Ordinary World for 1/3

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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9 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Ho1: I am very much a fan of the communal lawn my home in WA shares. I don’t have to care for it, and all the neighborhood kids play in it together.Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    Hi5: Lacks a link, although I assume that the picture at the top is from this.Report

  3. CJColucci says:

    Hi1–another in a long line of “free markets won’t tolerate discrimination because it leaves money on the table and, therefore, in the long run, they will do the job” that falters out of the gate because the driving force was the Rural Free Delivery Act, a damn gummint program.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

      RFD wasn’t a government program meant to combat segregation, etc. It was just a program to make it easier to get mail to farmers who couldn’t get to town regularly for mail pickup.

      The fact that Sears could deliver to black families without having a white person interrupting the commerce is what created the condition of “leaving money on the table”.

      The government could have also done something like charging anyone who interfered with mail delivery to black families with a felony, but that would have been a lot more work that just taking those people out of the loop.Report

      • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        True, it wasn’t an anti-discrimination law, but it was a government program, which just happened to make it possible to sell to anyone who had money without bigoted customer pushback. . So which of these other government programs would propertarians, er, libertarians, have endorsed?Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

          Depends on how anti-government a person is. For me, RFD was a good extension of the postal system that happened to be unexpectedly useful to both a private capitalist venture and toward allowing a minority to circumvent racist laws* and attitudes.

          *It is important to remember that the ‘money on the table’ idea works best when it’s only working against personal, or social bigotry**. When the bigotry is enshrined in law in the way Jim Crow was, then it’s going to be considerably tougher for profit seeking to overcome bigotry. And since ‘tougher’ translates to ‘much longer time horizons’, there is an argument for government intervention to undo the legal support.

          That said, Sears still deserves a nod for resisting the social pressures, and for utilizing a legal workaround to bypass the legal issues.

          **This is why I can’t be too worked up over bakers and florists and photographers not wanting to work gay weddings. Even in the most remote locations of the country, you will likely find someone willing to take on that refused customer.Report

          • North in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            **This is why I can’t be too worked up over bakers and florists and photographers not wanting to work gay weddings. Even in the most remote locations of the country, you will likely find someone willing to take on that refused customer.

            Me neither, and the majority of LGBT folk and their allies probably feel the same. But since socialcons generally seek to define artistic and religious objections to various things to encompass basically anything that any socialcon anywhere might choose to find employment in from county clerk to pharmacist to wedding singer; conflict is pretty unavoidable on the subject.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to CJColucci says:

      Concurred. I’d also point out that most other businesses did not follow suit until the government forced desegregation. They seemed to have survived just fine despite Sears. Sears provided relief for some but not nearly the majority of African-American households. The article is cheerleading without evidence.Report

  4. Kolohe says:

    Hi2- I remember seeing this space race article on the twiiters around when it came out. I remain deeply skeptical of the narrative. Especially that we gave so much sway to a legal precedent *and* we let the Soviets set that precendent.Report