The Minimum Wage: Common Arguments

With Bernie Sanders so popular on my Facebook feed, the $15 dollar/hour minimum wage has been floating around a lot, and there are a lot of arguments that I think need to be addressed.

A good starting point to refute is the Salon article about the myths of the minimum wage. 

Myth 1: The minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. 

Liberal/Progressive Take: Everyone working a full time job should be able to support their family.

Okay, so I'm not going to argue intent of the policy. It may well have had the noble intention of having everyone living above the poverty line. Intentions, sadly, don't really matter. What matters is the effect of the policy and the means by which the policy is enacted. 

The problem with the argument about the minimum wage is the definition of 'living wage.' I have lived at $8/hour. It wasn't that bad. Adjusted for inflation, that is about $10/hour in today's dollars. In graduate school, my wage is officially ~$20/hour, but I only get paid for 20 hours/week. This would be full time at ~$10/hour. I have lived fairly well on that. One problem with having a single living wage across the nation is nonsensical. A living wage will be different in LA or NYC than it will be for some podunk town in the middle of nowhere. A national minimum wage would try to impose the living wage of NYC on a smaller town that has a lower cost of living.

Also, I often hear that a parent should be able to support their family on the minimum wage. This is a load of bull, with a very simple question. How big is the family? Should a single mom be able to support three kids? 4? 5? Where do we draw the line? What about a two parent household? Should they be able to support any number of kids on minimum wage? This notion of supporting a family is one that doesn't allow for the continuation of the logic. 

Myth 2: Minimum wage increase won't help anyone if other costs go up too

Liberal/Progressive Take: This won't make a difference in inflation because it will take people off other welfare programs, and will also stimulate the economy with additional spending.

This argument is basically that paying people more will take them off welfare, and allow them to get off food stamps and other welfare programs. The problem with this argument is that it is that it is also just as possible that because people on the welfare system know it so well that instead of earning more, they will try to cut back hours to stay on welfare because it is familiar. We can't be sure as to the response of people to this particular stimulus.

As to the argument about stimulating the economy, this is the standard broken window fallacy. The workers who are getting paid are spending more, sure. But you don't see the employees who were never hired and what they spend, or the other spending that the businesses would have made if they didn't have to pay workers the additional amount. 

Myth 3: An increase in the minimum wage is bad for employers

Liberal/Progressive Take: This will spur workers to be productive, and make business run more efficiently.

It will certainly spur employers to find ways to cut employees out. The way that wages actually rise is by individual workers becoming more productive on average. Raising the minimum wage will indeed force employers to do more with fewer workers, which goes against the progressive response to Myth 5. If we pay workers more, they have to work harder to compensate, or work with additional capital investments to make them more effective.

As to other arguments about paying more being a good business practice, that is something that individual business owners have to determine. For most industries, this is true, since according to the Salon piece, only 4.7% of workers are on minimum wage. This means that 95% of employers ALREADY KNOW that paying employees more is good for retention, and I think the reality is all employers know it, but they don't care about keeping the 4.7% that is on minimum wage, otherwise they would pay more. Duh.

Myth 4: $15 is a random number.

Liberal/Progressive Take: It is what is required to raise workers above the poverty line, while being feasible for businesses.

So that means if the poverty line changed, this number will change. So who defines the poverty line? Also, who determines what is feasible for businesses? The minimum wage would take the ability of employers to find what is feasible for them, if that number is below this proposed minimum. 

Myth 5: It will cost us jobs and raise unemployment

Liberal/Progressive Take: There is no evidence from analysis of 13 states, and these states had faster job growth.

This directly contradicts point 3. If workers become more productive, that means that you can do the same amount of work with fewer workers. Also, this is a causation is not equal to correlation. Just because these states had faster growth and increased the minimum wage, doesn't mean that they are directly related. These states may have grown even faster if the minimum wage was not raised. I would have to see a more careful analysis rather than the aggregation at the state level, and other confounding factors. 

Myth 6: Only teenagers and uneducated people work for the minimum wage.

