Guest Post by Eric Peters
Do “private businesses” have the right – morally – to require that customers wear Face Diapers as a condition of entry? And are customers morally obliged to respect such conditions?
If they do – and if they are – then it seems logical that “private businesses” also have the right to require that people submit to medical procedures as a condition of entry, such as being injected with whatever’s in those Needles practically chasing Americans around like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon – but without the humor.
Many conservatives and even some libertarians have answered in the affirmative – taking the position that “private businesses” have every right to insist upon the former and – therefore – have already answered in the affirmative regarding the latter.
But are they right?
It is important to define our terms before we proceed to debate.
What is “private property”?
And what does it mean, today?
It is generally taken to mean land, physical structures on the land and things of that nature lawfully (and morally) owned by the private individuals who acquired the property by free exchange and who therefore have the exclusive right to possess and – the other side of the coin – to control it. Including the prerogative to restrict or deny others the use of it or access to it on the basis of the moral principle that it isn’t their property. Because others did not pay for it. Therefore, others have no right to it. They may be allowed to use it or have access to it, at the discretion of the owner, who grants such access and use as a conditional privilege – according to whatever terms he sets forth.
As distinct from what is styled “public” property – taken to mean land, physical structures on the land and things of that nature that the government controls and which the public is compelled to finance via taxes and fees and for that reason is considered to have a legal as well as moral right to avail themselves of.
The problem is there’s no longer much distinction between these two things – especially as regards private businesses.
Their “private” status is denied by the government, for one thing. They are not the true owners of their property – in other than a technical sense – because they do not control it. The government does – via the setting of mandatory “terms and conditions” backed up by the force of government. So-called “private” businesses may only do business with the permission of the government and only as the government allows.
They are “private” in the sense that you are a “customer” of the DMV or the IRS.
All businesses operate under duress because none are free to set their own terms and conditions.
And all of them are compelled by the fact of this duress to set terms and conditions that are by definition affronts to liberty, both that of the putative owners as well as that of their customers.
For example, the nominal right of the owner – if private property existed and was respected – to not do business with anyone, for any reason.
Clearly, the supposed owners of “private” businesses in this country have no such right. Or rather, that right is not respected. Indeed, they have a legal obligation – enforced by government – to do business with everyone the government says they must, even when it is contrary to their own wishes – and often, at their own expense. As for example in the case of being compelled to modify their “private” property to accommodate disabled customers, even if the cost cannot be justified by an increase in business – which if it were so would mean no government force would be needed to compel the business to make the accommodation.
In that case – and many others of a piece – the “public” has acquired the legal right (via the force of government) to impose terms and conditions upon the owner, who is really more of a custodian.
Conversely, the putative “owner” of the business is obliged to impose the government’s terms and conditions upon all who wish to transact business with him, even if he personally opposes such terms and conditions.
In effect, the “private” business becomes – and this is the precise term used – a public accommodation.
Which means it is no longer a private business in any morally meaningful sense.
This does not mean we should accept or respect the “terms and conditions” of the statists who’ve transformed what was private property into what has become public accommodations. Libertarians especially should refrain from using the ugly principles established by the statists to impose their terms and conditions on what remains of private property. As for example by using the force of government to compel a business to do business with them.
It also ought not to serve as the justification for obvious violations of private property, such as the theft thereof.
But are libertarians and others who respect private property as a moral principle obliged to respect the use of private property by government as tool to undermine their rights? As by forcibly denying them the option to lawfully transact business anywhere unless they accede to the government’s terms and conditions, imposed by the fictionally private businesses, which are acting under duress?
This was – and to some extent, remains – the situation with regard to Face Diapers and is becoming the situation, with regard to Needles.
There is a qualitative difference between a private individual deciding, on his own, to engage in a business transaction with another private individual, neither of them acting under duress and both of them free to transact business with others, if they cannot arrive at mutually agreeable “terms and conditions” . . . and the Potemkin facade of “private businesses” – all of them acting under duress and acting in concert via the obeying of government’s terms and conditions, so as to eliminate the freedom to choose different ones.
A truly private business has every right to post a Face Diapers Required – or No Blacks Allowed – sign by the door and those who respect private property are obliged as a moral matter to respect those signs, even if they regard the sentiments expressed or the actions demanded as loathsome.
But such presumes other businesses are free to not post such signs.
Which, of course, many would – were they free to do so (especially as regards the Diapers). Which would mean that no one’s rights are affronted. The businesses that post objectionable-to-customers signs would not have the power to force other businesses to post the same signs. And customers would be free to do business with the businesses that did business in a way as acceptable to them as to the owners thereof.
But that is not the situation as it exists in this country right now – in which “private business” is a sick joke, on the owners and on us.
