[awb]

In other words: Why is discrimination in the private sector bad?

Look at 1950s segregation. No one wants that again. It creates an imbalance that’s unnecessary, unfair, unkind and hard to recover from for those being discriminated against.

If all necessary goods and services were provided by the State (a horrible idea BTW), then discrimination in the private sector would have a much smaller impact.

But in the US, the vast majority of jobs and goods are in the private sector. To legalize discrimination there is to essentially legalize discrimination for the majority of all daily interactions.

If you’re familiar with the power of compound interest, now imagine everything in your day is 1% harder than your non-discriminated peers. Doesn’t seem like that big a deal to go to the next diner to eat or the next web designer to get a website, but if the discrimination is rampant, that 1% friction compounds and becomes a major detriment over time, especially when compounded over generations.

[betwixthewires]

I get how it's bad for a society as a whole. The US for example has done really well engineering it out of the culture.

But is it morally right to tell individuals who they can and cannot associate with? I'm trying to get to the bottom of it fundamentally.

[sofixa]

Do you consider "selling to" to be a type of association? I don't, it's purely a business transaction, nobody is talking about going on vacation or to watch a game together.

[betwixthewires]

It's a degree of association, yes.

[awb]

> But is it morally right to tell individuals who they can and cannot associate with

No law is saying that you can or cannot associate with someone. You have always been free to pick your friends.

Anti-discrimination laws are saying you can’t refuse service based on someone’s status as a protected class (age > 65, gender, race, religion, etc.).

Laws basically are morals. So there’s no right or wrong, just costs and benefits.

We know the cost of allowing discrimination by looking at history: segregation, generational decline, hate crimes, genocide, etc. When you allow one group permission to treat another group differently based on something that group can’t change or shouldn’t have to change about themselves then bad things typically happen.

What’s the benefit of allowing discrimination? Not much I can think of.

Maybe try a little experiment: pick a letter of the alphabet like ‘A’. Now, go about your day, but pretend anyone who’s name contains an ‘A’ doesn’t want to do business with you. Ask everyone their name (because in this society pretend that names are super important to people’s belief systems) and you have to go to a different gas station, coffee shop, restaurant, get a different Uber, etc. if the person doing business with you has an A in their name. Pretend that these folks don’t want to do business with you and you don’t want to force them to.

These are good questions you’re asking, but the history I’m aware of is pretty clear cut about the dangers of discrimination.

Basically every law that’s ever been passed had to go through this scrutiny:

Should we allow murder? What’s the benefit of allowing murder? What’s the cost of telling people “who they can and cannot” murder?

We like to think of the US as a bastion of freedom, but you don’t have the freedom to buy drugs, pay for sex, stone adulterers, own a wife, conduct honor killings or discriminate, unlike some other countries where you are free to do those things.

The question of freedom is not how much you can do as an individual. The question is how much you can do as an individual before you start harming others. That will always be a moving target, but for discrimination I personally think it does more harm to the group than the benefit it could potentially give to an individual.