The criteria of harm is by necessity one that is not always easy to determine, as there are interactions between people where both sides in a conflict can rightly be said to experience harm.
But the harm must be measurable. In the OP, if the couple were forced to drive to another baker, perhaps the harm is the cost of a gallon of gas, or perhaps their time. But fuzzy “feelings” as a gauge of harm is problematic.
If the “freedom” you speak of is freedom to act on those racist thoughts in the management of your public restaurant, I respectfully disagree. I think more harm is done to those that are refused service than to the restaurant owner who is denied his right to exclude blacks.
People are free to be jerks. Denying freedom is a greater harm than hurt feelings. Unless there is some measurable harm done by denying any specific individual a service, I fail to see how restraining an individual from hurting feelings does anything to reduce harm.
Well, he can try to make that point, but I remain unconvinced of it. I see the point that a restaurant owner who is forced to serve blacks may never have his human dignity elevated to the point of doing so lovingly. But at this point I am more concerned about the one refused service having his dignity degraded.
How is dignity being degraded? Dignity is inherent. The only degradation is in the store owners honor. A black person has their dignity no matter how they are treated.
It does prevent the dignity of their victims from being degraded further.
No, dignity is in inherent. No outside force can degrade or enhance dignity.
The Obergefell case was about same-sex marriage. I don’t think Scalia would take your side in defending a restaurant owner who wanted to exclude blacks.
No, but he would take my side in saying that an individual’s dignity is not degraded or enhanced by an outside act.
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
The government cannot bestow or deny dignity. Nor can it degrade or enhance it. And neither can individuals.
It might, sometimes. But more by accident than by necessity.
In an open and free market, it will. You may be dubious of it, but history is replete with examples of this. Only when government gets involved do we get distortions. Look at the rise in wages of blacks in the post-Civil War years, only to be retarded by the Davis-Bacon act. Look at the rise in wages of Japanese when they opened their markets and adopted free trade principles.
The OP is just one outlier. Put that up against the countless instances where the act has made society better and fairer and more equal.
It may be fair, perhaps equal, but certainly not more free. Indeed, that loss of freedom has opened to doors to the “outlier” as you call it. It opens the door to government involvement in individual transactions imposing costs, which reduce freedom and drive up costs.
Wait a minute! Not so fast. At this point we are not talking about government. We are talking about the market. The free market. The free market does not provide any inherent protection against harm.
Where did I say it did? I even agreed with your point about the government’s role is to prevent harm. But I disagree that hurt feelings are actionable harm.
The fact that abortion harms another person is exactly my point. Abortion harms another person, and the free market** does nothing to stop it**.
But abortion is not a free market transaction. Is the person harmed consulted?
Well, now you have confused me, because you did say that the Civil Rights Act does not make society good, and you did say that the market will make, if not a good society, at least an equal society.
I said the Civil Right Act does not make a good society because it denies freedom. The goal of the Civil Right Act is equality. But it uses bad means–coercion–to get there. And equality is a good. A free and open market will tend toward equality through voluntary means. These are good means and good ends.
But I never said the free market was sufficient. Only that it is necessary. Milton Friedman makes this point in his Free to Choose. Freedom, especially a free and open market, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a good society.
Well, tell me how, in the case of abortion, the market makes baby equal to the mother who wants to abort him? Looks to me like a great inequality that the market does nothing to correct.
The baby is not a participant in an equal and open exchange. This is not an example of a free market. So your example doesn’t hold.
So, no, I don’t think the market produces an equal society either. All it will produce, by necessity, is the best products money can buy.
That is a very simplistic view. I’m not talking solely of consumer transactions. But also of all contractual arrangements, societal arrangements, educational arrangements, etc. Any exchange of ideas, good, services, money, etc, should be free and uninhibited by the government.
