Discrimination

I like Walter Williams.  I've been reading him for sometime now.  For an economist he is an enjoyable read.

Re-education at George Mason

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I’ve asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren’t going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what’s fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?

I’m guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism. Back in 1960, when interviewing people to establish a marital contract, every woman wasn’t given an equal opportunity. I discriminated against not only white, Indian, Asian, Mexican and handicapped women but men of any race. My choices were confined to good-looking black women. You say, “Williams, that kind of discrimination doesn’t harm anyone!” Nonsense! When I married Mrs. Williams, other women were harmed by having a reduced opportunity set.

It would be interesting to ask Mrs. Williams how big that lose was for all those other women.   I suspect that there were some days in the last 50 years that it might have been bigger than others.  Wit aside, he makes an excellent point.  We discriminate every day.  Everyone of us does it.  Why do we need classes to teach us about it?  There are a great number of social ills that could be fixed by allowing legal, open,  and highly visible discrimination. 

The drug war would be over tomorrow if we allowed two things to happen simultaneously.  The first would be creating a legal class of recreational drugs and allowing them to be sold to anyone of legal age wishing to buy them through an approved outlet, similar to what we do with alcohol.  The second thing would be to allow anyone to discriminate against those drug users for any product, service, housing or any other reason. 

On one hand the "R" class drugs would be cheap and legal, eliminating the criminal profit incentive.  On the other hand your boss doesn't have to keep you as an employee if you are a user.  Your landlord doesn't have to keep you as a renter, and anyone in society can refuse you service if they so choose.  People would have the freedom to both do as they like and to avoid (or not) those who do things they do not like. 

This would work great in other areas too.  Companies could hire/discipline/fire etc employees who do not live healthy lifestyles thus reducing the cost of health care.  They could also, hire, or not women, minorities or people who don't have adequate English skills.  The best part about this kind of open discrimination is that individuals would bear the cost of enforcement and not the tax payers.  IF you don't like Chick Filets anti homosexual stand, you don't have to eat there.  They can be open about their feelings and you can vote with your dollars.  We wouldn't need vast armies of cops to enforce "stop and frisk" laws hoping that they can catch you breaking a random law.  There would be no reason to fund vast bureaucracies of  professional criminal justice flunkies to prosecute pot heads. 

Open, declared discrimination can fix any number of our societies ills with minimal cost to the public, just by legalizing decision making criteria to include those things that make liberals uncomfortable.