Liberal/Progressive Take: 4.7% of the working population is at or below minimum wage, and 88% of those are above the age of 20, and 43% have attended college.

What kind of college education? There are many fields in the social sciences and humanities that don't really have economic value to most companies. Do they have value? Sure, but not to companies trying to serve consumers. So college education can be (though isn't always) irrelevant. Should I care about your dance major? Depends. Am I a dance company?

The 88% of people on minimum wage who are over the age of 20 don't have a whole lot of other opportunities. If they did, they would be working for more than minimum wage. But that is irrelevant. What is relevant is if we are then advocating for age discrimination? Should someone be entitled to higher pay just because they are older? I would say no. Why should it be okay to employ a highschooler at minimum wage, but not a 21 year old, or a 30 year old? To use another social justice bugbear, that would be unequal pay for equal work, and that is not right. So why are these 20 year old unable to do more complex jobs that pay better? Have they not learned on the job? Why should they be entitled to more just because they are older?

Myth 7: Seattle already has a minimum wage of $15 and it's terrible

Liberal/Progressive Take: Totally not terrible, and the $15 minimum hasn't been reached yet

This is hard to argue about since it is true, they haven't gotten the wage to $15/hour yet, because of a slow roll out. So we can't judge the effects. Also, the big companies with large profits that they cite, Starbucks and Howard Schultz, are not the companies that would be most affected. Those are companies that are operating marginally, and just scraping by. That what is meant by the marginal change. It is not going to change for companies that are doing well, but a company that is doing barely okay will not make it. 

Secession and the Consent of the Governed

Discussion of secession in the United States is usually tainted by the connection with the term to the Civil War and slavery. This can be quite frustrating, as questions of secession are fundamental to the legitimacy of a government, and the topic can get derailed into talk about the evils of slavery, and how to solve them without war.

I think of the question of secession as being linked with the idea of the consent of the governed. How are they connected? The consent of the governed is the idea that a legitimate government is only legitimate if it has the consent of the people over which the it is ruling. This is fairly well accepted, and is a phrase used in both the Declaration of Independence, and a similar idea is expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." Secession is what happens when a substantial subset of people withdraw their consent to be governed by a particular government, and separate from it.

For the governed people to meaningfully give consent, it must be possible for that consent to be withdrawn. If consent cannot be withdrawn, then a government that turns tyrannical is just as legitimate and consensual as a democratically elected government. So what should happen when a group ceases to consent to the current government? Under democratic ideals, they would vote in a new set of rulers to whom they consent. Now suppose that there is a significant geographic split, and the people in one region want to be ruled one way, and people in another region want to be ruled another way? Should the minority in that case be ruled by the majority from the other region? Or can the minority region autonomously withdraw consent to be ruled by the other region?

I think that the answer is fairly straightforward in the abstract. The people in the minority of the whole country should be allowed to split off from the nation, and choose their own form of government that has the consent of the people who live there, even though that was the minority of the people in the original nation as a whole. Furthermore, the independence of the minority region should not be dependent on the opinions of the majority region. If the minority region wishes independence, then any action by the majority region to stop the secession is seeking to deny the will of the people in that region. It could be viewed as a form of Imperialism.

So what happens if we continue this process? If there is another significant minority in the original minority (now majority) of this new country? Well, I think the same logic applies, and that region should be allowed to break off from the new country to form another country which has the consent of the governed.

Another side to think about consent of the governed is this: What should happen when an individual withdraws consent to be governed by the current regime? They could certainly be the majority of the people that occupy their property (assuming a land owner), so should they be able to withdraw consent unilaterally?  If not, then how large a group do you need to revoke the consent? A city? A town? A county? A state? At what level do we draw the line?

I personally think that an individual can withdraw their consent to be governed, and they should be free to do so. The only valid retaliation would not be for the withdrawal of consent, but for aggressive action on the part of the individual. A state, company, or coalition certainly has the right to use the powers of defense delegated to them by the consenting members of that state, company, or coalition.

