Defining the noun "Liberal"

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 18, 2016.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Notes from the Realm of the Obvious

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    Your proposition presumes "reputation" is sufficient. There is a reason I asked what part of history supports your simplistic proposition. And I think there is also a reason you didn't bother answering.

    So, when you compared dark skin to, say, a sex crime, what was the functional purpose of that juxtaposition?

    Were you just comparing the existential reality of dark skin to willful offensive behavior for the hell of it? I mean, sure, that could be part of the problem, that anyone else would think there was some actual reason you so demanded people talk about your comparisons. But, hey, if it was just to denigrate dark skin, we have our answer. In any case, you can't make a racist argument about racism and say it has absolutely nothing to do with racism.

    Not all white supremacists are freeloaders. But you have also argued a lack of obligations to society. That would make them freeloaders. If they have the same obligations as everybody else, why are you bawling about the rights of white supremacists to enforce white supremacism? If they have the same obligations as everybody else, why are you wasting all this time and effort demanding special privilege for them?

    Make-believe does not a rational argument make.

    You know, it's funny; back in the Reagan years, people used to complain that I expected Utopia. The problem with your version is the good faith required to make bad faith functional.

    There is nothing in history to support the functionality of the society you describe.

    What you seem to overlook is people's behavior; many do, in fact, assesrt to make their religious ideologies relevant.

    Yeah, well, we ought not wonder why the anti-Trump majority is growing. But, yeah, my parents' generation is embarrassed. Well, the white part of the generation. See, they used to get really pissed off at us when we talked about racism, thought we were being too hard on our beloved America. You know, the whole "bad seeds" argument. This was the kind of shit that would get some kids stropped; y'don't talk bad 'bout 'Merica that way.

    A lot of people my parents' age are simply shocked. They really, really didn't think that many of their patriotic, God-fearin' American neighbors believed these kinds of things. The problem with being an American liberal is that you don't get to cheer when you're right; it usually means we've just gone and proven a point in a spectacularly awful way. There's no hooray when the war goes awry, or there aren't enough helicopters left for the wildfire season because the war has gone awry; there's no raising a glass and congratulating ourselves because we were right about the economy collapsing; look at the correlation between the opioid epidemic and Trump voters, by county, and what joy is there in being right about how our way of dealing with drug addiction wasn't working?

    Turns out my white-privileged middle-class cohort were right about racism. Black people could have told me that, but, you know, we were raised in the white middle class, so ... I don't know, it had something to do with rap, though, I think. Or ask the women. In the eighties, when we were supposed to freak out about pop music, we weren't listening to the women telling us what was wrong with the misogyny, we were listening to the misogynists telling us what was wrong with women. My male-privileged middle-class cohort were right about sexism, too.

    But we're Americans; being right didn't spare us from taking part. There is a reason we thought it ran deep. There is no joy in knowing we were right.

    More to the point, one of the reasons it helps to have a clue what you're on about is that your punch lines have a better chance of making sense.

    You advocate racism and for racists.

    You advocate racism and for racists.
     
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Reputation is sufficient where it works. Unfortunately, it works, without modern information technologies, only in small societies. But this problem is a solvable one.
    Above things were about violations of freedom of contract - in above cases somebody was forced to do something he did not like.

    The functional purpose of that "comparison" was to find out if my opponent has a different position about above cases or not. If not, it means he would have to defend that crime too. And he would have been in a much worse moral position defending it. Else, he would have to clarify that he makes a difference between the two cases, and to clarify what makes, in his opinion, the difference. This is a standard technique in such discussions. And a valid one. Feel free to apply similar techniques against me.
    No. Freeloaders receive something from society without giving it anything. My argumentation against obligations to "society" means also that those who argue in this way have no right to receive the corresponding service from society, thus, I do not argue for any freeloading.

    And, moreover, the same argumentation would be applicable to blacks too. To everybody. So, there is certainly nothing in my arguments in favor of white supremacists. In a liberal society, they have only equal rights - but these equal rights they have, else it is not a liberal society.
    As far as the means to "enforce" are restricted to the rights to decide about what is allowed to do on your property, or with your property, which is part of property rights in general, and the right to reject contracts, which is part of freedom of contract. everybody is free to "enforce" whatever he likes. This includes black suprematism, devil worship, whatever.

