[Dan_77]

Quote by: ThoughtCriminal This is a repetition of a standard libertarian fallacy. Let's say I walk into a store and they eject me because I'm black. You would say that's fine, because it's private property and their property rights trump my human rights. You might then add that all I need to do is go to another store, as if there were an infinity of them. In reality, I could go store to store and get ejected by bigots at each one of them, until I'm forced to shop in another town. The "just go somewhere else" answer only works in principle. In practice, options are always limited and there are significant costs to exercising some of them. That why we have laws that forbid such societally destructive practices as commerical racism.

Except that you still have money to spend on a product you need, and presumably so do other members of the class being rejected by the store, which creates a demand for a store that would not reject them.

Furthermore, as Kame pointed out, such a store would also draw disfavor from everyone who does not agree with such a practice.

Finally, merchants still can and do reject people on whatever basis they wish. The difference is in so-called "public accommodations", which not all businesses fall under.

You might as well argue that the racist stores that ejected me had an interest in letting me spend my money, yet they still ejected me. I guess not all entities are perfectly rational, and in the absence of an unlimited number of alternatives, we are going to get a market failure.

Irrational entities generally fail in a market system since they do not respond properly to immutable laws of economics.

Communications services, such as delivery or telephones, operate as common carriers, compelling them to serve the public while shielding them from certain consequences of doing so. ISP's need to be given full common carrier status, instead of this Patriot Act patchwork that we have today.

Well, the rationale behind those requirements is one of monopoly or near-monopoly.

You mentioned the market working when there are "limitless" options... In a person's choice of where to post data on the internet, there ARE virtually limitless options, limitless for all practical purposes. The location of data becomes unimportant when the capability of search engines is taken into account. Search engines will locate the NAMBLA website, on their presumably censorship-free ISP, as easily as they locate the Christian Coalition.

The technology of the internet makes regulation nearly pointless and usually ineffective.