From: IN%"mjmiski@execpc.com" "Matthew J. Miszewski" 11-DEC-1996 19:43:51.88

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A "phone" is easy to get, too. You can get a telephone number which is linked to a voicemail box. You can even get this number listed in the telephone book, if you like. The cost of this service should be less than twenty dollars a month. If you want to go wild, you can get a pager linked voicemail number. This means your pager goes off when you get a message. Handy.

Actually, I've heard about one charitable project in which they were giving homeless people voicemail numbers and doing just this. I believe it was in Houston or someplace else in Texas, but my memory is horribly bad. A nice effort.

If I wanted to I could repeatedly issue heart-wrenching stories of poverty in America (similar, of course, to politicians using "real world examples" in speeches). You seem to assume that this would be "wrong".

As did Ronald Reagan in talking about "welfare queens"... as could I in discussing how my grandparents got out of poverty and have two children with MDs and one with a PhD. Statistics are preferable to anecdotal evidence for just this reason; I've seen that over and over again in science. Anecdotes are for lawyers talking to juries and demagogic politicians talking to the masses.

Once again, we disagree. You do not favor any form of government regulation. I do favor some forms of government regulation. It seems that the turning point for you is your belief that racism causes no real harm. I disagree. If you really want to have a list of the harms caused by racism, I will list them in a seperate note to you. I wish you could be intellectually honest enough to realize these harms. I fear, however, you will not be.

While it is perfectly true that racism causes harms, that is true of most actions. When I choose to vote in favor of a Libertarian instead of a Republican or a Democrat, I am harming the Democratic and Republican candidates for a position. As I pointed out earlier, by _correctly_ deeming someone to be a poor credit risk and not lending them money, a lender is doing that person harm... to the degree that redlining due to racism causes harm. I believe, however, you're trying to claim that redlining due to racism is causing the same sort of harm as a KKK lynching. I'm afraid that it's pretty obvious that there are differences between the two. The KKK lynching is forced on one side; the other is not. You might contend that refusing to loan to someone is forcing them to do without that loan... but so is a refusal to loan money to _anyone_. The ultimate extension of this idea would lead to mandated savings accounts. In other words, there is a difference between what one should not do and what one should be punished for doing. I happen to believe that anyone who makes homophobic speech is doing something wrong... but I don't want various list members locked up on that basis.

I do not know where you live, but I live in the US. Cryptoanarchy has not taken hold here yet. As such, my discourse is regarding the political system in which I live. As such I favor regulating behavior between the small number of protected classes and the small number of covered transactions (employment, housing, etc.). You, OTOH, do not.

Umm... you had earlier stated that you had decided that you were not a libertarian, and did not have libertarian beliefs. This would appear to imply that you would prefer to see such regulations even in a cryptoanarchic society... where (as Red, TCMay, and others have pointed out) they would not be possible. (I am not actually in favor of full cryptoanarchy, personally; but I am a libertarian, and I believe that an increased use of cryptography would not lead to full cryptoanarchy, but to a reduction in the size of government to where abuses such as anti-discrimination laws were not practical to enforce.)

And neither do I. On balance, I would not have accepted prohibition then, and I do not accept it now. People also have a preference not to hire blacks. I feel that that should not be an acceptable means of interaction between an employer and a prospective employee. You do. That is what I meant by drawing lines. You feel that every employer (a creation of the state) should have the ability to act in a discriminatory fashion. I disagree. You and I do agree that when the personal excercise is for a drink, the government should not respond. This is because, on balance, I believe that the excercise of that freedom is more important than the adverse effects of alcoholism. And vice versa for employment discrimination.

In other words, you are quite willing to shoot someone for being a racist... for expressing their beliefs, even if they aren't doing so by shooting at you. Ultimately, that's what we're talking about... if an employer (or a bank, or an insurance company) goes far enough, they will find a cop with a gun pointing it at them to enforce the fines et al. If it were a bunch of KKK types wanting to lynch you (or anyone else), I'd be right behind you saying they should be shot. But shooting someone for refusing to do business with you is one act of murder that I'd prefer to keep government around to _prevent_. I find it interesting that you claim that an employer is a creation of the state. I suppose that you would not consider a Mafia kingpin, or a Kali cartel boss, to be an employer? It appears that the employee-employer relationship is one that gets set up in any economy that is large enough and which has specialization of labor. It isn't a creation of the state.

