At 01:45 PM 12/3/96 EST, Bovine Remailer wrote:

At 10:50 AM 12/3/1996, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:

...

Take, for example, the practice of redlining. How are people who live in "bad" neighborhoods supposed to not reveal that information.

You may lend your own money to whomever you wish. If you do not wish to lend money to somebody, that is your business.

I consider it my business also, when people are denied opportunity because of where they live. I may also hire whomever I wish, but I would have to pay the consequences if I happened to discriminate based on a protected class while doing so. That is the society in which I live. If I dont like it, I try to change it. Our society is not libertarian. If I would prefer that form of society I would have to accept that result. Therefore I choose a balance between liberty and social justice. There are times when government should intervene. I believe it should be as infrequent as possible, but would not want to live in a society where disinfranchised people have no possible recourse. Your choice would apparently be different.

It is difficult to understand why redlining should be illegal, to the extent that it even occurs. When it does occur, we expect that eager entrepreneurs such as yourself will rush in to grab new customers.

I have not heard serious doubts for a while that redlining occurs. But then again we are on the net. I would love to have the financial wherewithal to startup such an enterprise. Unfortuantely I reside in one such neighborhood. It is difficult enough to raise money to run a small business (and turned out to be much easier to do without any bank lending at all). I have talked with people about starting their own banks. When you are working to make sure all the bills are paid it is a bit difficult to also build an entirely new socio-economic structure.

As for the privacy issue, you seem to be proposing that you have some sort of right to borrow money on terms which are not acceptable to the lender. You need not give your address just as you need not borrow the money.

Actually I was stating the opposite. You do not need to do so. You just wont get the money if you dont.

Of course, we hardly live in a free banking era. Most people would prefer to bank with a company that respects their privacy. Yet, banks are so tightly controlled in the United States that they most often will not dare to protect the privacy of their customers for fear of regulatory consequences. When the service is provided, it cannot be advertised.

Whom would the service be more readily available to? Who uses tax-havens? Who has access to swiss bank accounts? Are you insinuating that my local bank actually has anonymous accounts and just won't tell me? I wish that people DID value anonymous banking in this country. The fact is they just don't care. As long as they get short lines or myriads of ATM machines they are happy. I am largely in favor of banking deregulation. There are places where I simply draw the line. Utter racism is one of them. Everyone can now clamor that it just isnt true. Banks have never discriminated. Its all a big lie. Whatever. (snip)

You are in the unpleasant position of appealing for protection from the very people who have robbed you of your privacy.

You are right. It is far from a perfect system. We make trade-offs every day. The real world I live in is just not as simple as the Libertarian Wet Dream(TM).

Red Rackham

Matt