We – as customers – are no more obliged to obey or respect the government acting through proxies under duress than we are obliged to obey or respect the government itself. Is there a moral obligation to tell the truth to a government agent with a gun on his hip – out of respect for the principle of not lying?
It is suicidal to liberty to “respect” what isn’t – i.e., “private business” – especially when it is so obviously being used as a weapon against the very concept of rights. Those of the business owner – and those who wish to transact business.
This idea that people are honor-bound to “wear a mask” – or take the jab – or accept that they cannot rightfully shop unless they do, out of respect for private property, is as blinkered as the viewpoint that Jewish people in 1930s Germany were obliged to Heil Hitler! (or wear a yellow star) as a condition of entering a shop to buy their daily bread.
Evade, ignore. Shuck and jive. Ignore the signs. Walk right by. Make them tell you to leave. Don’t just mindlessly obey out of some misplaced sense of obligation.
Whatever it takes to protect your rights. And also for the sake of theirs.
When private businesses exist again, their right to set their (as opposed to government’s) terms and conditions should be respected again.
But not until – and not unless.
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That’s totally ignorant reasoning. A face diaper is an ineffective pain in the rear end but basically except in very few people nothing more.
An injected foreign substance still experimental and with an off the chart mortality and serious side effect rate as actually approved vaccines go is not even in the same league.
Fuck you.
Stay home and cry
No people submitting to wearing a face diaper are in reality kneeling before their masters.
Yup we’re kneeling you petty moron.
Masking up amongst the useful idiot masses allows you to walk amongst them unnoticed.
What a Dumbass.
No, a LOT of people have to wear a mask all day at their jobs. It’s not just a minor inconvenience while they shop. And this fact from the Spanish Flu of 1918:
Most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection from wearing masks.
They’re not “private businesses” anymore. They’ve become an enforcement arm of local, state, or federal government.
The whole “private businesses” thing went out with the Civil Rights Act, anyway. Many are public accommodations under that Act and should have had their asses sued into bankruptcy by now for Civil Rights violations if they were “private businesses”.
Ownership is control. Private property entails control. The operators/enforcers aren’t in control of their own stores. They face a choice of enforcing unconstitutional mandates or being fined out of existence.
“Our” government has put many “private businesses” in a bind, and so they punted. The path of least resistance was to become enforcers for the mask tyrants.
… what’s that you say? Public Health is an exception to Civil Rights discrimination? That didn’t work for the lunch counters owners who viewed blacks eating in proximity to whites as a public health issue. It would have been nice if a single lawyer in the country had had the integrity to put the “Masks stop the spread” horseshit to the test in a courtroom.
Not that it would have mattered, the judges are all order-followers or tyrants themselves, and try getting more than a total of 1200 IQ points in a jury box.
In any event, the BULLSHIT CLAIM that “they’re private businesses” falls apart upon finding a single restaurant owner or store manager who would not have required masks if they weren’t being extorted by our quasi-legal quasi-medical tyranny.
They can’t rely on their ‘rights’ as “private businesses” to excuse, and cover up for, their becoming government enforcers. They slept on those rights. They had not the balls to stand up against the mandates themselves as “Private Business” owners, figuring it was easier to do battle against the’customers’.
If they would have required masks in the absence of government mandates; then I’d be fine with that and choose to shop at establishments that had no such requirement , ….
…
… and then we wouldn’t be having this conversation with twats justifying mask mandates on the PHONY basis of “muh propurtee”
Stop repeating this public/private nonsense. That is the first step to rolling back this aspect of the takeover.
https://odysee.com/@EJOK:c/WIN_20210505_08_34_58_Pro:1
So-called “private businesses” submit their article of incorporation to the state. In exchange, the state incorporates the business; it is a “creature of the state.”
As such, the business is duty bound to operate according to the rules and regulations of the state. The state passes laws that dictate how companies must do business, like payment of taxes.
If the state, by way of its legislature, wants to pass a law that requires their “creatures” to conduct business in a certain way, it can do that. And this legal requirement, if not arbitrary, can prohibit any business from requiring customers to take off their shoes, or present a passport, or wear a diaper… if the state were to so choose.
So the question is, why has no state legislature passed such law?
Yes. See Odysee video posted in prior comment thread. This “private business can do whatever they want” is nonsense. A falsehood implanted early in our education … a brain virus.
I have a “No Soliciting” sign prominently displayed on my front door. This doesn’t prevent salespeople and vendors from ringing the doorbell. When I open the door and they introduce themselves I say, “Nice to meet you but I’m afraid I could never transact business with a individual that can’t read. Have a good one”. Then I close the door in their face.
Related, I had a friend back in the ’90s, total wild man who asked the Jehovah’s Witnesses to please stop coming to his door. After half a dozen times he’d had enough. I just happened to be at his house, we were watching the 49ers in a MNF game. The doorbell rang, he looked through the peephole and said “Goddammit”. Without saying a word he busted down to his “tighty whities”, opened the door and invited them in. I heard one female yelp. They never came back.
