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Friedman was in no way a racist. He was just ok with racism as expressed by a free and unfettered (fettered?) market. If a market expresses racism it can only be for the good.

>>>Throughout the book he makes the argument that if you remove the legal frameworks that enforced segregation, that people would over time choose to integrate as they found mutual advantage in doing so. Reasonable people can disagree with this assessment.

Not to weigh in on the quote, but as to this opinion statistics might disagree, and is kinda the basis for positive discrimination: https://ncase.me/polygons/

This is a rather thin and 1 dimensional take on economic preferences, particularly something as complicate as housing. What we actually know from history is that poorer neighborhoods integrated rather freely at the turn of the last centruy because they were cheap and that segregating them required active and ongoing government intervention at all levels of government.

> This quote is taken totally out of context from the chapter of the book it's from and is clipped to make it appear in the worst light.

It's also important to understand that this is a huge amount of what Zitron does. He is a rage-baiter who does not engage in argument in good faith.

I haven't read much Friedman but his logic behind

> regulating negative harms is a short-sighted and ineffective means of achieving the policy aim of protecting minorities

still makes no goddamn sense. I take back the racism accusation until I've read more of his work but

> people would over time choose to integrate as they found mutual advantage

is still some dumb shit. If letting minorities shop or work in your store drives away the majority there's no "mutual advantage". There never will be. You're counting on, or rather praying, for hearts and minds at large to change in order to get voluntary integration. That could take generations, or it may never happen.

If people can't be nice on their own, maybe they need the stick (government regulation) until they learn.

He makes the argument that if your freedom depends on the largess of the majority then it is loosely held and precarious.

> is some dumb shit. If letting minorities shop or work in your store drives away the majority there's no "mutual advantage"

That's not the argument he's making. He argues that it is always more expensive to be a racist, and that absent the legal framework of segregation then people will by financial necessity begin to do business across the color line which will change their preferences over time. He points out that historically there was a time when people would refuse to do business with Quakers, but that over time the free market won out and that discrimination or affect of taste no longer exists.

Again, I think you can reasonably disagree but it isn't obviously stupid to observed that racism incurs an extra cost and markets reward you for not being irrational in that way.

> people will by financial necessity begin to do business across the color line

If the majority remains anti-integration then people will, by financial necessity, be forced to keep businesses segregated. A hotel owner who wants to let black guests stay will lose most of their white clientele. It's basic logic. Friedman says so himself in his example of the shop owner who would like to hire black clerks.

> He argues that it is always more expensive to be a racist

But then in the passage I originally quoted he says it also harms the business owner to not be a racist. Isn't that contradictory?

In the Quaker thing, did the free market win out? Or did communities become larger and more anonymous, and fashions changed so that telling Quakers and non-Quakers apart merely by appearance became impossible? That can't happen with minorities of a different skin color.

He's arguing that an integrated hotel absent government force will be cheaper to stay in than the non-integrated one and price conscious potential guests will choose it.

> But then in the passage I originally quoted he says it also harms the business owner to not be a racist. Isn't that contradictory?

It isn't contradictory if you read the whole chapter, its a single thought experiment and not his whole argument.

> In the Quaker thing, did the free market win out? Or did communities become larger and more anonymous, and fashions changed that telling Quakers and non-Quakers apart by appearance became impossible? That can't happen with minorities of a different skin color.

He's arguing that all of these prejudices are simply irrational preferences and will necessarily change over time. In fact today you find that preference have indeed largely changed in society.

> price conscious potential guests will choose

And we all know that everyone chooses the cheapest option for everything to the exclusion of all other factors.

He also ignores that prices for minority consumers go up because there are fewer businesses that cater to them.

> He's arguing that all of these prejudices are simply irrational preferences and will necessarily change over time

And there honestly isn't much evidence for this.

> In fact today you find that preference have indeed largely changed in society.

I'm arguing that preferences have changed because people were forced to interact across race barriers and found that, actually, it was fine. Absent that forcing factor, there's zero guarantee that anything would have changed.

He also ignores the harms done to the minority as a result of discrimination. All this talk about "freedom" - what about the freedoms of the minority?

> He also ignores that prices for minority consumers go up because there are fewer businesses that cater to them.

That's not what was observed in real life. There were form many decades black owned businesses serving clients at competitive price points and integrated businesses where allowed by law serving customers at price points lower than segregated businesses. Integrated Jazz clubs in the 50s served cheap drinks and had good music so white kids patronized them in droves. These interactions changed their preferences.

