Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
If anything, it's the opposite: I think race relations in the South were made much better by the CRA forcing everyone to get along.
ReplyDeleteTrue, under the proviso that "government restrictions" = history.
ReplyDeleteI generally agree with you, and if Tucker had meant that racism originated from government, he would be wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut even non libertarian academics like Michelle Alexander have documented how the war on drugs has lead to mass incarceration, which results in poverty, in the black community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/science/long-prison-terms-eyed-as-contributing-to-poverty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The urban renewal programs of the 60's destroyed thousands of black businesses and redesigned neighborhoods in a manner that eliminated the self policing functions performed by neighbors and stores.
You acknowledge this.
http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-did-urban-crime-rates-drop-last-20.html
Walter Williams' the state against blacks is a fascinating examination of the affects of occupational licensing laws and their origins.
Rent control and zoning deincentivize new apartment construction, while government programs meant to alleviate black poverty, like busing and affirmative action, harmed blacks. Busing removed black control over local schools and was based on the racist assumption that blacks could only succede in an environment with white children, and affirmative action programs placed black students in academic environments that they were not prepared for and that did not prepare them for the world.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-painful-truth-about-affirmative-action/263122/
A valid criticism is that the government was responding to public opinion, so a reduced government would have made no difference because the dominant attitude is racist. I disagree with this. But thinking that the government played no role in creating racial tension is a notion as utopian and baseless as anarcho-capitalist screeds.
"No role"? Who here said "no role"? Anybody? Anybody?
DeleteNot sure who you are addressing, Bob.