John Stossel defends Rand Paul and business’s right to discriminate
May.22, 2010 By: Davy in
Freedom, John Stossel, Videos, World Politics
Rand Paul, likely to become Kentucky’s next senator after his convincing win over his Republican rival Trey Grayson earlier in the week, has gotten himself in trouble with the mainstream media over his shocking suggestion that people should have freedom of association. John Stossel defends the libertarian position as a blonde fox shill vomits out the usual bollocks:
May 23rd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
The silly cow is just a repeater. Her argument is entirely illogical, as Stossel effortlessly demonstrated!
May 23rd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I’m not sure Stossel argued his position very well, actually. He just kept repeating that businesses should be free to discriminate without ever once saying why. It seems to me that if he had just said that forcing somebody to provide a service to a person they don’t want to provide it to, whether or not their reasons for not wanting to are good ones, means forcing people to work for others they haven’t consented to. That is forced labour. He could have just said that forcing people to make their property available to those they haven’t agreed to make it available to is robbery.
May 24th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I took the stance that Freedom of Association should enable people to turn whomsoever they want away from their business as long as:
a) the owner is doing it or is in agreement
b) the terms and conditions of a prior contract were upheld (including making it known to the potential purchaser).
In both cases, failure is a question of contract law, NOT “equalities”. People are offended? Well, sorry, there should be no law against that.
p.s. someone should tell the “reporter” that she benefited from people discriminating against the ugly.
May 26th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
It was not just the P.C. leftists with their desire to tell people who they should trade with (making a nonsense of “freedom of association”, which must include freedom to not associate), they actually had a legal doctrine to work with.
This doctrine was that of “common carrier” – the whole “public accomidations” thing. Even going back to the 18th century Blackstone decared that an inn keeper had no right to turn a customer away. This stinks – but it was a position in law.
Oddly enough (at least for those who think the Common Law did not get ideas from Roman Law) this crackbrained doctrine comes straight from Roman Law – it is in Justinian’s code and so on.
It goes back to the idea that a trader is not an independent free person – but is a servant of the public (i.e. really a servant of the state) whose prices and provision of goods may be controlled by the state.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:54 am
@Paul Marks – (making a nonsense of “freedom of association”, which must include freedom to not associate)
Absolutely. In fact if anything, the latter is more important and the basis of the former. Better to be exiled than enslaved against one’s will.