> And there honestly isn't much evidence for this.

Do you really believe that white Americans only interact economically with black Americans because the law forces them to? Because it looks to me like people's preferences changed. No one forced white kids in the suburbs to buy NWA albums, they were just good albums and no one stopped them.

> He also ignores the harms done to the minority as a result of discrimination. All this talk about "freedom" - what about the freedoms of the minority?

He literally does address this in the chapter. It isn't long, just go read it. You've said yourself that you haven't read much Friedman, you may find yourself surprised.

> Do you really believe that white Americans only interact economically with black Americans because the law forces them to?

In 2025? Of course not. In 1965, in the American South, yes. Where "interact economically" is defined as selling or renting houses to, educating, employing, or offering services at all businesses to black Americans on an equal basis.

And I believe the law greatly accelerated this change.

Plenty of people happily did business with black Americans in 1965 in the American South. Segregation was enforced by law by the state. Regular people often had a broad range of views. My own grandfather regularly did business with black neighbors in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s as did most members of his farming community.

> Segregation was enforced by law by the state

Which also means there was enough broad popular support to pass such abhorrent laws. They didn't come out of nowhere. They weren't imposed by force by an outsider. It's great that your grandfather was not bigoted. The problem is not enough people were. Not enough people cared strongly enough to have these laws repealed in the state.

> Which also means there was enough broad popular support to pass such abhorrent laws.

Not necessarily. Plenty of bad laws stay in force because people are ambivalent or politicians are cowards. The most radical people on a given issue are often effective at driving policy, we see this today all of the time.

My point is that lots of people weren't personally invested in segregation, but the state and police literally imposed it.

Friedman is arguing against that sort of government heavy-handedness. He makes the comparison of freedom of contract to freedom of speech, where the limits define the right. I'm not trying to say that things would have worked out perfectly if his ideas had carried the day, we obviously can't know that. What I'm saying is that he makes a compelling argument about freedom and that doesn't make him a racist or obviously wrong out of hand. He correctly points out that giving the federal government this kind of power doesn't have a good limiting principle and creates opportunities for abuse. He was making this argument when Nixon was establishing wage and price controls, so its important to understand the context.

Its not as though he was celebrating a right to discriminate, which the author of the article seems to believe.

>He argues that it is always more expensive to be a racist

Of course this rather misses a lot of the effects that cause racism to stay in place like redlining and actual acts of violence.

>"the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

Can also be supplanted by

>Ignorant racists can hang around longer than your lifespan.

Or are we going to forget shit like the Tulsa race massacre where black and integrated businesses were burned to the ground? There is quite an advantage to be segregated if the other option is having your shit burned. Things like integration laws are just one piece in a legal framework to ensure criminal acts don't occur.

Well redlining was government policy, and he actually addresses the perverse effects of government policy that enforce discrimination in the chapter.

He also specifically addresses violence as positive harm that the government has a duty to prevent.

I'd really encourage you to spend the 15 minutes to track down this chapter of Friedman's book and read it because it addresses most of what you're talking about.

This sounds like you are in favor of the government regulating that people must shop in a certain store in order to achieve some arbitrary color integration number.

I don't know why it sounds like that to you. It sounds like that's what you want to hear because then it's an easy strawman to tear down.

Well I suggest writing with more clarity in the future then. Perhaps Copilot can assist you.

Many responded to my comment and no one else had your interpretation. I suggest reading better. I didn't say anything about the government telling people where to shop.

> If people can't be nice on their own, maybe they need the stick (government regulation) until they learn.

Careful now. Governments change, and along with it priorities for enformcement.

This is a lazy argument. You can say that about any law or any government. We should just stop banning anything bad because the government could accuse you of doing it and throw you in jail.

This isn’t a lazy argument at all. It’s based off of millennia of humans questioning the proper role of government and their failure modes. The US in specific took a lot of inspiration from people such as Polybius and John Locke.

It’s not that there is no proper role for government, it’s that some paths end up being a Faustian bargain.

> it’s that some paths end up being a Faustian bargain

If enforcing equality of treatment and access in housing, employment, and education is one of those paths, then the government has gone to a very bad place. And literally everything has turned to shit.

Yeah? That's what I would want. If I was needlessly harming others by being sexist, racist, or just generally hateful I'd want the government to limit that harm. That's also why I advocate for reasonable punishments that aim to rehabilitate, because I don't believe the people that commit those crimes are really all that different from me.