    Your use of "enforce" strongly suggests that you want to defame me, because enforcement in its usual meaning includes much more, in particular the use of force beyond self-defense and defense of the own property.
    I don't.
    If classical liberalism is Utopia or not is an interesting question. But it is not the question discussed here. The question discussed here is the difference between classical (European) liberalism and American "liberalism".
    As long as they do it without violation of liberal principles - in particular, simply by refusing to have contracts with "bad" people - this is something which has to be legal and tolerated in a liberal society. There will be, of course, always people who reject liberal principles and want to create some totalitarian society. The question is if a liberal society is strong enough to defend liberalism against those. The American society has failed, and is now, imho, deeply totalitarian.
    You cannot argue without defamation? I have no emotional bounds to anything in America. Beyond some weak remains from childhood, in favor of the good native tribes fighting evil white aggressors. Been there three weeks during the 90's and decided "never again".
    No. You defame you political opponents. And this is not an accident, but your normal way to have a discussion. Defamation is no longer only the emergency exit of those who have lost the discussion about the content. Defamation is the aim of the discussion. You are the winner of the discussion if you find a good way to defame. The content is only a tool to find a justification for defamation.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    White racism in the US is, or was, a reputational system. That's why it didn't need laws to deny black people freedom of contract.
    You haven't got that. You've got a system where the rich and powerful, or those who seem rich and powerful, can cheat the vulnerable at will without penalty, merely by dominating the actual means of spreading reputation and subsequent retaliation - a capability that comes with wealth and power automatically, unless curbed by government. Which is exactly how white racists in the US enforced the denial of freedom of contract to black people.
    Of course they can. They can forbid making them unavailable on the basis of race. They can state that no legal contract for commercial dealings with the public can exist if it is unavailable to anyone on the basis of race. This was done, in the US.
    Repeated irrelevancy.
    Again: It does give you something if they do. Preventing those who do, or would, is a violation of freedom of contract.

    And that's the situation at hand, in the racist denial of freedom of contract to black people in the US.
    Degree and scope and range, not amount, is at issue. All freedom of contract is restricted in order to exist, by the formal definition of enforceable "contract" if nothing else. The liberal government will make those restrictions minimal, maximizing the freedom. In the US, allowing racial discrimination in commercial contracts with the public leads to the loss of the freedom by black people, so that can't be allowed by a liberal government.
    I didn't like that term "give" either, but it was yours, and I was responding to you.
    Please read my use of it the same way you intended yours.
    And since introducing obligations is dubious and should be avoided, the US liberal approach is to restrict the definition of legal contract so that freedom of contract is not denied to black people.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2017
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    But in these definitions of contract, nobody is being forced to do anything. The motel owner is voluntarily doing business with the public, likewise the gas station owner, the emergency room nurse, and so forth. No coercion is involved.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    A reputational system - in the relevant sense, that means, how I use it - has no means to deny anybody the freedom of contract. Except that it allows to enforce that those, who have accepted it as their obligation not to sign contracts with blacks, really do not sign contracts with blacks. Such a reputational system has no force against those who don't participate, and the participation is volitional.
    Wrong. In my proposal for a reputational system, everybody who can present a record which meets the technical standard (that means, contains a record of electronically signed acceptance of the arbiter, by the person who violated the contract, together with the decision about the case, with the penalty, as well as the information that the contract violator has refused to pay the penalty, signed by the arbiter) can post this record. To check if the record meets the standards is a simple automatic check. All one needs for distribution is something similar to a newsserver, technology of the old USENET. The amount of data which have to be distributed by such a server would be much less than an old USENET server, thus, this would be no relevant costs at all.
    Of course, they can forbid them everything if one does not give the local administrator of the government a blow job. A totalitarian government can do whatever it likes. But this would be nothing which can be justified by common sense and not in obvious contradiction with liberal principles.

    A liberal government would start to care at all about some contract only if there is a conflict about that contract and one of the sides asks, volitionally, the court to decide about that conflict. Without a signed contract, it would not do anything. Because, even in principle, there would be no obligation to sign any contract. None, nada, keinerlei, ни хуя.
    Partially correct. So to forbid, with minimal wage laws by law, to hire blacks for a wage below that minimal wage is a clear violation of freedom of contract. As explained, with racist consequences.

