Scrib wrote:I have a question: why can't businesses discriminate?
Because anything like modern business is base on the idea that the government
legally enforces your contracts. If you sit down in a restaurant, order food, eat it and don't pay, this is a crime you can be arrested over and thrown in jail ect... that's the government enforcement power supporting the business. The contract might not be written out, but we all understand you are entering into an agreement to pay for services. This is what is key, not that its a formal sheet of paper.
Equal protection and anti discrimination laws are based on the premise that it is inherently wrong for business taking advantage of this innate government power while discriminating against customers at other times. The government is for the people, by the people, and thus must serve and protect all people equally.
This is a problem in general with libertarianism, which is linked into all of this, because the libertarians badly want to ignore the fact that 'free' enterprise almost always ends up dependent on government enforcement power. Otherwise people could screw you all day long, and even suing in civil court means
nothing without government power to back up enforcement of the ruling. The only other option would be to employ your own private armed force to collect debts; which is basically how we got governments in the first place. Armed groups end up fighting until someone comes on top, starts ordering people around at spear point because they can.
Now if you want to be discriminatory in who you donate money too, or volunteer time for, or other one way obligations from you to another, with no legally binding obligations made in return, nothing stops that, and nothing should. This sort of activity involves no contracts or enforcement.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956