The Marxist concept of 'Property'

Something that I hear Communists say is that they want you abolish private property. This is found in the Communist Manifesto, and I've seen a few Facebook communists claim this. I have no particular intellectual problem with this, until I hear the secondary claim: That they don't want to take away your home or your belongings. I typically hear it as the want to abolish private property for the things that you 'don't need.' A good example would be a second home, or something like that.

The problem with this is that it is inconsistent, and neglects the reason for 'ownership' of even a small amount of property. Suppose we limit each individual to what they need, as the Communist ideal would go: "To each according to his need." What is it an individual needs? Food, water, housing. In this day and age, we consider housing to include electricity, sanitation, and temperature control (heating and A/C). Okay, so if we consider that each person will control their own food, water, housing (own it). How do we get the builder to make that second house beyond his own? He won't own it, since private property doesn't exist, and he already controls his own home.

Suppose we have a small community, with one farmer, and one builder  (and we are supposing that the single farmer can feed everyone. I'll deal with the other case in a bit). The builder builds two houses, and one goes to the farmer. Is the builder then free forever to live off of the farmer? What if the builder is no good at farming, or is incapable of it? Is the farmer then forced to work to feed the builder for the rest of the builder's life? Suppose some disaster strikes, and the farmer is injured, and can only work enough to feed himself. Does he still have to provide food for the builder?

Now, that construction was a little naive, and the builder could farm, and the farmer could build. But in that case, why is one entitled to the labor of the other? If the builder builds a second home, why is the farmer entitled to it for no labor? The builder spent his labor to build it, surely he should be compensated for his work somehow. Otherwise, it would be slavery. Similarly, if the builder can't farm, how is he entitled to the work of the farmer? They can certainly trade between the two of them, but that presupposes that there is ownership of the goods being traded. The extra house being traded for food requires that the extra house is owned, as is the food.

Let us also look at the case where the farmer cannot feed both himself and the builder with his labor. If he doesn't enlist the builder's help, one of them will starve. Is the builder the one who gets the food? Well, not if you own the labor and materials that you need. In that case, the farmer gets to keep the food, because he needs it, and only the excess is given away. This puts the builder in a predicament. Why should he build a house for a farmer who will not feed him? In reality, the builder should build his house and then take up farming, but leaving that aside, why should he build that second house for the farmer? He gets no benefit, and starves to death, at which point the farmer can take his stuff (unless the farmer died of exposure).

The problem with abolishing private property is that there is no incentive to reach beyond subsistence. There is no reason to build that second home, since you won't use it. There is no reason to farm the extra food. Any extra labor beyond subsistence has its benefits denied to the individual, and becomes a form of slavery.

The Dangers of Nationalism

Something that I see a lot implicitly in the media and the culture is the value placed in the nation as an entity. It is something that I think goes unquestioned, more than most. We often take pride in our nation (though sometimes to satirical extremes, as in 'America, Fuck Yeah!'), but I think that this pride and assumption of the nation state can be dangerous to the health of the citizens.

Over the summer, Russia annexed part of Ukraine, and a big fuss was made about it, talking about how a war might break out over it. Then, there were parts of Ukraine that started fighting to leave and join Russia, though whether that is legitimately Ukrainians wanting to leave, or Russians who are seizing the area, I don't really know or care, and it doesn't matter. The problem is that people are framing the question wrong.

We generally assume that a government is made legitimate by the consent of the governed. Let us assume this to be true. This is a principle that can also be embodied by the idea of the self determination of peoples. Okay, so lets suppose that all people within their national borders are consenting to be governed by that nation, more or less. Clearly in this case, Russia has no claim to invade or annex the people in Crimea, as they have consented to be governed by Ukraine, and not Russia. But suppose those people don't care? They would consent to be governed by Russia or Ukraine? If they are indifferent to who is sovereign, why should the outside world care?

