I thought Choate might want someone with more authority to speak on this. Here is his reply. (Jeff Tucker is the admin of the mises.org mailing list.) Mark From: "Jeff Tucker"

This looks hopeless to me. Anyone who calls the freedom of association "fascism on an individual level" isn't worth arguing with.

jeff

----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcel Popescu" <Marcel_Popescu@microbilt.com> To: "Jeff Tucker" <tucker@mises.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 9:55 AM Subject: Fw: Business 'rights' and free markets

I apologize for disturbing you; we're unable to convince this guy he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, so I thought maybe we could get a few words from someone with more authority than us.

Basically, we're talking about the Austrian school, and whether a free market can exist at all. We started with Tim May's statement (with which I agree completely) that there's no contradiction between a free market, and the freedom of a businessman to refuse to accept a customer, no matter on what grounds. Choate disagrees.

Thank you, and my apologies for bothering you with such triviality. (It's not that I don't know how to respond - it's that this guy won't accept anyone because "he doesn't really understands Hayek".)

Mark