On Sun, Nov 04, at 01:10PM, Jim Choate wrote: | Tim (and other C-A-C-L proponents) have opined that a 'business' has the | 'right' to refuse service to anyone for any reason. This is clearly | contrary to both the concept of 'rights' and 'free market' (and is | diametricaly opposed to what C-A-C-L proponents claim(!) to want). Dear Mr. Choate, Please, oh please, actually read a little bit into that wonderful process known as "the free market" and understand that the very basic notion of the same is free consentual exchange between two parties. If one is not free to deny service based on any grounds (yes, as far as the free market is concerned, one should be well free to deny services on the basis of race, gender, religion, etc...) | Things don't have rights. A business is a thing. It is a mechanism whereby | one or more people get from here to there. It is analgous to a bicycle and | moving from point A to point B. While the people riding the bike clearly | have a right to get from A to B by any mechanism that doesn't interfere | with others it is a long slide into insanity to then say the bike has | equivalent 'rights'. You're wrong again Mr. Choate. | A business can refuse to serve anyone they desire for any reason, but the | market such a business operates in is not(!!!) a free market by any | definition that folks like von Mises or Hayek would recognize as such. Now | C-A-C-L proponents claim (of which this is just another example of their | hypocrisy or ignorance - take your pick [1]) that they want to create a | free market that is universal in all human activity. Clearly this isn't | possible operating under Tim and his supporters particular brand of 'free' | which is nothing more than 'freedom for me, not for thee'. A business has | the RESPONSIBILITY to refuse service to anyone which threatens that | business' operations. They also have a responsibility to make that | reaction as minimaly invasive as possible in all cases, no exceptions. Mr. Choate, please do not use the good names of Mises and Hayek in vain...if you are going to choose to sprout out ideas that you will be attributing to Autrian Economists, please have the decency to understand the works which you are allgedly writting about first. | There is no "..., but..." in free market or American democracy. There are always exceptions...for example, Mises and Hayek did not subscribe to Democracy in the first place...and a free market, as such can only exist when (yes, read the first paragraph again Mr. Choate) consentual exchange occurs. | [1] Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Never fear Mr. Choate, none of us have ever thought you were malicious. --Gabe -- Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer --On the eve of Britain's entry into World War II: "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.