One might be tempted to think that if owners were free to reject customers by race, segregation would be widespread. But that’s nonsense because there’s a difference between what people can do and what they’ll find in their interests to do. Think about it. During the United States’ Jim Crow era and South Africa’s apartheid era, there was an elaborate legal structure mandating and enforcing racial segregation. Whenever you see a law on the books, your best guess is that the law is on the books because not everyone left to their own devices would behave according to the specifications of the law. After all, why would there be a need for a law saying bars or theaters cannot admit blacks if no white bar or theater owner would admit blacks in the first place?
As usual, the GOVERNMENT is needed in order to enforce something negative. Let people be free to discriminate if they wish. If you don’t want to serve blacks, you should be free not to. If you don’t want to serve whites, you shouldn’t have to do that either. That is freedom of association, yet another Constitutional right that has been legislated away. As Walter Williams points out, most people won’t find it in their interest to do so – because if they had, there would have been no need for Jim Crow or apartheid in the first place!
No good comes out of government. None. The more you think about it, the deeper you consider it, the more this becomes obvious in every circumstance. The only thing a national government is really good for is protecting against other national governments – hardly a strong case for the positive good of the concept. Fine, let’s limit it to that and nothing else.