    But there remain legal means to prevent those who want to sign contracts: Argumentation with them, to show them that signing such contracts is bad or evil, and even to boycott those who refuse to follow such arguments. An attempt to prevent signing a contract would violate freedom of contract only if using similar means for whatever other reason would be illegal too.
    No. There may be societies without contracts enforceable by law, but with freedom of contract. Freedom of contract can be violated only if to sign some sorts of contract is illegal, or if not to sign some sort of contracts is illegal.

    One can, of course, argue that it is only the subset of enforceable contracts which matters. But in this case, you have a problem: Or the contract itself is not sufficient to show that it is enforceable, so that you have, additionally, to present audio records about the negotiation or so to prove that a contract is enforceable. Or you cannot include information about how the contract was reached into the definition of an enforceable contract.
    No. If the "US liberal approach" would be to restrict the definition of a legal contract, the blacks would have no chance. Because they have no contract at all, neither a legal contract by definition, nor an unenforceable contract. They have no contract at all, not even a verbal agreement.

    And these lesbians would have had no chance to get a photo of their marriage too. There was no paper with a signature, there was only a rejection to serve gay couples. No restriction of what is a legal contract allows to reach this.

    So, the "US liberal approach" forces white racists and anti-gay fanatics to serve as slaves to blacks and gays.

    Disclaimer, necessary in a totalitarian society without freedom of speech: I object against this, not because I do not like blacks or lesbians, but because I do not like like slavery, even if the slaves are subhumans like white racists or religious fanatics.

    The racist motel owner is not doing "business with the public", but simply signs contracts with particular white guys.

    The coercion starts once the racist motel owner is forced to serve a black guy, without signing any contract.

    Of course, a totalitarian government can also force people to accept "voluntarily" an obligation to serve everybody once they have signed a contract to do the same with some person he liked. With the threat to imprison him if he, without signing this general obligation to serve everybody, is caught serving somebody else (say, allowing a white racist to sleep in his home). But this is possible only in a society without freedom of contract, because in this society signing contracts has serious legal consequences. Say, a white racist prostitute signing a contract for sex with a white racist is, after this, obliged to accept to have sex with blacks. Which would be, imho, a legalization of rape.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2017
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    If that's true, then he has nothing to worry about - the law would not apply, and the motel owner would not be coordinating with all the other white racists to deny black people their freedom of contract, and no problem.

    But most motels are doing business with the public.
    That's not true. The racial discrimination system in the US had plenty of means, and was very effective.
    And you have no idea how the rich and powerful would use that, do you. Even when provided with a genuinely horrible, easily researched, and large scale example - racial discrimination in the US after WWII - you haven't got a clue.
    In the US there are many unsigned forms of contract, especially in commercial dealings with the public. And of course nobody here has ever been talking about obligating anyone to sign any contract - that's just a strawman you made up to dodge the problems with your formulation of "liberal" principles.
    In the US we had no trouble including criteria about how a contract could be reached into the definition of a contract, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt - our legal standard - turned out to be (often) quite simple.
    It's a restriction on some kinds of contract, and it applies equally to everybody. Whether it violates liberal principles or not depends on what its actual effects on freedom of contract are.
    There is no freedom of contract under liberal government without a formal, justified, enforceable definition of "contract". And if willing and otherwise able parties are prevented from making such contracts while others of the public can, they do not have equal freedom of contract.
    The US liberal approach was to restrict the definition of an enforceable contract in commercial dealings with the public, and the blacks had much improved chances as a direct consequence. This is historical fact - your speculation there is contradicted.
    Nobody is forced to have any commercial dealings with the public at all, in the US. They are voluntary.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The liberal principle of "freedom of contract" does not know such an animal as "the public". A has the freedom to sign or to reject to sign contracts with B. A and B are simply human beings. There is nobody who is "the public".
    I have not made a statement about racial discrimination in the US.
    You have no idea about my ideas. Moreover, the reputational system I propose does not give you any information about the signed contracts themselves. The record does not even contain information about the other side of the contract. It contains the penalty assigned by the arbiter, signed by the arbiter, the information that it has not been paid, signed by the arbiter, and the acceptance of that arbiter about a contract identified only by a number, signed by the contract violator as part of the contract. About contracts without problems it does not give any information. And before a contract violation causes problems, even the arbiter may not know the content or the participants.
    Fine but irrelevant. How the US courts distinguish between empty talk and an enforceable contract is not a problem at all, as long as it does not claim that a contract exists if one side does not accept it. Because the worst thing which happens if that decision is suboptimal is that some contracts cannot be enforced. It does not mean that they are forbidden, thus, not a serious violation of freedom of contract.
    Of course, contracts exist also without governments, so this is nonsense.
    But, sorry, this is nonsense. Because restricting the definition of an enforceable contract helps you nothing if you, as a black, are boycotted by white racists. Because you simply have no contracts, enforceable or not.

