I was psyched when you went down this line of reasoning, and I really think it’s a critical point to be made here, and, perhaps only coincidentally, the only point that hasn’t been rebutted. Libertarian philosophies seem to be based on an idea that protection of the ownership of property is the only justifiable kind of government enforcement. However, this idea is either treating property as some kind of infinite resource, where everyone can have as large a parcel as they desire, or that everyone is “spawned” onto a parcel of land that was created for them, and by the rules of the “game” it is naturally theirs to do with what they please. This thinking is at distinct odds with reality. Clearly @DerekBalling even acknowledges that land is a limited resource, having decried the lack of available lands wherein to establish the libertarian utopia (minecraft?)
This totally ignores the idea that ownership of property takes that property away from someone else, essentially robbing them of the opportunity to use it in the way that they see fit. The only way to gain ownership of land was at one point to literally rob people of it, quite bloodily, or to occupy it “F1RST!!11!!” thereby preemptively robbing future people of their opportunity to use it. There is hardly an acre of soil on the earth that didn’t become “property” through violence, then defended through threat of violence, then exchanged with other parties, throughout history, with the threat of violence hover over all the proceedings, protecting the “rights” of the “owners” to pass ownership.
There is nothing natural about ownership of farm land, space downtown where people like to shop, or that sweet strip mall right off of route 91. It is no more heineous for there to be laws about civil rights of people than there is about enforcing property rights. So, the law, roughly speaking, strikes a balance between giving individuals the rights within their sphere to do what they need to do to be happy and successful. The balance often depends on the level of public-ness of the activity. sitting at home, highly private activity, in a very private sphere, not much justifiable intervention. We can all live roughly the way we want. But business space in the public market is limited, and regulation, whether wild west, or state-sponsored, is going to appear in some form or another, and start making and enforcing “law”. In this case, the state is making a rule and saying “You must serve homosexuals” they’re saying “Either serve everyone, or get the hell out of the way, so someone else can make better use of that limited public space, trolley.”
I return to my previous point as well. Law, and government are just people, organized, and making decisions and enforcing them. It happens everywhere, you can only shape it. Without anti-discrimination laws, you’re pretty much asking for people to fight it out in whatever strange posses tend to form around the shifting sands of common cause. And when all the posse’s form based on their relative numbers, you can guess (or read about) how minority populations tend to fare. Why do you (@DerekBalling) insist that disorganized groups of people vaguely vote on clear moral questions, rather than the (slow, plodding, overly careful) process of collective action we call civil rights law?
