libertarian

The Pope has yet again been causing controversy, but, for once, he’s on the right side of the issue (even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut). Harriet Harman’s “equality bill” currently going through parliament would:

…outlaw discrimination against any group in the “provision of services” from health care to shopping, would restrict the right of a church school to employ a head teacher who shared their faith, and would open the job up to members of any religion or atheists.

Responding to the legislation Benedict XVI had this to say:

Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet … the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.

“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.

The pope is actually correct here (although certainly purely by accident and not because he actually cares about people’s freedom) . “Equality” legislation, whether it is in the form of affirmative action, forcing companies to install wheelchair ramps and lifts or, indeed, prohibiting employers from hiring based on sexuality is fundamentally an INFRINGEMENT of people’s rights & freedoms, not a protection of them.

Let’s break this down into the moral argument and the economic argument.

The moral argument:

Libertarians see all people as individuals. We do not believe in collectivism or group rights, only individual rights. People intuitively want to defend “minorities” but the smallest minority there is is the individual. Violating the rights of an individual to protect a “minority” is almost an oxymoron.

Libertarians believe in negative rights for all individuals, that is nobody has the right to initiate force or fraud against you. You are free, as the sole owner of your own body, to pursue your life, liberty and happiness, so long as you don’t violate anybody else’s right to do the same. Positive rights (or the right to get something from somebody else by force) are self-contradictory because the only way for you to achieve your “right” is for somebody else’s rights to be violated.

Humans cannot help but discriminate. To illustrate the point, let’s take our relationships. Choosing a partner, is, for most people, one of the most important things they do in their lives. We expend huge amounts of money on clothes, grooming products, gym memberships, fast cars, perfumes and self-help products, most of which can be traced back to a desire to be more attractive to the opposite sex (although we might not all realise it consciously or want to admit it). Most of this, evolutionary biology tells us, can be attributed to the desire to get the best possible mate (the best possible mother or father for our children) to continue our genes.

Our entire evolutionary history (who we are) has been shaped by sexual selection. By discrimination.

And yet this is clearly entirely unfair. Why should somebody, through no fault of their own (being born unusually unattractive) be denied the chance to date a supermodel? I mean clearly the high status individuals in our society are discriminating against low status/ugly people all the time in who they choose to spend their lives with, often for very discriminatory reasons (wealth, looks, career, social standing, fame, health, IQ).

Does anybody seriously suggest we propose legislation to prohibit better looking people from refusing to date people on the grounds of their attractiveness? Of course we don’t, and it’s because we intuitively understand that:

a) It would be a violation of the rights of the (subjectively) better looking person. They would be forced to spend their time with people they didn’t like or weren’t attracted to. They would be forced to have sex with people they wouldn’t voluntarily spend 5 minutes with.

b) It would be impossible to enforce and totally arbitrary. Who is better looking that who? While I’m trying to sue Megan Fox under the “equality of sexual partner act” Vanessa Feltz is simultaneously suing me because I (unfairly) find her repulsive. How do you prove that they think they are better looking than you? How can you show the extent of the “damages”?

Well for these same reasons employers should be able to discriminate against their employees.

Employees discriminate against employers all the time based on all sorts of arbitrary things. (“They don’t pay enough”, “I didn’t like the look of the boss”, “I don’t want to work in the sewage industry”) why don’t employers deserve the same privilege?

If I have a family business, and I personally have a problem with homosexuals, fat people, women, muslims, nudists, ex-police men, or any other (often arbitrary) group, I should have the freedom not to have to associate with those people in my own company 8 hours a day if I do not want to. Just as a gay person has the right not to frequent certain bars that they feel uncomfortable in, a bar owner has the right not to employ a gay person he feels uncomfortable with. In fact he has the right to not even let them in to drink, if that’s what he wants.

This does not mean we condone particular discrimination, it just means we don’t FORCE people to associate with those they would prefer not to. In fact by forcing people to integrate, you create animosity between groups, not harmony.

The second part of the analogy is the unenforceable and arbitrary nature of the beast. It is unenforceable because you can rarely prove why somebody was discriminated against. Maybe I fired the gay person because he was obnoxious in the interview, but he can claim it was due to his sexuality. Maybe I hire the gay person because I’m afraid of being sued but I have now discriminated against the straight person because he WASN’T gay, even though he might have been the best man for the job! It is arbitrary because once you give homosexuals “equality rights”, you have opened the door for people with low IQs, heart conditions, short people or even racists (they could easily claim not to be able to help the way they feel about black people) to not be discriminated against. The right of an employer not to hire somebody because of their sexuality is also the right of a gay club not to hire a bartender who openly despised homosexuals, or the right of me and my friends not to associate with BNP members.

