Freedom of association is an important freedom that even some libertarians, who should be its strongest defenders, are unwilling to defend and are even, occasionally, hostile to those who defend it. I see that somewhat on blogs and I especially see it on Facebook. One outspoken libertarian, for example, whose name I won’t mention because doing so would violate my rule of not quoting FB comments without permission, has been quite vocal lately in laying into libertarians who think that employers should have the freedom to hire whoever they want on whatever criteria they choose, including race.
There’s also a strong overlap between libertarians who no longer blanket defend freedom of association and libertarians who favor much less strict laws against immigration, with the likely consequence of more immigration.
Here’s the pragmatic problem: there’s a tradeoff. The more that people’s freedom not to associate with others is reined in, especially when those others are people of different races, the less likely they are to favor immigration and, even if they never favored immigration, the more likely they are to be outspoken opponents of immigration.
If I can tell someone who doesn’t want to associate with various kinds of people that he can have enforceable restrictive covenants on his house that forbid houses in his area from being sold to certain people, and if I can tell employers and employees that the employers are free not to hire people of certain ethnic groups, I can somewhat reassure them that some of the downsides they fear from immigrants won’t happen. (My own view is that those downsides are not large, but I’m not the one who needs to be persuaded.) But if they believe that more immigration means that their freedom of association is even more violated than it is now, my task of persuasion is much harder.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Sep 25 2018 at 11:10pm
To what extent is it really a question of race (skin color, physiognomy, whatever) rather than language, culture, and religion?
Jonathan Goff
Sep 26 2018 at 12:07am
David,
This is a tough article for me. As a libertarian, I’ve definitely become somewhat squishy on freedom of association over the years. I agree that the logic that the government shouldn’t be able to force you to associate with people you don’t want to, or to support causes you find morally repugnant, but we’ve also all seen the harms that can come to hated minorities when discrimination is permitted. I can agree with the libertarian argument that in an ideal situation, the market incentives for people to not discriminate are real, but in the real world there also seem like situations where there enough frictions and non-idealities that out-groups could get screwed pretty badly. So over time I’ve grudgingly become a lot more squishy on freedom of association.
But your article makes some pretty solid points, and I could see why people who are biased against some other group, but not allowed to chose not to associate with that group might then prefer to use the law to restrict the number of outsiders that are allowed in. You can see a similar dynamic with religious groups, anti-discrimination/public accomodation laws, and gay rights.
As someone that likes immigration and cosmopolitanism, and likes the idea of freedom of association, but hates seeing out-groups mistreated, it’s a quandry.
~Jon
David Henderson
Sep 26 2018 at 10:13am
Thanks, Jon, for confronting this issue head on.
Bedarz Iliachi
Sep 26 2018 at 2:19am
Jonathan Goff,
You are worried about real world consequences of the freedom of association with its frictions and non-idealities. But why are frictions and non-idealities of increased immigration and Open Borders not allowed similar consideration?
Mark
Sep 26 2018 at 10:00am
I think freedom of association should be limited if and only if it would cause some group to be excluded from the marketplace. That is how it works in antitrust law—large monopolistic companies have their freedom of association restricted to protect competition.
Generally, I am against anti-discrimination laws though, because a group that is politically powerful enough to get an anti-discrimination law passed is almost certainly powerful enough not to be excluded from the marketplace anyway. The only exception seems to be when a higher level of government passes an anti-discrimination law to prevent a minority from being excluded from a local marketplace where discrimination is pervasive, such as the Civil Rights Act.
Hazel Meade
Sep 26 2018 at 11:41am
Good rule of thumb.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the complaint of African Americans that expanding the discussion to every possible kind of “ism” tends to take the focus off of the unique level of adversity they face in society. I wouldn’t want a law that only forbids excluding blacks though. We should also distinguish public accommodations laws (in serving customers) from anti-discrimination laws (in hiring employees). Public accommodation laws say “if you’re open to the public, you are open to everyone“. Employment is a much more intimate and selective relationship. Not serving someone in public restaurant is more offensive than not hiring someone. However, if everyone in the market is refusing to hire a group of people to such an extent that they are systematically excluded from the market, that is a real problem. So I would consider public accommodation laws much less of a problem than anti-discrimination law, and probably only anti-discrimination laws against blacks are really justified – I don’t see a lot of real evidence for broad discrimination against Asians or Hispanics or other groups.
Robert EV
Sep 26 2018 at 12:04pm
Those without diploma X are excluded all the time, and this is despite the existence of Griggs v Duke Power.
