A history professor I had loved to tell the story of his cousin who owned a piggly-wiggly in a good-ol' boy Alabama town during the civil rights movement. His cousin refused to high a single black (do not know of any other minorities). Well, since the majority of his clientele was black, they refused to shop at his store. He eventually had to bend to the demands of the public. The same for the bus boycott that was sparked by Rosa Parks. There are plenty of stories of this sort, but those are just the two that I remember off the top of my head. This shows the free market fixing its own issues, but of course it was slow. Too slow considering our society and the stance of individual rights and justice. The biggest problem with the civil rights era was that the judicial system was failing at protecting the rights of minorities, which is one of its primary duties. But eventually the courts got it right, and the congress and states passed the applicable amendments giving the courts more fodder against rasism. I will disagree with your statement that with a free market, you get what you get. I would say that with a free market, you get what is offered. You can either negotiate for what you want, look for another company that is offering what you are after, or build your own company that does what you are looking to do (obvious market segment that is being ignored). Add regulations to that, and now you are tying the hands of any entrepreneur who is trying to provide a service to others. On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 17:06, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com<mbmiller%2Bl at gmail.com> > wrote: > On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, J.A. Simmons V wrote: > > > When you sign a contract with your ISP, what do you expect in return? I > > expect a "tube" to the internet. I do not want a content provider like > > cable TV. I want a connection to what ever destination I want, like a > > freeway. Some people would rather have a content provider, and that is > > fine. Without regulations, both business models can exist through the > > free market. > > Not necessarily. With a free market, you get what you get. There are no > guarantees. > > For example, people used to say that a free market would solve the problem > of racism because companies that refused to hire people just because they > were black would not compete as effectively as companies that based hiring > decisions on ability alone. It did not work that way. Companies avoided > hiring high-ability black workers for a number of reasons (e.g., most of > our customers are probably racists who won't want to work with a black > sales rep). It was necessary for the government to force companies to > eliminate racial bias in hiring. Government regulation was able to fix > what a free market could not fix. > > Yes, the regulation was a restriction on freedom -- the freedom of > companies to hire an all-white work force, or the freedom of white workers > not to associate with black people -- but the same regulation enhanced the > freedom and opportunity of the black workers. > > Mike > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100819/c7772350/attachment.htm