Now let us suppose that they are not indifferent, and would rather be Russian than Ukrainian. In this case, does Ukraine have any right to claim sovereignty over that area after Russia takes it? Sure, Ukraine had it before, but if the people in that region want to be Russian, not Ukrainian, then by the self determination and consent of the governed, they should be allowed to stay Russian. Similarly, if another portion of Ukraine's population wishes to leave Ukraine, what claim does Ukraine have to keep them in Ukraine? If the people derided as 'separatists' withdraw the consent to be governed, then isn't government action against them illegitimate?

Even assuming the legitimacy of all nations, I think these ideas of self determination of peoples and consent of the governed call into question the 'legitimacy' of any civil war, and any nation that engages in such a war. When any portion of a population of a nation withdraws its consent to be governed, waging war against them to keep them in the nation is wrong, by these principles. What ends up as the problem of nationalism is when the people in the rest of the nation support this kind of military action for arguments for national health or power. When we encourage pride in the nation over the consent of the governed, then we lay the ground work for needless civil war.

Response to Jon Stewart's Questions for Libertarians

Because it's there. Although it is a few years old now, I think it is a decent starting point for addressing my views to some common misconceptions of Libertarianism. A lot of these topics require a more in depth response than I am willing to do in a single shot, but I've tried to give the basic idea and outline of the arguments here. The questions posed by Jon Stewart are in blue. 

1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?
In some sense, yes. Government, or rather the people acting as agents of the government, are allowed to initiate force or aggression, or threaten with force or aggression, in order to get the desired results. Taxes are taken from businesses, and if they refuse to pay, they are shut down. Do people pay taxes from the goodness in the bottom of their hearts? Or do they pay because of the negative consequences if they don't? Government is the only institution that we allow to do this. The worst that a company can legally do is deny you access to the services that they provide, which you are not entitled to anyway.

2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.
True, but for a government to be involved means that other peoples freedoms are being taken away. I say that government road would be one of the later parts of government that I would phase out. As it is now, roads are supposed to be paid for by gas taxes, which are at least somewhat related to usage. The more you drive, the more you have to pay for the roads. 

The problem with this is that the land for the government roads has to come from somewhere. This means that the government takes land from private owners, and gives them what the bureaucrats deem to be the fair value for the land through the power of eminent domain. This means that the bureaucrats are infringing on some peoples freedom with the claim that it will enhance the freedom of everyone else. So should the freedom of a minority be infringed upon to enable the freedom of the majority? And that is assuming that the power is not abused, as I think it was in the Kelo v City of New London case, where land was taken from one group of private citizens to give to a different group of private citizens.

Roads, infrastructure, and a social safety net may all enhance the freedom of the people receiving the benefits, but not for those who have to pay for them involuntarily. I'm all in favor of them, if they are paid for by willing donors and workers.

3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?
Do we need to do anything? They invested their time and money unproductively, and could not deliver a product that people wanted. Let them do something else, and let the resources they used be used for something more productive. 

4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.
We live in a society, but we are not a collective, and it is important to recognize that society is not the same as government. The government is a part of society, but the society is not the government. When someone says that  'we as a society should...' they usually mean that there should be a government program for it. I think that they are going a bit too far. I usually agree with the 'society should,' but when government is involved, the phrase should really read 'I think my neighbors' money should...' which is a specific way that they think the society should do it.  

Each person's success is predicated on the hard work of people who exchange it with them for other products or services. You don't get there on your own, but you don't get it from taking stuff from other people either. You get there by exchanging with other people. The people that are being 'hung out to dry' are the ones that are not participating in the exchange. If they have nothing to bring to the table, then why should we be forced to support them? 

And since when do Libertarians not believe in evolution? I'll grant you that there are some that don't, but evolution is not really that important when talking about liberty. In fact, it doesn't matter economically at all. Someone else's belief or disbelief in evolution does not impinge on my freedom unless they try to force it on me.

5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.
No, in a representative democracy, we choose some of our government officials through elections. We are not the government. If you think we are, try to fire the police officer that tries to give you a ticket. The electorate can kick out an elected official, if they can agree on a different candidate, but it won't necessarily remove the non-elected government employees that we find incompetent. The vast majority of government workers are not elected, and most are not replaced with each new elected official. 