There are plenty of people lacking just a few credits toward graduation. A core curriculum requirement for employment would be defensible in those cases, but a degree requirement is not.
nobody.really
Sep 26 2018 at 6:01pm
A bit off-topic, but the value of a degree does not necessarily arise from the education received. Rather, a degree marks a person who has sufficient drive to continue a project to completion; a person with 98% of a degree lacks that marker.
The US federal government has tampered with the requirements for gaining a Government Equivalency Degree (GED) for years. Yet regardless of the intellectual content required for a GED, the GED never predicts the same productivity as a college degree–presumably because degrees demonstrate something beyond the mastery of a specific body of knowledge.
Robert EV
Sep 27 2018 at 1:27am
The problem with that is that a degree marks a ton of stuff, including tendency to cheat, willingness to bow to parental pressure, any number of formative experiences.
I think you mean “High School diploma” vis-a-vis GED, not college degree.
I’m an exception, and as such this is my hobby horse. I eventually got that college degree (in my 30s), but spent my 20s highly underemployed.
It easier to select people already adapted to a system run by people already adapted to the system than it is to adapt the system to people’s strengths and weaknesses. But the cost of the easiness is a ton of ability and potential left on the cutting room floor. How rich would people be today if this wasted ability hadn’t been wasted?
Robert EV
Sep 27 2018 at 1:29am
And in the real world you only need a certain percentage of staff to have a drive to complete. If someone’s instead oriented to problem solving or idea generation, well, those traits are highly valuable too.
Having a staff full of completers without the problem solves, networkers, visionaries, etc… leaves you with a mediocre organization.
Hazel Meade
Sep 26 2018 at 12:14pm
In an ideal state we would have no restrictions on freedom of association and no restrictions on immigration either, and the system would self-regulate via informal norms by people choosing to associate or not with new immigrants.
The situation we’re in in America, with respect to race relations, isn’t really about immigration though. African Americans didn’t choose to come here, they were brought here in chains. And the discrimination against them isn’t about an established culture trying to keep outsiders from entering it and changing it. African Americans are Americans by birth. Americans have a moral obligation to integrate blacks fully into society that descends from the harm inflicted upon them by forcibly bringing their ancestors here as slaves. It would be morally wrong for majority white society to make them into pariahs, which is what happened under Jim Crowe, and what might happen again if public accommodation and anti-discrimination laws were repealed.
David Henderson
Sep 26 2018 at 6:19pm
All true. But my post is about the tradeoff between restricting freedom of association and having more immigration. As you said in your earlier reply to Mark, you “wouldn’t want a law that only forbids excluding blacks.”
In my area of Pacific Grove, when my house was built (in 1936), the covenants, conditions, and restrictions forbade selling the house to Turks. I’m guessing that you would be against enforcing those CCRs. So you would face the tradeoff I’m discussing.
Hazel Meade
Sep 27 2018 at 10:48am
Yeah, I am kind of of the opinion that people have to accept demographic change in the same way that they have to accept generational change. By the time you hit 80, I suspect everyone feels like they live in a foreign country, especially in the 21st century. If you think back on the last 60s years, things have changed so much culturally, I’m not sure it makes such a difference if the people living next door are Turkish immigrants or a group house of transgendered millenials.
Bedarz Iliachi
Sep 27 2018 at 4:17am
So you think that the present state of race relations is such that, absent public accommodation laws, there would be a rash of businesses excluding blacks?
However, all the recent court cases over public accommodation laws have been over Christian businesses that were unwilling to deal with demands made by homosexual customers. There has been no similar incidence of blacks refused service.
So, I may suggest that the current passion for public accommodation laws, historically anathema for libertarians, virtually a litmus test for this philosophy, is not about race relations or historic injustices to blacks but merely another facet of current enthusiasm for homosexual acceptance.
David Henderson
Sep 27 2018 at 9:27am
Bedarz Iliachi,
You write:
While that’s true, I don’t think it’s a good argument against Hazel Meade’s point. I thin reason for the recent court cases re Christian businesses and homosexuals is that the law is not well defined whereas it is well defined in the case of black people.
That doesn’t mean that I buy Hazel’s argument. My guess is that if employers were allowed to discriminate against employees or if businesses were allowed not to deal with black people, a very small percentage of them would do so.
Hazel Meade
Sep 27 2018 at 10:55am
A couple of years ago I would have agreed. The last couple of years, certain things have convinced me there is a lot more racism under the surface of American society than I thought. Not just Trump’s election, but the hostile reaction to Black Lives Matter by many whites, and the hostile reaction to Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. Those reactions have been so much more extreme and so much uglier than I would have expected if there were only a tiny number of white people who harbored racist attitudes.
