How does a libertarian address civil rights issues? Would there be laws prohibiting discrimination by businesses?
In a libertarian society, businesses could refuse service to individuals for any reason. However, they would be punished by losing the profit that they otherwise would have made. This feedback is so powerful, that even in the post-Civil War South, segregation could only be maintained when governments made integration (serving blacks and whites in the same establishment) a crime. If integration could only be stopped by outlawing it in the South, surely today it would take place readily without government mandates. If some individuals, black or white, wished to maintain some separateness, why should we force them together? In a libertarian society, laws enforcing segregation could never have been passed in the first place. Slavery would never have been legal. In short, if the U.S. had been a totally libertarian society, Africans would never have been enslaved and given second-class status. Government creates conditions that foster racial prejudice, then creates backlash and further preje