    All you can reach with a restriction of enforceable contracts is to effectively deny some parts of the population the freedom of contract, by not enforcing their contracts. As it is actually openly done with minors.
    So if one signs a lot of contracts with whites, but only with whites, not with "the public" (how one signs a contract with "the public" is beyond me, but whatever) one cannot be forced to sign contracts with blacks?
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The laws involved in governing according such principles do know that animal.
    The details of your fantasies about incorruptible arbitrators and willingly disparaged rich and powerful people are of no relevance.
    It doesn't. It defines the terms under which they can exist, including of course acceptance by both sides. Also, in the US, including no racial discrimination in that acceptance - in commercial dealings with the public.
    Please read more carefully - the topic was freedom of contract under liberal governance.
    You can also jail and fine people for making fraudulent contracts and illegal commercial deals - such as when discriminating by race, in the US.
    Please pay attention:
    The law was enforced against the white racists, and their refusal to do business with black people - any black people - was proved by that absence of contracts among other things. Having no signed contracts was legal, physical evidence in situations where the contracts involved were signed contracts. Most retail commercial dealings with the public do not involve signed contracts, of course.
    1) You said "particular" whites - not all of them.
    2) To have established a pattern - even an entire business, such as a motel or a mortgage lending bank - of doing business with the public, is not a concept beyond most people. In particular, it is not beyond the intellectual capabilities of an average judge or jury in the US.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So being prohibited from discriminating against certain races is "slavery." Orwell would be proud.
    Yes. We rape white racists here all the time. Because that's the logical extension of anti-bigotry laws.

    It's probably a good thing you don't live here - your head would explode.
     
  13. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    And here: I had thought that "liberal" was an adjective.
    (sigh)
    So, if we go with turning adjectives into nouns, could we also have a definition of "liberal" as a verb(add an "ly"?)?

    back to the op
    If you take "Liberal" to mean not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms:
    Then many who I know who would call themselves "Liberal" ain't.
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2017
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The meaning of the word in American public discourse has been systematically ruined by thirty five years of propaganda from the Nameless Faction. But it has been a noun at least since some time in between 1950, when Lionel Trilling wrote this:
    in a book with the title "The Liberal Imagination"

    and 1964, when Barry Goldwater titled a widely influential book "The Conscience of a Conservative", which received no criticism for having an ungrammatical title,

    so that in 2007, when Paul Krugman titled his book "The Conscience of a Liberal", nobody blinked an eye.

    It's "liberalize", and it's been in the dictionary for quite a while now. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/liberalize . "Liberally" is the adverb.

    The English language acquires useful new nouns from adjectives routinely - and vice versa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(word_formation)
    In the US we have an odd situation, because increasingly liberal government is among our traditions.
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2017
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    And here I thought "conservative" was someone who cared about conservation! (<- equally silly.)
    It would be wiser to use the more relevant definition in Merriam-Webster (the one just below the one you used) -

    "of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism : of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; especially : of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives."

    And to round that out, the definition of liberalism from the same source:

    "a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy (see autonomy 2) of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties; specifically : such a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (such as those involving race, gender, or class)"
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    A liberal society values rape prevention more than it does arguing about who a hooker will or won't do. Regretfully, nobody is really surprised you can't figure out the problem with your rape and slavery fantasies.

    Still, though, that's a funny marketplace you imagine where, after all that, the hookers are so discriminating.

    Or in which the hookers sign contracts.

