Wackiness at Redstate.org

Redstate's an interesting site. It's much more civil than other conservative sites I've been to. Which pretty much means that I've gotten in 5 or 6 posts and they haven't banned me yet.

Anyway, check it out, especially this piece they are promulgating which argues that the free market would not have led to segregation and jim crow laws in the south. Yes, it's crazy. No, that doesn't mean what I said in the last paragraph is untrue.

The basic argument? Private transportation companies in the South at the end of the 19th century did not have an economic incentive to segregate the cars, and that we should be wary of government since it was what in fact caused the harm and created segregation. So, it wasn't racism at the bottom of segregation, but government.

The support:

It was politics that segregated the races because the incentives of the political process are different from the incentives of the economic process. Both blacks and whites spent money to ride the buses but, after the disenfranchisement of black voters in the late 19th and early 20th century, only whites counted in the political process.

And no, he doesn't stop to consider why or how blacks were disenfranchised.

Anyway, read the piece. I put up a couple comments there, but you'll have to read it to see them.