Memories of the 28th Century

I had decided to write a post about minding one’s own business, when the Supreme Court decision came down ruling that discrimination violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, even if people call the discrimination “affirmative action. I think the Equal Protection Clause is wonderful, and all laws should be required to adhere to it completely.

There are some people who think that treating people unequally is good, if it supports their prejudices. I disagree, and the U.S. Constitution also opposes that view.

Recently, someone asked me a rude and intrusive question, to which I replied, “You should mind your own business.” I was going to leave it there, but the concept came up in regard to other things. After all, the essence of nanny government is that the government should mind everyone's business, and that includes asking rude, intrusive questions. The flip side is that the government is everyone's business. I was looking for my beginning of this post, when I noticed part of a post about intelligence lowering, and that probably is related as one cause of people minding other people's business. And it probably is a result of poor early childhood training.

On the other hand, we have governments that try to control all facets of people's lives, so it shouldn't be surprising that some people try to do the same thing. It appears that there are several competing social and political trends. There are some people who think that government really should control everything. I suspect that such people believe that they aren’t capable of making decisions or plans. Then there are people who are quite capable of making decisions and plans, and they don't see any reason for government to be involved in their lives. And there are others, including the ones who want to take advantage of as much as they can. And there are many people who can't survive without assistance and subsidies. There are legitimate doubts as to the validity of laws that grant government favors to some people, because such laws appear to be violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
With some recent Supreme Court decisions, it appears that the U.S. government is becoming a little less “nanny”. We will have to wait to learn whether individuals will go along with that and try to live their own lives. And avoid bothering others about their lives. On the other hand there are things that people do that harm others, and we set up governments to do something about the people who do such things. But disagreements over victimless crimes are a common source of violence. I think that eliminating prohibitions of activities that are victimless would tremendously decrease violent crime.
If all recreational drugs were legal and could be sold by anyone who wanted to sell them, then drug gangs and foreign cartels would have smaller businesses; although most would continue in their drug businesses on a legal basis. Legal businesses seldom shoot the competition, but it has happened.

A discussion of government and minding one's business brings up the question of why government exists. There are several opinions about that, and those answers reflect the political spectrum or parts of it. In republics, government is supposed to provide a framework in which people can live their lives with safety. In despotisms, the government exists to benefit the people who run it. In democracies, government exists to protect the people. The U.S.A. was founded by people who were Classical Liberals, so they wanted government that would provide a legal system and defense against foreign invasion. This week, the Supreme Court appears to have backed that view of government by banning “affirmative Action”, and they also found that a person who sets up wedding websites can refuse service to people she doesn't want to work for. In both cases, requirements that people act the way the government wanted them to act were struck down. On a larger scale, those were laws that required people through their government made individuals or organization act the way the government wanted them to, regardless of their desires.

It isn’t good business to refuse service to some people, but it has always been a right that business owners had, and some use it. If someone doesn’t want to sell to people of a particular type, then they are the ones losing; the people who are refused service find out about a place that they probably don’t want to go to.

Comments are welcome. This post is not really complete but you might help.