    Seriously, though, that post isn't even a joke―it's not funny.

    What the hell is wrong with you?
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Without doubt, US law knows this animal. That means, their very intention is quite obvious - to restrict freedom of contract. Without this intention, there would be no point introducing this animal.
    Of course, and, as usual for your fantasies, I have no such fantasies.
    So far about slavery. You need contracts with at least some blacks, else you can be, under some circumstances, imprisoned. The other circumstances, it seems, are simply that they have used their freedom of contract, afaiu by having a lot of contracts with whites.

    So, US law gives you the alternative: Or you do not use your freedom of contract, by signing a lot of contracts with whites, or you have to serve blacks against your will, thus, slavery.
    Of course, no firm, not even Coca Cola, will have contracts with all whites. A small motel will certainly have only contracts with a particular subset of whites. Then, to have a pattern in the own behavior is, of course, quite common. But it is not the governments business in a liberal state. Freedom of contract includes also the freedom to choose whatever pattern to decide if one wants to sign a contract or not.
    I have no doubt, that an average jury will be able to decide if somebody has violated most totalitarian laws. Moreover, it does not matter anyway if not.
    Slavery is if one is obliged to serve some people against the own will. That's all. If you have a very different definition of slavery, so be it.

    All you can say in defense of that slavery is that to work for "the public" is a free decision. If one decides to serve "the public", one has to serve everybody. But this ignores that we do not have here a free decision. The free decision of the racist motel owner or prostitute is a different one - to serve the white part of the public.

    So, the racist is faced with the following choice: Or he is not allowed to use his freedom of contract - which would allow him to serve whites only, without any restriction. If he uses his freedom of contract by making contracts with whites, he is penalized for this with slavery, because he has, after this, to serve blacks against his will, or will be penalized.

    That you don't understand the difference between what it means in principle, and what happens every day, is your problem. The discussion here is about liberal principles, not everyday life in the US. The very name "anti-bigotry laws" already shows, by the way, that they violate liberal principles. Because bigotry is part of freedom of thought, which is fundamental and protected in any liberal state.
    I would suggest you not to speculate about me. I have no problem living in totalitarian states, I have lived in a highly totalitarian state during my childhood, and I'm actually in a state which is, in some aspects, even more totalitarian. It is not that problematic to live there - you have to learn which thoughts you are not allowed to express openly, take into account that these restrictions change in time in unpredictable ways, and that there is no prohibition of retrospective legislation, so that you can be penalized even for things which were allowed to be said at that time. But simply not to talk about politics is a safe choice.

    So, don't worry, if I would live in the US, I would be a nice American liberal guy, fully PC compatible, the best friend of Tiassa and iceaura, not care at all about the lies of the US media, and simply not talk about politics at all but restrict myself to physics. That's simple and safe.

    BTW, I was in America three weeks. This was a very boring time. Found nobody to talk with about something even remotely interesting for me. Except one Russian. (And seen only three people I found beautiful - and two of them recent immigrants.)

    I'm not surprised that you are unable to understand the arguments. So, you don't even get the point that the aim of my hooker example is that the same principles which are relevant for this example would legalize rape. Thus, they would be in contradiction with other ideas, which in your society are at least claimed to be highly valued. If I would think that in the US nobody cares about rape, there would be no point to construct the hooker example.
    Of course, in places where prostitution is illegal, there is no point of signing contracts, they would be unenforceable anyway. But prostitution illegal is simply another example of anti-liberal restrictions of freedom of contract. So, once we discuss here liberal principles, this case is simply irrelevant.

    And you seem to have the same problem as billvon, unable to understand the difference between what it means in principle, and what happens every day. So I do not use here any imagination about the real prostitution market in the US.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Passions and Priorities

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    It's not a matter of comprehension, but, rather, utility. It's one thing if your examples actually apply to anything real, but quite another if you're invoking rape and slavery just to get a thrill out of talking about rape and slavery.