Half a dozen visits? By the third, they turned around as soon as they realized who lived there. I must be wilder than I thought.
In My case I was already undressed Fresh out of a shower. I did have a towel around me But after seeing who was there 2 Men 3 woman I dropped all pretence and opened the door.
JW free for 8years and counting
Eric has been a leader on this entire scamdemic. Thank you Eric.
If the Private Business argument had legitimacy, then shouldn’t “anti-Gay” Bakers receive an apology?
Please see …
https://odysee.com/@EJOK:c/WIN_20210505_08_34_58_Pro:1
The bakers ultimately won their case because their Constitutional Rights mattered. But, a business cannot impinge your Constitutional Rights for any reason other than that.
I can’t imagine Germans wanting jews to hail their leader.
Wearing a yellow star though, that just makes sense. It lets the normies realize who the shapeshifters amongst them are.
Respectfully, the author is full of shit. Just because the government fails to respect the rights of private property in many cases does not mean it is moral, or ethical, or even legal under the Constitution. The concept of saying a business owner cannot refuse to do business with anyone for any reason is a tyrannical, feudalistic, and contrary to every concept this country was founded on. If you do not respect a business owners rights to do business with, and under whatever circumstances he choses, then you are a liberal communist pure and simple. Every person in this country should be free to enter into any sort of business agreement they choose, so long as that agreement is consensual to both parties. If one party does not agree to the circumstances or conditions, they are free to walk away and not do business. It you take that right from one, then you take it from both. There are only two choices in life, free will, or tyranny. Which do you choose?
Jdog,
I’m pretty sure you misread the article. Peters is against government telling businesses what to do.
Evade, ignore. Shuck and jive. Ignore the signs. Walk right by. Make them tell you to leave. Don’t just mindlessly obey out of some misplaced sense of obligation.
Works for me!
If you have to get a license from the government then you are not a private operation. You have been licensed by the people as the people elect the government, therefore you operate at the will of the people..
LIBERTY, as secured as a Right of We the [Sovereign] People in the Preamble, 5th and 14th Amendments, includes the Right to Pursue a Livelihood. The city did not appreciate my reluctance to purchase an Occupational license but they could not tell the Appeal Court why their law was not unconstitutional.
West publishing company helped bury the evasive Opinion.
Bullshit. You are a communist. The government is not our master, it is our servant. It does not dictate what we can do with out PRIVATE PROPERY or our rights as sovereign citizens to do business deals of our choice with whom, and under what circumstances we choose. Show anywhere on a business license application where it states that as a business owner you sacrifice your unalienable rights recognized by the Constitution and thereby superior to all other government laws and statutes. You can’t because you are full of shit.
I think you’re missing the distinction between what ought to be and what is reality. Between how businesses ought to operate, and how they have allowed themselves to be controlled by government (or, how Americans allowed the government to control them).
I don’t think Very Old White Guy is necessarily condoning the state of affairs as it is; but, instead, pointing out the hypocrisy of accepting the governments Faustian bargain, doing what your told, jumping throughwhatever new hoops are required, and then hypocritically defending yourself against criticism by saying “It’s my place, I’ll run it how I please.”
Like hell they will. They don’t. They haven’t. … possibly ever.
They run it how they’re told to run it. They allow who they’re told to allow. They require what they’re told to require. And they deserve all criticism coming their way for doing so.
and so do we, for allowing it to come to pass.
The one thing store operators are definitely NOT doing when requiring masks or vaccines of their customers, is stnding up for their own (or anyone else’s) private property rights. Instead, they’re standing up for an overly controlling and extortionary government (and, hence, an overly controlling populace with little regard for “rights”), because they know what would happen if they did stand up for their rights (they’d get squashed). So, they don’t … but when they get push-back from their own customers; they hypocritially claim that they’re standing up for their private proerty rights.
Except that it usually isn’t the business owners themselves saying this. Typically, — in the last year, anyway — it’s LEFTISTS wo are claiming it’s all about property rights. The same people who’ve never made such a claim before in their lives. The same ideology that would (whether its adherents are aware or not) ultimately eliminate such rights.
Yes, you’re right. Businesses should have the right to require masks. But, then, shouldn’t they also have the right to NOT require masks? How many business owners in places where the mandates exist, have done so? What has become of the ones who stood for their property rights?
You have here on TBP defended store owners’ right to require masks. Do you defend other store owners’ right to NOT require masks? Or even to disallow them (as would have been the case in any convenience store prior to 2020)?
And if you would defend the right to NOT require masks, do you really believe that the store owners are really choosing to require them because they want to?
Look I do not wear a mask 98% of the time, but if a business posts saying they require it I comply.
