There is an interesting development in the United States that is laying the precedent for the darkest sort of future. Vendors cannot legally refuse to sell to certain groups, eg Whites only restaurants are illegal. More interesting is that buyers cannot refuse to buy from certain groups, eg boycotting Israel is illegal federally and in most US states. This raises an interesting question, is commerce a choice? Is the free market being replaced, not by the labor theory of value, but instead by the mandatory market. Neither vendors, nor customers have the absolute right to withdraw from commerce anymore. How long until they are made to?
Sellers (being porkies and all) should ideally be heavily regulated (to the point where they really question whether they should keep on existing). I don't see the problem with that sort of thing.
In 90% of cases it has to do with foreign trade, eg only buying Iraqi apples instead of Israeli apples.
Not really, since Republicans repealed the Individual Mandate from Obamacare. That is a better example which suits your argument better. For context, the Individual Mandate required Americans to buy health insurance from a private company or buy it from a government-subsidized private company or else be charged 2% of their income on their taxes as a fine. This was likened to mandatory car insurance laws, and Democrats defended it on that basis (even when confronted with arguments for socialist or goverment-run healthcare).
The question is who gets to determine who is an is not a vendor or customer? If I want to buy your car did I force you to become a vendor? If you refuse to sell to me is that unlawful discrimination? If you want to sell me your car did you force me to become a customer? If I refuse to buy from you is that unlawful discrimination?
Nolan Perry
When it passes and people actually go to jail for it, get back to me.
What would be better for porkies than to erode your right to not buy?
Logan White
Actually giving money and time to proles so they can buy things, and keep the system limping for another… decade, instead of squeezing blood from the stone and starting a revolution within a year.
Easton Walker
My Senator (Dianne Fienstien) has tried for years to make criticism of Israel illegal on college campuses as a means to crush student activism. For context, her husband runs the largest public university network in the US - the University of California system, who has also tried to make criticism of Israel illegal on college campuses by branding it as "hate speech" - which has major weight recently as UC students themselves are reconsidering allowing free speech on their campuses at all following Holla Forums's constant trolling of them.
Anthony Ross
Well?
Xavier Carter
What is late stage capitalism for 20 food credits?
Justin Foster
Well, the question was "What would be better for porkies".
Isaiah Bennett
Fair enough. Of course by that logic you could argue the dialectical end of history is best for everyone.
Logan Smith
Unsuccessful, as of now. The UC Board of Directors chose to adopt a general broad statement against antisemitism, which sounds bad but what they adopted was a defanged version of what they originally wanted. They chose the watered down one because it was the middle of 2016 primary season, and notable UC Alumni (many of whom are California legislators up for reelection that year) didn't want Israel to be an issue.
But things are different now. First of all Trump became our Zionist-In-Chief, and secondly Holla Forums's trolling of UC Berkley has created a very dismissive attitude towards free speech on campus so stronger "hate speech" policies are easier to push as there aren't many students willing to defend free speech (and those that do are outed as racists and isolated).
Free speech is a much larger issue, one which the UC system doesn't really know how to handle. Specifically, young liberals under age 30 see zero reason to have free speech and consider rude things to be hate speech. Their older peers (professors, bureaucrats, etc) mostly don't, and this has created a quiet conflict on campus. This can be seen to outsiders on the local NPR outlet KQED, who has had several free speech vs hate speech debates in the past year. In most of them, the older NPR broadcasters clumsily hide their distaste for the younger people they interview.
Fascists and fascist sympathizers deserve a bullet not a platform. Communists are ignored by the media under capitalism. I see no reason to give fascists an advantage.
Kevin Nelson
The thing about precedent is that the tools used to crush someone else are just as good on you. When we give the powerful more power, why would they use to to our benefit instead of their own?
Jaxson Peterson
Sure, but remember that the judge and jury here is whatever the Federal government will let publicly funded schools get away with. Right now, the arbiter for that is President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeffery Sessions, and Dept. of Education Chair Betsy Devos. All three of them are openly Zionist, and fully support Israel. Complicating this for the UC Regents is that the formermost has openly expressed a desire for the targeted disenfranchisement of Muslims in America, through such things as "Muslim country" travel bans, a Muslim gun ban and a Muslim registry. That's pretty much the only reason why they haven't committed to banning criticism of Israel (yet), because a significant amount of them are legitimately afraid they might help Trump if they did that. But the jury is still out on the issue.
Lincoln Torres
They are already "crushing" us in a way. A fascist gives a talk at a state university and suddenly they are giving interviews to major network news shows. When a communist gives a talk they are given no such play on the media. We are not allowed to be part of the conversation. We should not allow fascists to participate either.
Brody Thomas
Buy the ticket to the speech prole.
Hudson Ramirez
That was a one off rooted in idpol (black and brown people along with women getting something for "free") and not done on any sort of principled free market conviction. They are perfectly comfortable with laws mandating the purchase of insurance and other things.