    It is true we have less comprehension of your fragmented, self-defeating, uneducated, and generally thoughtless bullshit than you pretend you do, but it is also true that your rants regard your own fiction. You're building up straw men to burn down, and revealing glimpses of your passions and priorities along the way. Dark skin as a substantive juxtaposition to sex crime in particular and willful offense in general, prostitutes signing contracts―you do realize, do you not, that despite your thesis about anti-liberal whatnot and freedom of whonow, that the problem is, indeed, "anti-liberal" insofar as the prohibitions against prostitution are conservative and historical. If we consider the practical challenges facing prostitution as matters of history, even legalized prostitution will remain lethally dangerous until societies deal with the ignorance and prejudices you promote and celebrate.

    You keep coming up with these useless examples that add up to, "Well, Schmelzer wants to talk about black people whacking off, or black people raping hookers."

    Priorities are as priorities do, Schmelzer.

    And all of this why? Ostensibly in pursuit of a straw man to flame?

    The problem with laughing at you is that you are, technically, kind of dangerous about your advocacy. And you can take what internalized reward you might from feeling dangerous, but that, too, would be a matter of passions and priorities.

    There are alternatives, of course. Making sense. Presenting a pretense of decency. You know. Little things.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The opposite - it increases freedom of contract, by preventing its physical denial by cooperating white racists, and that is its intention.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, you don't. You don't need contracts with anybody.
    That is not slavery. You do not need to serve blacks against your will - you just have to have some other criterion than their race, for consenting or refusing to serve them. It's a criterion for consent, as well as refusal, that is removed from the criteria for legal contract - along with all the other intentions to defraud (such as only consenting to contracts with the elderly and confused). It's part of the definition of fraudulent contracting, which is of course complex (because people intending to defraud the public are clever sons of bitches). It applies to everyone equally.
    No, you don't have to serve everybody. There are all kinds of reasons for refusing contracts that are perfectly ok - any, in fact, that do not intend to defraud as defined.
    The discussion here is about liberal principles of governance - liberal government. That involves everyday life, by definition.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Don't worry about your own fantasies about my intentions, thrills, priorities and so on, they are anyway only stupid speculation. Care about the arguments. If you are not interested in the arguments, stay out of the discussion, instead of flooding it with ad hominem attacks.

    Sorry, you contradict yourself here. I think we have clarified that if you have a lot of contracts with arbitrary whites, but no contracts at all with blacks, it does not matter at all what you tell about your criteria, it will be considered as sufficient evidence that you are an evil racist and you will be punished for this. Thus, to prevent punishment, you have to have some contracts with blacks, or you have to have no contracts at all, beyond a small number of people which does not count as "public".

    So, if the criterion for refusal is "I do not like his face", the result may be similar, so it cannot prevent one from persecution.
    Sorry, this logic is beyond me. Ok, if I make a fraudulent contract, this contract will be invalid. For good reasons. If one signs only contracts with the elderly and confused, this may be evidence that I plan fraud. But this is, again, only a possibility to refuse to enforce the contract. It does not make, and cannot make without introducing slavery, a contract which one has not signed a valid contract.

    Whatever the criteria for fraudulent contracting, this is part of contracting, and presupposes a contract - it defines only criteria if this contract is valid or fraudulent.
    You completely ignore that in a society with freedom of contract there cannot be any criteria for a valid refusal to sign a contract. In principle. If I'm obliged to "sign" a contract, because I have no legal reason to refuse to sign it, I'm simply a slave, and do not have freedom of contract. Because freedom of contract means freedom not to sign it - without any need to justify this decision, thus, even without any reason at all.
    Yes, but this does not make references about everyday life in clearly illiberal states like the US relevant or valid.
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    "Care about the arguments"? Okay: Do you ever have an argument that isn't a pathetic excuse?

    Really, Schmelzer, racism as a word game isn't an argument.

    So you say, "Care about the arguments".

    I say get an argument.

    Racism and sloth, Schmelzer, aren't any manner of useful argument.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That's clearly false - the very definition of whether a contract has been refused or not is based on carefully considered criteria.

    Meanwhile, we're talking about criteria for invalid acceptance of contract, which are numerous and complex under liberal governance as under any governance which enforces contracts.

    And quit talking about "signing" a contract - retail commerce does not usually involve signed contracts.
    As with most of your claims about a legal system and country you are ignorant of, that's not true. It's evidence, but not necessarily sufficient evidence.
    Nevertheless, in this case they are - because the laws and circumstances involved are (or were) exactly as your formulation supposes.
     

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