Monday Lazy Linking
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 14 years ago, in 2010, on the World Wide Web.
i very much like the current phrase "sovereign debt," which. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-05-21).
i very much like the current phrase "sovereign debt," which appears simply to mean government debt. but it's hard not to hear it as "the debt which exercises complete, legitimate power over each of us." and hard in turn not to see this as a kind of summary of human…
(Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)Should Whites-Only Lunch Counters Be Allowed? Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-05-28).
Okay, let’s get right down to it. Our side is asked, incredulously, “Do you mean that someone should be allowed to have a whites-only lunch counter?”The standard libertarian answer is, “Yes, although I don’t approve of the racist policy.”I say, “No. He shouldn’t be allowed.”What?! Heresy!Chill out.He shouldn’t be allowed,…
(Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)Update on Julian Heicklen's 2010-05-25 arrest. bile, blog of bile (2010-05-27).
http://a072-web.nyc.gov/inmatelookup/inmateDetailAction.do?bookcasenumber=7001000078 Julian_Heicklen_inmate_details_-_2010-05-27-1232.pdf Inmate Details: Julian Heicklen NYSID: 02569223L Age: 78 Sex: Male Race: White Height: 5 ft 10 inches Weight: 195 lbs Hair Color: White Eye Color: Brown Nativity: Unknown Booking Information: Book & Case Number: 7001000078 Facility: Anna M. Kross Center Arrest Date: 2010-05-25 Arrest Number: WARRANT Next Court…
(Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)State Backs Off. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-05-29).
Good news – as far as it goes – for civil liberties in Malawi, as their president has (reluctantly) pardoned a same-sex couple, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who'd been sentenced to 14 years of prison for their role in the country's "first recorded public activity for homosexuals." The pressure…
(Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)Sustainable Food and Privilege: Why is Green Always White (and Male and Upper-Class) Guest Contributor, Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture (2010-05-20).
by Guest Contributor Janani Balasubramanian When asked to name the heroes of food reform and sustainable agriculture, who comes to mind? Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, Eric Schlosser, Peter Singer, Alice Waters maybe? Notice any patterns? The food reform movement is predicated on rather shaky foundations with regards to how it…
(Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)Getting it Backward. Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-05-27).
You can learn a lot about people's unstated assumptions just by looking at the way they frame their questions. Take the debate over genetically modified foods, for example. It's generally presented as a controversy over whether the government should "allow" GM foods to be sold without proper labeling. But that's…
(Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)Rand Paul and Positive Law in a Stateless Society. Brad Spangler, BradSpangler.com (2010-05-20).
I've previously mentioned one of the biggest drawbacks of a reformist approach to implementing libertarian ethics is that politics makes you stupid — because by looking at things in terms of government policy, you tend to lose the ability to explain and advocate something very important. Now Rand Paul is…
(Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)
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How exactly does being a Market Anarchist reconcile with the notion of forcing people who don’t want to deal with certain people to deal with them? In the absence of a state, are you going to bust Muslim societies that keep out non-muslims? How about Rastafarians? (yes they are peaceful, its only a hypothetical). How about Jewish kibbutzes who don’t want non Jews working for them? So what is so abhorrent about white only communities? OF COURSE, being enforced by the state, and its organs of coercion, also being complicit is robbing working people for the connected corporations, this shit doesn’t count. But in a market anarchist society, how do you justify forcing a community to admit people they would rather not associate with?
Contemplationist:
Man, you’re new here, aren’t you?
Nobody here (neither me, nor the folks I linked to on the Rand Paul/Rachel Maddow exchange) is proposing that people who want to run stupid racist lunch counters be forced to serve black people. What has been proposed is that if you open up a stupid racist lunch counter, black people (and white anti-racists) have a right to engage in nonviolent forms of grassroots social protest against your stupid racist policies.
If you don’t like how people peacefully react to your whites-only policy, then you have a few options: (1) you can bear the costs of the protest and wait it out; (2) you can bear the costs of changing your space so that protesters can’t get access to it while maintaining disciplined nonviolence (e.g., rather than putting it in the middle of an integrated department store, you could put it in a closed-in bar and hire a bouncer to turn away would-be customers who are black); (3) you can move somewhere where there aren’t any black people or anti-racist activists to protest; or (4) you can decide that the benefits (whatever they’re supposed to be) of your whites-only lunch counter aren’t enough to be worth the social costs of antagonizing a large segment of the community. My view is that (4) is the best option — because I don’t think there are any real benefits worth having in that kind of stupid racist shit. But whatever you may decide, the protesters aren’t forcing you to do jack — in the sense of treading on your individual rights. Rather, they are freely deciding not to support your stupid policies, or to make life socially easy for you when you promote policies they consider offensive. But you don’t have a right to make other people support your stupid policies, or to make life socially easy for you.
So, when you ask:
I surely don’t know, but I have yet to be shown where somebody is being forced. Of course I oppose government antidiscrimination laws, as do Sheldon and Brad. What we’re discussing is how nonviolent grassroots social activism might affect things without forcing integrationist policies on anybody.
HTH.