Also, if you think of the government as the group of people that the society has allowed to initiate force, we can clearly see that we are not the government. We are not allowed to do what the government is allowed to do unless we are a part of it. Just look at the gun debate. Everyone in the mainstream says that the military is allowed to have automatic weapons, tanks, missile launchers, and other heavy weapons, while those should be banned from use by civilians. If we are the government, then why are we not allowed to have all the same toys as the government?

6. Is government inherently evil?
Depends on how you want to define evil, and that is a much deeper philosophical debate than I am willing to get in to right now, and one that I don't think anyone has resolved. But from a libertarian anarchist perspective, yes.

7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.
Perhaps, but there is a distinction in how that organization takes place. If you form an army, is it voluntary? Are the soldiers paid? If so, who pays them, and is that voluntary? Part of the reason for a militia is to have a volunteer defense force in the case of a foreign invasion. There is no formal military required. If weapons are widespread and available to the population, then any occupying force will have to face an armed populace much more capable of inflicting damage on them than the Iraqis were against the US military.

 In the case of building a wall or levy, there is nothing stopping local organizations from doing these things. These things certainly don't require federal involvement, and the federal government does not necessarily know the problems that face the local community, or the most effective response to those problems. 

8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.
This is an important distinction between those who identify as anarchists and those who identify only as Libertarian. The most common Libertarian statement of value is the Non-Aggression Principle. Most Libertarians will hold that violating this is evil or wrong. The non-anachists will tend to take a 'necessary evil' stance of government, and say that government should be minimized in order to minimize the use of aggression, but that removing it altogether would increase the aggression, as everyone would try to use it. 

This logic can only apply to the anarchist libertarian position though, since it is an absolute prohibition on aggression. Any army must be voluntary, and supported by voluntary donation. Using this argument is dangerous though. If you are willing to impinge on the freedom of some people for the greater freedom of others (eminent domain to build roads, taxation to build infrastructure), what is that but slavery? A lesser form of slavery, sure, but now we're just negotiating. 

9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.
Did not work in what sense? We got through the Revolutionary War with just the Articles of Confederation. Also, this is assuming that the nation of the United States is a Good Thing, and that if we were left as 13 independent states, it would have been a Bad Thing. History would have been very different if the Constitution was not ratified, and we had split into 13 separate nation. Perhaps the Civil War would not have happened. Perhaps slavery would have been undermined by the lack of authority of a Federal Government. Perhaps we would have been better off if we had not unified under the Constitution. 

10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.
No, I give money to the IRS because if I don't, they might make my life very unpleasant. Hell, even when I do give money to the IRS, it is unpleasant having to worry about all of the monetary transactions for the last year. 

11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.
Because a company is accountable to me. My representative is accountable to me, and a bunch of other people who can overrule my opinion. The worst that a company can do is deny me access to their service and labor because I don't pay them. The worst that a representative can do is pass a law that makes something I do punishable by jail time. 

12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.
The problems with the healthcare system in its current form started during World War II, with price and salary controls. Employers got around this by offering more benefits, such as healthcare. This alone would have distorted the market with the third-payer problem, but it got worse. After the war ended, instead of simply raising the salary and wage caps, and allowing individuals to buy their own insurance, the government gave tax incentives for medical benefits paid by employers. This meant that it was cheaper for employers to pay for health care than for individuals. 

To use an analogy, it is like you and your employer are going to a restaurant. In the old system, before WWII, you would pay for your part of the bill with your salary. During WWII, your salary was capped, so instead of raising your wages, the company would offer to pay for some of your food. At this point, you are willing to spend more on the food than if you paid yourself, since if you don't buy the food, you don't get the left over money. So spending at the restaurant would increase. After the war, the employer is still paying for you food, but has lobbied the government to give tax breaks for the money spent at the restaurant. This means that the actual cost of the food is lower than the nominal price, as they can get some of the money back from taxes. So the employers end up willing to pay more. So the price of the food increases to match this demand. 