The economic argument

Discrimination comes on a continum, starting with sensible and ending at completely irrational, and that discrimination will be punished in the marketplace according to its level of irrationality. Let’s take a few examples.

The Rational: A shop selling women’s bras wants to hire a new sales assistant, they get two equally qualified applications, one from a man, the other from a woman, they give the job to the woman, because they feel that their customers will feel much less comfortable discussing their breasts with a man. This is rational discrimination. Even though the man could not help being born who he was, the employer would lose a lot of business by hiring him. To force this employer to hire the man would be to force them to lose money, so the man could get money (in wages). In other words, charity. Or more plainly, violently enforced charity.

The somewhat rational: A factory owner specialising in the manufacture of ironing boards is employing a new production line manager. He gets two CVs, both are good, containing several positive references from previous employers and all the relevant qualifications,  however Bob’s CV is slightly more impressive, as he got a degree from a more prestigious university, and had slightly more work experience . The owner is about to phone Bob up, when he notices that Bob has included information on his criminal convictions. Apparently he spent 18 months in jail a decade previously. The owner immediately rips up the CV and phones the other applicant, Jeremy.

This sort of discrimination is semi-rational but can sometimes be a mistake. There is, no doubt, a correlation between a person’s criminal record and their poorer performance as a worker on the average, but the boss has made the mistake of putting people into groups, and the market will punish this, if this particular worker should have got the job on his own merits. By treating all former criminals as the same, the boss will be lumping murderers or fraudsters in with, say, tax evaders. A costly market mistake. The tax evader might have been evading taxes for moral reasons (he opposed the war in Iraq) which would have shown both bravery and strong ethics, which would probably be positive traits in an employee. By not taking the time to research his individual circumstances, the owner will lose money to a more thoughtful competitor as he continues to pay Jeremy the same wage as he would Bob, despite being a less productive worker.

The irrational: Steve runs a call centre. A well spoken straight A-student arrives for a job interview. Steve immediately tells him to get out of his office because he is Black.

This completely irrational discrimination will be punished in the market immediately, as Steve the Racist finds his irrational refusal to treat people as individuals is causing him to have a smaller pool of potential workers to draw from. Subsequently (due to the immutable law of supply and demand) he must pay his employees, on the average, a higher wage than those that don’t make this mistake. His more rational and non-racist competitor is happy to snap up a motivated and fully qualified employee and benefits accordingly. In addition Steve is further punished in the market place when the news of his racism gets out and all non-racists, in open disgust, stop using his service. Michael Richards knows something about this, as does Jim Davidson. This isn’t to say that Steve would cease to make a living entirely, only that his stupid and ignorant behaviour will be punished in the marketplace to a degree appropriate to his bigotry.

The reason it is better to punish in the marketplace rather than through government regulation (aside from the moral reasons already presented) is that government regulation is one-size fits all. By creating a uniform rule that punishes every “discriminator” equally you get distorted and weird results and you increase the costs of hiring and firing people, which must be passed onto consumers (which includes minorities) in the form of higher prices. Distorted and weird results include (but are not limited to, and in fact are limitless):

Nightclubs that are forced to hire female bouncers, even if the woman is 5″ tall.

Maternity clinics that are forced to hire male nurses, even if their patients say they much prefer to receive care from women.

Babysitting companies that are forced to hire men, even though the mothers of the children feel much more comfortable with women looking after their children.

Gay sex shops being forced to hire straight men, even though this makes the customers feel less comfortable going inside for fear of being judged.

Working men’s clubs being forced to allow women to join.

Women’s refuge charities being forced to allow men to work in them.

Sports retail shops being forced to hire people in wheelchairs.

And of course you get church schools, who specifically believe that homosexuality is wrong, and attended entirely by children of parents who believe this to be true at a deep level, who are forced to employ homosexuals. Do you think this improves relations between christians and homosexuals? Do you think any of these examples fosters good relations between employers and employees?

In the market people will be punished according to the level of the irrationality of their discrimination but rewarded when that discrimination is genuinely justified. It’s also the only morally consistent position that respects *everybody’s* rights, even those with whom we disagree.

Yes, for once the Pope was right… But before I end this article let’s get one thing straight: the man is still a controlling, moralising busybody. Far worse than the average Christian (who I have nothing much against), for he ignores the Golden rule in favour of political rule. Force over free-will. He helps to promote ideas and, much more unforgivably, legislation which kill millions of people across Africa and the third-world whilst at the same time he helps protect child molestors, as this award winning documentary, now hosted on Google video, shows: