CDR: Re: <nettime> Rebirth of Guilds

[Sampo A Syreeni]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Tim May wrote:

>Lynching is an act of physical aggression, not at all the same thing 
>as choosing not to trade with someone, not to invite him into one's 
>home, not to interact with him.

In my mind, that is a rather fine line.

>If Alice doesn't want Bob in _her_ "venue" (shop, home, ballpark, 
>company, whatever), then she can of course tell him to leave and not 
>come back. Or even physically remove him if he refuses to leave.

True, provided you endow an owner with such rights. I'm not ready to do
that offhand - I have a rather more fine grained view of property rights
which distinquishes the right to ownership per se, the ability to profit
from the property, the ability of others to utilize the property (without
diminishing its value to the owner) and any extra obligations which come
with any given type of property (like fairness of utilization in certain
situations). Those distinctions come in very handy when talking about
intellectual property rights (and especially their abolition). But let's
stop this line of discussion here. Here we obviously have such a basic
difference in viewpoint that it probably cannot be reconsiled without 
considerable bloodshed.

>We were not discussing the _practical_ issue of whether a sports 
>stadium _is wise_ to discriminate against lesbians, we were instead 
>discussing whether the State has a valid interest in intervening to 
>_stop_ such discrimination at gunpoint.

Actually I'm thinking more in terms of the society instead of the state. But
I agree. Forcing (in)action at gunpoint is something I find repulsive
regardless of who's behind the piece.

>But you need to think and read deeply about the nature of rights, and the
>dangers of enforcing "politeness" rules.

I do. I just don't trust that individuals can look out for their rights as
easily as you do. That may have something to do with my Finnish
background. (Finland, in my mind, is a fair, sufficiently rational, and
remarkably open one but also one of the more intrusive. It's also subject
to the dreaded regulatory bloat. EU also adds its complications.) This seems
like a difference in viewpoint over the preferred role of individuals
vis-a-vis groups in the maintenance of liberties.

>By the way, market forces are often so powerful in ending 
>discrimination that it is _states_ (governments) which seek to 
>maintain discrimination.

I know and agree. But OTOH, we do have the opposite thing happening for
religious/moral/ideological reasons in your Bible Belt, in European Neo-Nazi
circles and alike. The problem is that while most liberal ideas go hand in
hand with economic theory, the fundamental assumptions of the latter do not
always apply when we look at social phenomena. Economic models are also
steady-state or asymptotic ones, which means that the slow or uncertain
temporal evolution of markets doesn't always form an acceptably stable basis
for social practices. The Great Depression gives a first class example of
how market economy can occasionally bifurcate even when in theory the system
has a nice stable point. Conditioning basic liberties on like systems isn't
always a good idea, then. But I do admit that the basic reasoning is sound
and that aiming for liberties through emergence instead of regulation is the
more robust way.

>Markets aren't "perfect" (not that such a thing has a lot of 
>meaning), but greed and self-interest usually results in less 
>discrimination than when governments are the ones enforcing the laws. 
>Enlightened self-interest usually means that merchants deal with 
>_everyone_. It takes a very powerful reason for shunning or expulsion 
>to occur.

Agreed.

Sampo Syreeni <decoy at iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university