Separating the presumably wiser adults from the relatively inexperienced younger individuals without specifying any gender identity for the purposes of this title

Pop quiz for self-described Repub­li­cans, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, Con­ser­v­a­tives, and Clas­sic Lib­er­als.1 What is your first thought when you see this head­line from an arti­cle in today’s Wall Street Jour­nal?

Pay­Pal Can­cels Plan for Facil­i­ty in North Car­oli­na, Cit­ing Trans­gen­der Law

Choose the one option which most close­ly cor­re­sponds to your belief:

  1. Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness has gone too far.
  2. Cor­po­ra­tions have no right to tell peo­ple how to gov­ern themselves.
  3. God­less anti-het­ero­sex­u­al hea­thens are extort­ing the good peo­ple of North Car­oli­na to pre­vent bath­rooms being one for men and anoth­er for women, as God intend­ed.2
  4. Mar­ket forces always win. Get over it, North Carolina.

This quiz is not timed, and is self-grad­ed. No pres­sure, take as much time as you like. When you are ready, con­tin­ue on to the next section.

Grading your quiz

If you answered with any­thing oth­er than response num­ber four (Mar­ket forces always win) please head on back to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or a Trump ral­ly or wher­ev­er. Here’s more infor­ma­tion about what was wrong with your answer:

If you answered with response 1, Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness has gone too far: You just weren’t think­ing. It’s a fuzzy answer that does­n’t even real­ly mean any­thing. And it’s wrong. This is eco­nom­ic cor­rect­ness. More on that later.

If you answered with response 2, Cor­po­ra­tions have no right to tell peo­ple how to gov­ern them­selves: Fine, but Pay­Pal isn’t dic­tat­ing terms (at least not with North Car­oli­na). They just can­celed expan­sion plans, and the CEO explained why. Pay­Pal doing busi­ness with you isn’t an enti­tle­ment. That’s what free coun­try means, right?

If you answered with response 3, Hea­thens…: You could­n’t decide between answer 1 and answer 2 so you dou­bled down on your bemuse­ment by pre­tend­ing to know some­thing about the Bible. Now go bor­row a neigh­bor’s dic­tio­nary and look up bemuse­ment.

If you answered with response 4, Mar­ket forces always win: Con­grat­u­la­tions, though you don’t need me to say it. You already know that was the obvi­ous choice.

A free mar­ket is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the one with­out any reg­u­la­tions; it is one in which peo­ple, whether indi­vid­u­al­ly or in groups, exchange goods and ser­vices with oth­ers vol­un­tar­i­ly for their own rea­sons. Part­ners in trade have agency and auton­o­my. If some­one wants to do busi­ness with some­one else, they sim­ply do.

Gen­er­al­ly peo­ple and busi­ness­es trade for their own ben­e­fit. Some­times they do so out of altru­is­tic moti­va­tion, but ulti­mate­ly that’s real­ly the same thing. Either they get a good feel­ing from it, or some secu­ri­ty in know­ing that their action makes the kind of change in the world they want to see. They trade some­thing they have for some­thing they want more than the thing they are trad­ing away.

Though there are some­times snags with that arrange­ment, and some pro­tec­tions are nec­es­sary (coer­cion and fraud pre­clude vol­un­tary action) gen­er­al­ly the end result of vol­un­tary trade is that peo­ple get the things they want­ed most. Their pur­chas­ing choic­es rep­re­sent their needs, desires, and val­ues, because they make those choic­es them­selves. When one thing is more valu­able than anoth­er, they give up the less val­ued in favor of the more valued.

When Pay­Pal began mak­ing plans to expand into a new Glob­al Oper­a­tions Cen­ter in Char­lotte, they based that deci­sion on a vari­ety of fac­tors. It’s easy to spec­u­late that those includ­ed the tax­a­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry struc­tures in North Car­oli­na, the costs of real estate and the qual­i­ty of the labor pool. Pay­Pal weighed ben­e­fits against draw­backs and decid­ed that Char­lotte NC looked like a place to move with more advan­tages than dis­ad­van­tages. Ask any­one: Pay­Pal is not a charity.

What Pay­Pal’s man­age­ment under­stands is not con­tro­ver­sial: their employ­ees are valu­able. Pay­Pal’s rela­tion­ship with its employ­ees is also large­ly vol­un­tary, so if Pay­Pal’s employ­ees weren’t valu­able, Pay­Pal would­n’t keep employ­ing them.

While it may not be Pay­Pal’s job to keep its employ­ees hap­py per se, it’s in Pay­Pal’s best inter­ests to make sure that its employ­ees can do their jobs in an envi­ron­ment free of harass­ment or hos­til­i­ty. I don’t know how many peo­ple of var­i­ous gen­der iden­ti­ties work for Pay­Pal, but it’s safe to say that Pay­Pal’s employ­ee ros­ter includes peo­ple of all kinds.