Jace Torres
Sure they are, that's how the Individual Mandate came about in the first place as a "moderate" compromise to ensure Democrats could get reelected in 2010. Unsurprisingly, once people were faced with the prospect of losing at least $2-3 thousand a year to insurance companies and Democrats got fucked in the mouth over it. Republicans' original attempt to defend it in 2012 utterly failed because their candidate, Mitt Romney, signed into law a similar Individual Mandate when he was Governor of Massachusetts. It's current repeal is largely done out of defeat, and is not an endorsement of the GOP in any way.
Lucas James
As a point, the civil rights amendment sidesteps the right to free association by it's very status as a constitutional amendment. The illegality of boycotting israel is… questionably constitutional, on the other hand.
On another note, vendors do still have the right to withdraw from commerce, just not SELECTIVELY (for the specific cases covered by the civil rights amendment.) If serving blacks is that contrary to you, you retain the right to stop selling anything at all.
Cameron Clark
In general, these are exceptions. There's special laws against discrimination on six or seven particular grounds which have been focuses of strong social movements. Mostly, shops, clubs, pubs, websites can ban whoever they like, with absolute impunity. Also, anti-discrimination laws are rarely enforced, and bosses have all kinds of let-outs.
In principle, capitalism shouldn't be discriminatory. Capitalism is based on equivalential value. Everyone is formally "equal" as sellers of products or of labour power (Marx's "liberty, equality and Bentham"). Money expresses the value of ABSTRACT labour - not black, white, male, female labour. In practice there's discrimination, but widespread discriminatory practices might interfere with capitalist value production.
Laws are particularly used to prevent anyone interfering politically with markets. The Israel example is a good example. Also, some countries ban secondary/tertiary campaigns lobbying countries to disinvest from animal abuse enterprises. Basically they're trying to make sure the market, not politics, determines the winners. This kind of policy is reactionary.
The other kinds of anti-discrimination laws are progressive. There are market incentives to discriminate, either to maximise income by excluding poorer groups, or to impress bigots. Anti-discrimination laws require bosses to treat people as abstract workers or consumers, rather than sets of socially observable traits.
The market is actually too unconstrained. Private companies are banning whoever they like, and in extreme cases this could amount to genocide (e.g. if banned from all food stores). A general duty of privatised service providers to provide services to everyone would be a progressive policy, bringing them closer to socialised provision.
Jack Diaz
welp, time to start merchantposting but the lawsuit against GW was dismissed, lol system a shit
Grayson Myers
You don't have to jail people to stifle dissent. When it comes to campus activists for example (>>2335999), it is enough to get them thrown out of uni to significantly affect their future earning potential, to a point where many an activist might reconsider.
Yet the way this is gone about on campuses for example is typically by empowering the administration to decide what is and what is not allowed via all kinds of opaque councils and diversity consultants. You're just further empowering the disciplinary apparatus of the educational industrial complex (which will turn around on you as soon as you make a move like supporting BDS), all to swat away totally marginal viewpoints that can as easily be laughed out of the room when given a hearing.
Easton Phillips
Remember the way it was used in Texas. No one has to go to jail to make this oppressive.
tbh I quite like the concept behind anti-boycott laws in an ad-hoc "I just got an idea" fashion. If boycotting is a crime, ethical anti-consumerism becomes impossible. It thereby becomes mandatory to engage with the real levers of power. If you cannot boycott Israel, you cannot pretend your boycott is meaningful: you MUST get the real levers of foreign policy (i.e. govt) to go after Israel instead, which would always be more fruitful than trying the commercial route.
Also it could possibly be useful in inter-company relation terms (instead of consumer terms) to force companies to buy from preferred sources, but that would require a social democratic government to exert the appropriate forces. To contextualize my thinking, the level of bourgeoisie co-operation involved in the Grunwick strike leaves a lingering unease. Working class solidarity was pitted against overt bourgeoisie solidarity. Despite several attempts by standard mediation methods to compromise, the bloody-minded head of Grunwick refused these options - and in the end, was kept in business. (You had for example several libertarian organisations delivering mail, because post-office workers were refusing to come and collect it until this was found to be illegal. That's a very concerning development indeed.)
Ryder Cooper
Subtle point, but I like it. Abolishing a liberty to do something forces the obligation to acknowledge reality.
Xavier Lewis
waaaah
Jack Clark
The concern is that no party can refuse to trade. Vendor or customer.
Carter Long
Just stop dude.
Juan Peterson
Seriously think about the implications of illegal boycotts. Customers (ie proletariats), prospective or ordinary, do not have an absolute right to refrain from purchase. You cannot refuse to buy if your reasons are "impure". Capital now says not merely what purchases you should make, but what purchases you must make. This adds to the power of the bourgeois elite by making marketing unnecessary and replacing it with the threat of legal sanction.
Jack Johnson
Do you have any source on this?
Michael Jackson
Illegal boycotts are this.
Aaron Clark
No, they are not this.
Gabriel Jenkins
Yes they are.
Xavier Thompson
kthxbb
Jack King
RACE WAR NOW You sure you are posting on right board? Pun intended.
So?
No, it's not. The answer was given in 19th century.
You are using words you do not understand.
Made to do what? Withdraw from commodity production? After Revolution and introduction of Planned Economy.
Isaac Powell
You can just say you disagree. It takes fewer words.
