On the other hand, governments in Canada—and even private employers, if
we are to believe some jurists—are forced to practice real discrimination
towards women and other groups when it comes to wages and hiring. At all
government levels, a vast bureaucratic apparatus is in place to monitor
the application of these rules.
These two examples are more proof that in order to comply with current
trends in values and beliefs, the state is ready to negate freedom of opinion,
freedom of association, and the principle of equality before the law, all
this presumably so that past wrongs will finally be righted. And in looking
at the conclusions of a report by a federal committee on human rights presided
by Justice Gérard La Forest and presented to the Justice Minister
some time ago, we can expect that new « rights »
will soon be added that will further diminish these fundamental freedoms.
What should be emphasized however, is that these measures are harmful not
only for people in general, but also for the so-called « oppressed
» groups that they are designed to help.
Collective
rights
Collective rights are typically defined as the coercive use of state power
to bestow privileges on and transfer wealth to members of preferred groups.
This concept collides with the rights of individuals to freely and voluntarily
negotiate the terms of contracts among themselves. Collective rights imply
that individuals have no rights except as members of groups. This inconsistency
is clearly manifest in our Canadian Charter of Rights, where equality of
all before the law (except for property rights) is proclaimed with the
same force as a series of discriminatory preferential rights for some groups.
The notion of collective rights and its sister concept of social justice
as conventionally defined, are inconsistent with private property. In the
group rights framework, wealth produced by individuals becomes a collection
of goods that belong to the « community » and
which some wise people can redistribute in accordance with their own prejudices
and after weighing current political forces. These are the sages who have
invented the idea of entitlement, of statutory rights, conferred on some
individuals on the sole basis of their membership in a group. These rights
have no foundation in just laws; only individuals can have rights, because
only individuals can be responsible and free.
Individual rights are to be distinguished from claims on some other person
or on the property of someone else, which in reality constitute a violation
of individual rights. No one has a right to the wealth of others without
their consent. Francophones have no right to French unilingualism or to
bilingualism from coast to coast, or to a Radio-Canada as richly funded
as the CBC, no more than the Canadian elite has a right to be offered Canadian
content on a full range of TV programs produced with taxpayers' money.
Residents of the Gaspe have no right to the wealth produced in Montreal,
women have no right to wage parity with men, and cultural communities have
no right to claim a special status. As morally wrong as prejudices can
be, homosexuals have no right to force private employers or associations
to welcome them. Even the poor have no right to the money of richer people,
which of course in no way precludes the latter from voluntarily sharing
their wealth with the former if they so wish.
State
discrimination
Equality of opportunity based on property rights is a by-product of the
market solution, even in the presence of prejudices on the part of the
few. It is the only foundation that sustains not only wealth creation,
but also justice. Privilege and unjust redistribution is the by-product
of government discriminatory rules. The tragic error propounded by contemporary
political morality is that social justice can be furthered by violating
property rights. Social justice thus defined can never serve as a foundation
for a stable society. By contrast with the rule of law and equal rights
and opportunity for all, it can be defined as anything that anybody says
it is at a given moment. It is an excuse that serves to justify the suppression
of the rule of law. It promotes antagonism and perpetuates underdevelopment.
Since these so-called rights are invariably created and conferred by people
who hold temporary authority, they are likely to change often and without
notice, just like the definition of social justice itself.
Indeed, historically, women and homosexuals have been the target of systematic
discrimination by state authorities, indirectly through the use of regulations
and directly at the hand of monopolistic public institutions. Women used
to be denied nominations to the Senate, forbidden access to professional
corporations and court benches, forbidden to work during the night or in
mines, or in jobs controlled by trade unions; married women could not contract
without their husband's consent. Homosexual acts were specifically outlawed
(there are still a dozen US states that have « sodomy
laws » on their books). Evidence shows that racial discrimination
in the United States has been more prevalent in the public sector than
in commercial enterprises, and that's not even counting so-called «
Jim Crow » regulations in the southern states which excluded
blacks from all sorts of activities. It is thus no surprise that politically-correct
reverse discrimination is now being practised mainly in the public sector.
The
market does not discriminate
Discriminatory laws engineered by the state are not only arbitrary diktats
that can change from one decade to another and create as many new victims
as they « protect »; they also preclude the working
of the only just and efficient solution, that which derives from the principles
of the free market, of competition and freedom to contract.
Minorities have nothing to fear from the effects of true justice based
on the logic of economic liberalism. Equality of opportunity for every
individual, irrespective of colour, religion, or sex, is precisely what
freedom to contract generates in the absence of government regulation.
The history of the job market confirms that minorities are not victims
of other people's prejudices, even of prejudices held by a majority. To
be able to transfer the burden of his prejudices to his victim, an employer
must indeed possess monopoly power, a power to coerce like the one reserved
to the state.
For an employer, discriminating means, in effect, forgoing the use of manpower
of higher productivity as the cost of indulging one's bigotry. The narrow-minded
employer thus penalizes himself. The key proposition is this: an employer
who would hire a heterosexual male candidate for $14 an hour instead of
a female or homosexual candidate of equal productivity for $12 an hour
would deny himself $2 of net profit for every hour of work. Such discriminatory
behaviour would be unstable and could not be sustained for long, because
competing employers free of such prejudices would seize the opportunity
and rush to hire the cheaper candidates and beat the other firm. In a competitive
environment, prejudices are irrelevant because they do not affect the victims.
Neither « gays » nor « straights »
need fear the bigotry of others, because those who entertain prejudices
bear the burden or enjoy the benefits of their particular values.
The market destroys employment prejudice. In the 1960s, Birmingham and
Atlanta fought to become the US south's business centre. In Birmingham,
politics ruled. In Atlanta, businesses promoted a telling slogan — «
the city too busy to hate. » Atlanta became a
world-class business centre. The story is complicated, but even Birmingham
leaders attribute their lost opportunity to the triumph of racial politics
versus Atlanta's business market-oriented approach.
The trendy discriminatory laws themselves render the job market less flexible,
increase the cost of female work, reduce the number of jobs for women and
other « visible minorities, » and transfer the
cost of bigotry to the women who lose their jobs, for the benefit of a
minority. Every dollar devoted to wage egalitarianism is in the final analysis
a dollar taken away from the creation of jobs for other women.
Conclusion
The conclusion to derive from this logic, the only arrangement consistent
with essential liberties and acceptable in an open society, is that discrimination
should be solely prohibited in state institutions, inasmuch as these are
in a position of monopoly. As morally abhorrent as it may appear, individuals,
private associations, and corporations should be allowed to practice the
kinds of exclusions which they deem desirable. Any other coercive rule
is a threat to freedom of thought, freedom of association, and freedom
of religion. Actual discrimination outside government would be limited
and without any consequences for minorities, thanks to the constraints
imposed by a competitive market and the evolution of social attitudes towards
more tolerance and open-mindedness. It is time that minorities be freed
from the burden of official bureaucratic discrimination.
| *Jean-Luc
Migué is president of the Scientific Council of the Montreal
Economic Institute and a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, and Martin
Masse is publisher of the webzine Le Québécois Libre. |
|