So who ends up paying for this? The uninsured, the self-insured, and the taxpayer. Eventually the healthcare system got to the point that the person making the cost-benefit analysis was the recipient of the benefits, but not the bearer of the costs, to the point that the costs are greatly inflated. Should it be a surprise that someone without the benefits of the employment system would be priced out of the market? 

And that is just on the insurance side. Another part of the problem is competition among different healthcare providers. In order to build new medical facilities, often government licensing is involved. This might not be a problem, but if the politicians are connected with the established medical community, then in can easily become a case of crony capitalism, which hurts patients and taxpayers. 

With regards to school choice, yes some people have school choice, but for many people it is determined either by where they live, or if they have enough money to go outside the system. They pay for it either way. The price of housing in good school districts is higher than those in bad districts, so buying a comparable house in a good district will be significantly more expensive. Another option is to pay for a private school, which costs money more directly. In both cases, you are in a sense paying twice, once in taxes, and once directly to the school or for the house.

13. Would you go back to 1890?
No, but I don't think that every single change since 1890 has been a Good Thing. Some of the changes have been good, like the technological advances which gave us the computer, or the internet. Some of the social changes were good, like the declines in racism and sexism. Others have been bad, like the rise of socialism and fascism, which led to some of the greatest armed conflicts in history. I think the two worst ones that come to mind for me are the Prohibitions, of alcohol with the Eighteenth Amendment, and of the War on Drugs starting in the '70s (though there is some legislation on hemp and narcotics in the '30s). We learned from Prohibition on alcohol that it doesn't actually work, but decided to make the same mistake and have the government ban other drugs. 

14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?
I don't know that it would be like if we didn't have government. Is our society ready for anarchy? I don't think so. I think that it might take a giant cultural shift for that to happen. As for the specifics, it could be that hovercrafts are the more efficient form of travel if we hadn't already invested in road infrastructure. Or maybe everyone would own an off-road car. We don't know the solutions to all of the problems. No one does. To think that even experts know the most efficient mode of transportation. For example, many people keep pushing for mass transit, but the only mass transit that has made money has been privately run. 

15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.
I'm pretty sure those were not really unregulated markets. They may have been slightly deregulated, but not unregulated. Regulations are a messy subject because they distort the market landscape, and increase the cost of doing business. This means that the businesses that are just getting by are going to leave the market. Regulations can also be used as a legal excuse, allowing the company to deny wrong doing because they followed the regulations. The regulations also don't eliminate actual damaging behavior, such as fraud, but rather increase the cost of that behavior.

Also, to talk about people being 'victimized' by a system, the best way to make sure that they can't fight back against it is to regulate it. This raises the barrier to entry artificially, making it harder to find competitors that actually provide the services that the people want. Often times, the reasons for the system being screwed up in the first place is because of a government intervention, as with the case of healthcare.

16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?
Because they thought that unionizing was the best way to defend their interests. I have nothing against voluntary unions. I have issues with unions that use violence and intimidation against non-union workers to protect the interests of the union workers. I have issues with employers being denied the freedom to fire the workers that aren't working. 

17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.
Just as I am against unions using violence, I am also against companies using violence or threatening violence. You are not entitled to a job though, so if the company owner finds someone else who is willing to do the job you were doing, you don't have right to get your job back. Don't be surprised if you stop working to go on strike, and end up getting fired. 

18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.
The free market cannot enforce segregation without the society as a whole accepting and enforcing segregation. An unlimited democratic government can legally enforce segregation if a simple majority thinks that segregation is acceptable. In the South, segregation was enforced by government by Jim Crow laws, not by the free market. That is an issue with the democratic process, and lack of limits on government interference, not the free market. 


19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.
Even if I grant that government may be necessary, how do we hold it accountable, when politicians create rules to prevent third parties, and shape districts to ensure incumbency? What about the bureaucrats who are not elected, but appointed? What about the agencies under them? How do we hold them accountable? More government agencies?