> 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.
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 Not enough people cared strongly enough to have these laws repealed in the state.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.
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.