THE CASE FOR DISCRIMINATION
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WALTER BLOCK
THE CASE FOR
DISCRIMINATION
Walter E. Block
LvMI
mises institute
/ owe a great debt of gratitude to Lew Rockwell for publishing this book (and for much, much more) and to Scott Kjar for a splendid job of editing.
© 2010 by the Ludwig von Miscs Institute and published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0. http://creativecommons,org/licenses/by/3,0/
Ludwig von Mises Institute 518 West Magnolia Avenue Auburn, Alabama 36832 mises.org
ISBN: 978-1-933550-81-7
Contents
Foreword by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..........................vii
Preface.......................................................xi
Part One: Discrimination is Everywhere...........................1
1. Discrimination Runs Rampant................................3
2. Affirmative Action Chickens Finally Come Home to Roost..........6
3. Racism Flares on Both Sides..................................9
4. Exclusion of Bisexual is Justified.............................12
5. Catholic Kneelers.........................................14
6. Human Rights Commissions Interfere with Individual Rights.......16
I. Watch Your Language......................................21
8. Sexist Advertising and the Feminists..........................24
9. No Males Need Apply......................................27
10. Wc Ought to Have Sex Education in the Schools.................29
II. Another Role for Women...................................32
12. Female Golfer............................................35
13. Silver Lining Part IV: Term Limits and Female Politicians.........38
14. Ann the Coeds............................................42
15. Free Market Would Alleviate Poverty and
Strengthen Family Relations.................................46
16. Racism: Public and Private..................................49
17. Stabbing the Hutterites in the Back............................52
Part Two: The Economics of Discrimination........................75
18. Economic Intervention, Discrimination, and
Unforeseen Consequences...................................77
19. Discrimination: An Interdisciplinary Analysis..................117
20. Affirmative Action: Institutionalized Inequality.................142
21. Banks, Insurance Companies, and Discrimination...............155
Part Three: Male-Female Earnings and Equal Pay Legislation
22. Seminar on Racism and Sexism.............................157
23. Directions for Future Research in Equality Pay Legislation........188
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The Case for Discrimination
24. Single Women Have Better Chance to Earn Equal Salary.........202
25. Debunking the Mythical Gap...............................204
26. Insight; Pay Equity Won't Close Wage Gap....................206
27. On Pay Equity: Making the Numbers Say What You Want........210
28. Commentary: "Pay Equity" Undermines Marketplace............213
29. Commentary: Equal Pay Laws Spell Disaster...................215
30. Male-Female Earnings Differentials: A Critical Reappraisal.......217
Part Four: Feminism, Sex Differences, and Sex Discrimination........221
31. Gender Equity in Athletics:
Should We Adopt a Non-Discriminatory Model?................223
32. The Feminist Competition/Cooperation Dichotomy: A Critique .... 266
33. Review of Michael Levin's Feminism and Freedom.............287
34. Levin on Feminism and Freedom............................292
Part Five: Discrimination and the Law...........................305
35. Compromising the Uncompromisable: Discrimination...........307
36. Should the Government be allowed to Engage in
Racial, Sexual, or Other Acts of Discrimination?................322
37. Sexual Harassment in the Workplace:
A Property Rights Perspective...............................359
38. The Boy Scouts, Freedom of Association, and the Right to Discriminate: A Legal, Philosophical.
and Economic Analysis....................................407
Bibliography................................................445
Name Index.................................................479
Subject Index...............................................483
Foreword
Every age offers its own version of a false moral code.
Just as Tom Sawyer thought that he was surely evil for being tempted to free a slave, we too live with incredible illusions about right and wrong as it applies to the civic realm. A firm principle of our age is that we must never discriminate. With Professor Block's book, how ever, we are encouraged to be free at last.
The very title of Professor Block's book is likely to set off alarm bells. Is he really saying that what we've been taught to be immoral is perfectly fine? Is he defending the undefendable, again? If he is a libertarian, why not stick to defending the right to discriminate rather than actually making a case for it?
The confusion deals with language first and economic theory second, and both points are critical. The word discrimination means nothing other than to choose between options in an environment of scarcity. If vou can only have one car. and both a mini-van and SUV arc available, you must choose between them, even if you don't have strong feelings about either option. You must discriminate, and therefore you must have the freedom to discriminate, which only means the freedom to choose. Without discrimination, there is no economizing taking place. It is chaos.
But of course the controversy over discrimination does not involve vehicles. It pertains to people, groups of people, and groups of people who have successfully lobbied for special protection. The law says they may not be excluded from jobs or admission or whatever on
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grounds of race, sex, religion, disability, or any other trait that the law may stipulate.
How does the state know for sure? It can pretend to read minds and motives, which is probably impossible. As a means of discovery, it listens for complaints and decides if they are valid by counting bodies. That's where quotas come in, and there are few forms of central planning more egregious than this. It creates group resentment and fuels conflict and hatred where none need exist—all in the name of resolving conflict and forbidding hatred. Here we have a classic case of the stated aim of the state turning out to accomplish the very opposite.
But rather than offer a more detailed critique—Walter Block does that brilliantly in this exciting book—let me address a more fundamental problem. What is the theoretical basis of discrimination law? Think back to the age of Marxism, and its core idea that capitalism introduced an intractable conflict, woven into the very fabric of society, between the owners of capital and the w orkers. The gain of one could only come at the expense of the other. In the free market, they believed, capital would exploit labor to the point of death. The role of the revolutionaries, then, was to turn the historical trajectory on its head and enable w orkers—the masses of people—to exploit capital to the point of death. The expropriators would be expropriated.
