Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Discrimination vs. Boycott in Commerce

Commerce is the collective endeavor at collective survival; for that reason, it an important question whether people should be free to not do commerce with people they don’t want to.

If you were on a desert island with 5 or so other survivors of the plane crash that stranded you there, and one of those people was an anti-gay bigot or anti-black racist/white supremacist; is it ok to refuse to collaborate in survival with him?  It’s not actively harming him, it’s just choosing not to positively help someone because of their dislike and disrespect of you. 

If it is, but discrimination is not ok against anti-gay christians in commerce today, why this difference?  Could it be only for the same reason that regulation is now ok, there are no more commons left for natural appropriation?  
On the desert island then, would it make a difference how big or small the island was, so that independent survival is possible without collaboration with others?  

Isn’t this just a restatement of the condition of active harming the person vs just opting to not positively help him: if the island is too small such there is no unappropriated land left and so individual survival is not possible, then refusing to collaborate with him is actively harming him by excluding him from access to the means of survival?  But if there is enough island that there is enough resources for him to survive on his own, then not collaborating with him is not actively harming him but just declining to actively help him.    

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