Now the reason I do not wear a mask 98% of the time is that most of the people where I live have come to the educated opinion that this whole thing is bullshit and there is no danger.
Because the overwhelming number of people where I live are conservative, they have elected people to the Statehouse with common sense, and who listen to their constituent’s who are fed up.
We have no mandates to wear masks or anything else. It is up to individual business owners.
Now if you live somewhere where the State or Local government is ignoring both the science and the will of the people, then your problems are bigger than just wearing a mask in a store.
In the UK property rights are vested in ancient law and based on Roman common law enforced by civil courts.
“The main legal property rights are the right of possession, the right of control, the right of exclusion, the right to derive income, and the right of disposition. There are exceptions to these rights, and property owners have obligations as well as rights.”
“English property law refers to the law of acquisition, sharing and protection of valuable assets in England and Wales. While part of the United Kingdom, many elements of Scots property law are different. In England, property law encompasses four main topics: English land law, or the law of “real property”
“Today in the UK thanks to the Civil Aviation Act of 1982, the generally accepted amount of air above one’s roof a person is entitled to is approximately 500-1,000 feet, though again this isn’t a hard definition.”
In UK most of the land is owned by the crown and leased for use by government, companies and individuals. You do not own materials like minerals present under your land in UK – this is owned by the crown. All property ownership is known as ‘freehold’ – i.e. you hold the land free of rent to the ultimate owner – the crown.
This all came about when the Normans invaded England in 1066 and stole all the land from the original Anglo Saxon owners. King William divided up all the land after a survey (The Doomsday Book) and gave it to his mates. It’s been this way every since and gave rise to the ‘aristocracy’ or ‘old money’ as it is known. We are all serfs in the UK except for the aristocrats and monarchy, most of whom sit in the House of Lords.
Except even owning the freehold doesn’t exempt the owner from property taxes. Therefore the freeholder owns nothing because it can be taken away on non payment of tax. There is also compulsory purchase which can take a property away from yousuch as for HS2. You only ‘own’ at the Government and the Crown’s pleasure.
This is true Rossa, freehold doesn’t exempt you from Council Tax (CT). But it is unlikely that a court would award possession for non payment of CT which is actually a criminal offence under UK law. So they can lock you up and this has happened in the past. And yes, there is always the possibility of compulsory purchase, as you say, relevant today for HS2.
Everything in UK is subject to Her Majesty’s pleasure ultimately since the crown owns everything and also perhaps the church. We serfs have no chance under current conditions.
Saxons stole it from my ancestors, the celts.
Yes, very true Anon although the Romans stole it first?
In England, you are still subjects. Your rights are given by the Crown and government. Only in the US are the people Citizens, meaning we are sovereigns with all the rights of Kings, only without subjects. Our rights are birthrights, and not given to us by government or anyone else.
Ah yes, Jdog you are of course very right which is a quirk of history I guess. Our heritage is long and fraught which ever way one sees it.
It is by discussions like this that people become educated, and hopefully demand their sovereignty as human beings. I never understood why this concept is so hard for people to grasp when it is so very simple. Either you are sovereign, and own your self, or you are not, and you are the property of another sovereign… There are really only two states of existence, and you cannot be free if you do not own yourself.
I agree Jdog and we in Britain are not free, being subjects beholden to Her Majesty’s pleasure, and only a revolution will change this. We in our small group are trying to change this through non-violent means:
http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/ much along the lines of the Chartists of earlier times:
“Chartism was a working class movement, which emerged in 1836 and was most active between 1838 and 1848. The aim of the Chartists was to gain political rights and influence for the working classes. Chartism got its name from the People’s Charter, that listed the six main aims of the movement.”
They won some concessions in the end but it took 150 years to accomplish – we are hoping to move things along a little faster!
I have come out of the closet folks.I am now “Transvaxx”,i.e. I identify as a vaccinated person.
I like it! And you can claim discrimination if anyone refuses to accept your “identification”… LOL
Do businesses have the right to establish ‘no smoking’ areas ?
Does a concern for health alter the ‘public accommadation’ mandate ? But then, is the mask a health issue ?
Do they have the right to establish smoking areas?
A question for Jdog.
Does a concern for health alter the ‘public accommadation’ mandate ?
For a period of years, establishments were free to allow smoking or disallow smoking, and all was fine because you could choose. That ended based on a “worker safety” argument. Amazingly they still allow commercial fishing and crabbing industries, not to mention roofing and a whole host of dangerous jobs that workers can choose to perform if they accept the risk.
But, the better comparison would be to ask whether a business has a right to make you smoke while you’re in the store. Light up or hit the bricks. The point is, not smoking is a human’s natural state; likewise not wearing a mask is a human’s natural state. Requiring masking is like requiring smoking in that they’re both affirmative steps you must take.