Once again, I would determine policy based on several competing interests. Aparently you would determine it on a notion of absolute freedom. I am trying not to assume anything. And for the record, I have only supported governmental intervention in currently accepted transactions, which do not cover individuals wanting to hold racist beliefs.

Umm... the last statement is meaningless. Your first statement essentially says that you're willing to give up freedom for security or whatever else you deem important... not advisible in the long run; that's how Hitler got started.

I believe in regulating, in one instance, employment discrimination. I do so because I have personally seen the economic impact on the Greater Milwaukee Area of such discrimination - both past and present. I believe X also because I have been witness to the personal impact that such discrimination has upon people. To take advantage of practices effective against poverty, several of which you have mentioned, it helps to have self-confidence and a degree of self-worth. These are directly damaged by employment discrimination. I believe that the elimination of redlining would help to increase capital flows into some of these affected areas. Even if, as you stated, the elimination would allow for a few token investments in order for banks to appear to be in compliance, that is a willing trade off for me. It is not for you.

I am not happy with people who discriminate either; I've run into entirely too many of them. But I don't consider shooting people, or (as in the present case) threatening to shoot them, to be a proper response. Quite simply, your emotions are not a justification for the use of force; the use of force against you (or someone else) is.

^^^^^^^This was, of course, my explanation before. Apparently you didnt see it. I was not using libertarian's ideal society in any derogitive way. At one time I believed in it. Through self-examination I decided that it couldnt work. Is your point that you disagree with me or that Anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong?

Given that you didn't give any cogent reasons _why_ a libertarian ideal society wouldn't work, of course Red ignored it. Make an argument, not rhetoric, not simple statements of your opinions. Your opinions are meaningless without something to back them. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to have them or to voice them, of course... but it does mean that we shouldn't allow governmental policy to be based on them.

If you are really interested I will roll out what I perceive as the many harms caused by racism. Unlike you, I am in no rush to call your reasons for your beliefs "good" or "bad". You believe as you do. You do so because of personal reasons. I believe as I do, that racism harms people.

I would like to point out that this is a prime example of the Politically Correct variety of pluralism. Quite simply, one _must_ discriminate (in the older sense of the word) between beliefs that make sense, beliefs that do not make sense, and beliefs on which one cannot tell (e.g., theism vs atheism). One should avoid making governmental decisions - decisions involving force upon others - that are not based on beliefs that make sense. You have yet to be convincing in arguing that your beliefs make sense.

I do so because of my personal experiences. Among these are employees explaining to me the nature of the discrimination that they have suffered, their inability to pursue any such claims because of a lack of both self-confidence as well as capital, the faces of their children that do not yet understand the nature of the world they have been brought into and the immense stress on familial relationships caused by the lack of a job caused by employment discrimination. Ill even discard the borderline cases and refer to the slam dunk cases out there. I live and work in Milwaukee, Red. People are fired and told they are fired because they are black. I have settled cases with no dispute of these facts. All of the personal harm and more was suffered by my clients. This is part of the reason for my perception. I wish I lived where you did where racism hurts nobody. Just give me a general location and Ill start to move my clients there ;-|.

Lack of self-confidence? Please reference my comments on emotions above to see why this _isn't_ a justified reason to threaten violence. Being fired because they're black? I'll perfectly well agree that this is wrong... to use (an admittedly much lesser) example from my personal life, I've been turned down for a job as a _word processor_ because I couldn't type fast enough on a _manual_ typewriter (in case you're wondering, my measured typing speed on a computer would have been quite fast enough). I told them they were idiots and walked out; I looked for a job someplace else. Let me assure you that a job would have been quite helpful at that point. In other words, yes, people are assholes. This doesn't justify sticking a gun into their faces, directly or indirectly, unless they're trying to kill you, steal your property, or otherwise _truly_ harm you. -Allen