Of course most people realize that this is a silly way to look at the labor market. Workers and owners make agreements based on the prospect of mutual benefit. They are benefactors of each other through an act of human cooperation. The essential conflict in society is not between labor and capital, but between them and the agency that exploits them both, namely the state, which taxes and regulates them. The expropri ators who should be expropriated are the bureaucrats and politicians who make life a living heck for the multitudes.
Marxism is old hat; hardly anyone takes it very seriously anymore. But the conflict model of society that is at its core—valid insofar as it pertains to the state—has been changed to an endless stream of other implausible scenarios. We are told that women and men are
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always and everywhere at odds, that blacks and whites arc going to be forever at each others' throats, that people of different religions will forever attempt to drive each other into the ground, that people with a disability will always suffer at the hands of those with full abilities, and so on. This is the view of society that the proponents of discrimination law have inherited from the Marxists. The irony
of policy based on this idea is that it creates the conflict itself—as all violations of the freedom to associate do—and thus the alleged evidence that this confused view of society' is actually true.
The alternative to all this is the one accepted by Walter Block, the old liberal view, nowadays called libertarian, that society on its own is not rooted in conflict but cooperation, and that no central administration is necessary' to bring about social peace. Yes, there arc problems and conflicts, but there is no institution more likely to resolve them than the free market itself. People must be permitted to work out their own problems, and the result will be a flourishing of all groups. This is his view, and it is also the one held and defended by the whole liberal tradition from the late Middles Ages to the current dav.
Walter Block's book is a specialized application of the libertarian perspective on society, as applied to a particular controversy in our times. It is supremely rare in tackling this issue head-on and offering a no-compromise alternative: abolish all anti-discrimination law on grounds that it makes no economic sense and only generates conflict where none need exist. Will this book cause controversy? Most assuredly. But that is not its goal. Its goal is the uprooting of a flaw ed and failed social theory and its replacement by a realistic one that is rooted in a genuine concern for human rights and the good of all.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell. Jr.
Auburn, Alabama
Preface
Some of the essays included in this book deal with events
as they arose in Canada. This is due to the fact that I worked at the Frascr Institute, located in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1979-1991, when a portion of these pieces were written. But, let me assure readers from other nations, the issues of discrimination which arose there and then were global issues having implications for most places in the world, particularly the U.S., in the modern era. In many ways, Canada was then and is now "ahead" of the U.S., at least insofar as the march downward tow ard socialism and economic interventionism are concerned.
New Orleans, September 2010
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Part One
Discrimination is Everywhere
Everyone has heard about sex discrimination, racial
discrimination, and age discrimination, but what about height discrimination or language discrimination? What about beard discrimination? Or discrimination against people who kneel in church? This section of the book show s that discrimination exists in obvious, and sometimes not-so-obvious, places. In short, discrimination is everywhere.
Further, families come in all shapes and sizes, from single-parent households to traditional two-parent families, from blended families to extended families. But when government steps in, it brings along coercive elements that destroy the voluntary and beneficial nature of families.
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1. Discrimination Runs Rampant
"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" This challenge
shows only that there are exceptions to every rule. Other things equal, smarter people arc richer than the rest of us, and this bit of folk w isdom is w ell-known to most people.
Statistical analyses have shown, too, that height is correlated with pay. As a matter of fact, even- extra inch added to a businessman's stature translates into roughly $1,000 of extra income. Pity the poor but short executive officer.
Now comes a University of Manitoba study which shows that people also discriminate in favor of good looks (as if this facet of human nature were not already fully documented). According to a survey conducted by the psychology department, respondents are more likely to consider an unattractive person guilty of a crime.
The study first asked 40 students to rate head-and-shoulders photographs in terms of attractiveness. Then, they were asked to determine which were most likely to have committed murder or armed robbery. The resulting correlation between guilt and ugliness was statistically significant.
It will come as no surprise whatsoever that tall, smart, and handsome people earn more than their short, stupid, and homely counterparts. Few will deny that they are more successful, for that
Fraser Forum (March 1989): 22-23.
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matter, in all other aspects of life as well. Indeed, merely to state this is to belabor the obvious.
Is there a need, then, for affirmative action for these groups? According to one vision of social propriety, there certainly is. Individuals are short through no fault of their own. No matter how hard they try, some people will always be w iser than others. And, the best efforts of the cosmetic and fitness industries notw ithstanding, the ugly stepsister can never attain the beauty of Cinderella.
If it is no one's fault that he or she is short, dull, and plain, and if such people almost always get the short end of the stick due to the discriminatory behavior of others, then the case for government interference w ith such results is all but made. Given that quotas and other sy stems of preferential treatment are justified for groups on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, and handicap status, there w ould seem to be no reason not to make such programs available to these other victims of discrimination.
But there is a competing philosophical perspective that can guide public policy prescriptions in such matters. In this view, the role of the state is at most to protect persons and property. Its responsibility is to set up rules so that all can compete, but not to attempt to ensure equal outcomes. If a tall but ugly and blind lesbian Protestant with bad breath earns more than a short deaf divorced but smart Catholic homosexual, or if an atheistic bald male Jew confined to a wheelchair is promoted to a job coveted by a beautiful but fat Jewish female with no sense of humor, it should be no business of the state.
People, in other words, should have the right to voluntarily associate with others on whatever terms they find mutually agreeable. They should be allowed to indulge their prejudices, no matter how unsavory they appear to the rest of us. The right of free association is simply incompatible with a program that forces employers, or anyone else, to hire workers based on ethnicity, gend...
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