Mark Z
Sep 27 2018 at 4:01pm
At risk of derailing the discussion, how is opposition to BLM or Colin Kaepernik’s kneeling in any way indicative of racism?
I would say the equation of non-racist positions, like disagreement with the idea that racial disparities in police homicides are mainly the result of racist police, with racism is a terrible way to convince non-racists that they should.
This is why I can never agree with your sentiment of wanting to ostracize putative racists; my suspicion has been – and it seems to be correct – that ‘racism’ for you includes a host of opinions that aren’t at all racist, in my opinion, like opposing the BLM movement or being offended at what one perceives as disrespect to their country. This seems little different from people who see even such non-racist policy positions as welfare reform or school choice as racist dog whistles.
john hare
Sep 27 2018 at 6:56pm
With all due respect, the Black Lives Matter website is the most racist one I remember visiting. I went there to see what they had to say and came away convinced the site authors at least were racist and evil.
Robert EV
Sep 27 2018 at 11:17pm
@Mark Z
If BLM succeeds in decreasing the number of deaths of people who are in the process of being arrested, and even decreases the number of false arrests, then this is good thing. Because it wouldn’t just be black lives being saved, it would have a ripple effect to all people in such circumstances.
The argument against BLM then, in my eyes, would be along the same road as the argument that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is an unreasonable standard, because look at the murderers who walk free. Maybe not as extreme, and I’m sure there are ancillary arguments that I’m ignoring (I haven’t paid much attention to the BLM movement itself), but it’s still prioritizing policing over individual freedom within the state.
Mark Z
Sep 29 2018 at 1:59am
Robert EV
That’s a false dichotomy. The BLM movement routinely supports and galvanizes people killed by police justifiable. Indeed, the inciting event of the movement – Michael Brown’s death – was justified, and the police officer will have to live in fear for the rest of his life because of that movement. If police officers are afraid to use force even when warranted because they know the activists see only black and white, and make no distinction between what’s justified and what isn’t, that isn’t a good thing. Gratuitous police homicides can be reduced without vilifying police and galvanizing violent criminals who were killed because they were threats to others rather than because they were black.
More over, the movement is thoroughly racist. A White Lives Matter movement might save some lives too, but I doubt many people would see that as sufficient to justify supporting it.
Mark Z
Sep 27 2018 at 4:12pm
“The situation we’re in in America, with respect to race relations, isn’t really about immigration though. African Americans didn’t choose to come here, they were brought here in chains.”
That’s entirely irrelevant. No one who was born here chose to come here, regardless of whether your ancestors chose to or not, because no one chooses their ancestors. If two people suffer the same misfortune, one due to his parents’ bad luck, the other due to his parents’ choices, should we treat them differently? Moral individualism demands that we do not, because regardless of their parents choices or lack of choices, neither of them chose his parents.
“And the discrimination against them isn’t about an established culture trying to keep outsiders from entering it and changing it. African Americans are Americans by birth. Americans have a moral obligation to integrate blacks fully into society that descends from the harm inflicted upon them by forcibly bringing their ancestors here as slaves.”
No, “we” do not. I emphatically and categorically reject any supposed moral obligation toward someone based on what someone else’s ancestors (mine were serfs to some Prussian Junker at the time) did to that person’s ancestors. I’m also fairly certain you greatly overestimate the extent to which ills afflicting African American communities can be traced back to slavery. I think the work of Robert Fogel is informative on this matter.
“It would be morally wrong for majority white society to make them into pariahs, which is what happened under Jim Crowe, and what might happen again if public accommodation and anti-discrimination laws were repealed.”
Is there any actual evidence that racism is so rampant in America? The main article of evidence people bring up seems to be Trump winning an election, which I don’t find remotely convincing.
Thaomas
Sep 27 2018 at 6:37pm
I don’t see how anti-discrimination laws create a trade-off with receptivity to immigration. I’m not aware of any anti discrimination laws (which I think ought to have an exemption for really small, “mom and pop store” scale, bigotry whether based on race, religion, gender identification, national origin, immigration status sexual orientation, etc.) that have any bearing on forcing association. What am I missing from the argument?
David Henderson
Sep 28 2018 at 12:23am
@Thaomas,
I’m not aware of any anti discrimination laws (which I think ought to have an exemption for really small, “mom and pop store” scale, bigotry whether based on race, religion, gender identification, national origin, immigration status sexual orientation, etc.) that have any bearing on forcing association. What am I missing from the argument?
What you’re missing is that anti discrimination laws force people to associate with people that they may not want to associate with. That’s how such laws violate freedom of discrimination.
Comments are closed.