The real ques­tion is: why would Pay­Pal vol­un­tar­i­ly try to relo­cate employ­ees to a state where some of those employ­ees would be unwel­come and unsafe? What would be the cost to employ­ee morale? Cis­gen­dered employ­ees don’t want their trans cowork­ers to face the choice between a work pro­mo­tion and rel­a­tive per­son­al secu­ri­ty and safe­ty. There are many places a com­pa­ny can build a new head­quar­ters; a com­pa­ny’s employ­ees are the ones that actu­al­ly do the busi­ness of the busi­ness. A smart CEO or man­age­ment team does­n’t mess with that — just as they don’t inten­tion­al­ly under­mine the effec­tive­ness of the oth­er aspects of their operations.

While North Car­oli­na law­mak­ers may claim God’s guid­ance in this mat­ter, Pay­Pal and the oth­er busi­ness­es that have recon­sid­ered or are recon­sid­er­ing doing their busi­ness in North Car­oli­na are answer­ing to good old fash­ioned mar­ket forces. Between those two Invis­i­ble Hands frankly Smith’s has the more reli­able track record on improv­ing peo­ple’s lives. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly we rarely see blas­phe­mers struck by light­ning all that often these days, but those who deny the pow­er of the mar­ket find them­selves pun­ished pre­dictably and often severely.


  1. If you actu­al­ly call your­self a reac­tionary or a neo­con, feel free to answer but I prob­a­bly can’t help you with that prob­lem. 
  2. The out­house had not been invent­ed in Old Tes­ta­ment times. If we are to take The Bible at face val­ue, indoor plumb­ing itself is an affront before the Almighty. See Deuteron­o­my 23:13

6 Replies to “Separating the presumably wiser adults from the relatively inexperienced younger individuals without specifying any gender identity for the purposes of this title”

  1. Names
    So what do you call those of us who don’t believe the gov­ern­ment should even be in our bed­rooms and/or bath­rooms? Or in our wed­dings? And also believe that mar­ket forces alone should deter­mine who you do busi­ness with and where you do it?

    Our Gov­er­nor has invit­ed Pay­pal to move to Ver­mont. If Pay­pal takes him up on it, we’ll know that the deci­sion to leave NC was not based on any ratio­nal busi­ness deci­sion. We’ll see.

    1. Mar­kets (almost) always win
      [quote=Dad]So what do you call those of us who don’t believe the gov­ern­ment should even be in our bed­rooms and/or bath­rooms? Or in our wed­dings? And also believe that mar­ket forces alone should deter­mine who you do busi­ness with and where you do it?[/quote]

      That’s an impor­tant part of my point: the labor mar­ket is also a mar­ket, and mar­ket forces apply. A busi­ness mak­ing deci­sions based on the well-being of their employ­ees isn’t being char­i­ta­ble; it is doing busi­ness. Refrain­ing from doing busi­ness in a juris­dic­tion where one’s busi­ness inter­ests are com­pro­mised by the gov­ern­ment over­reach is what a busi­ness *should* do. It does­n’t mat­ter whether that over­reach is tax law, zon­ing law, or bath­room law.

      Where the gov­ern­ment ought to inter­vene is nev­er as sim­ple as I would like it to be. In this case, the state leg­is­la­ture act­ed to over­ride local munic­i­pal laws, which is some­thing any con­ser­v­a­tive ought to be skep­ti­cal of. Watch the dou­ble-stan­dard at work when this law is chal­lenged at the Supreme Court. So-called con­ser­v­a­tives will be argu­ing that the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment has no busi­ness inval­i­dat­ing States’ laws which inval­i­date local laws meant to pro­tect indi­vid­u­als from extra­ju­di­cial (vig­i­lante) pun­ish­ment. I guess that’s a triple-standard? 

  2. Laws
    What you are say­ing then is that a local­i­ty should be able to pass laws that vio­late state and fed­er­al laws? I believe that local con­trol is best, but we can­not end up with such balka­nized laws that cross­ing a town line sud­den­ly makes you a crim­i­nal. It is bad enough at the state level.

    1. Dad wrote: What you are
      [quote=Dad]What you are say­ing then is that a local­i­ty should be able to pass laws that vio­late state and fed­er­al laws?[/quote]

      I don’t think I’m say­ing that. I’m wary of states pass­ing laws specif­i­cal­ly to inval­i­date munic­i­pal laws. The North Car­oli­na law was put in place specif­i­cal­ly to inval­i­date munic­i­pal law (ordi­nances, what­ev­er.) There are cer­tain­ly sit­u­a­tions where that’s war­rant­ed, but I’m high­ly sus­pi­cious when I hear about that happening.

  3. Pay­pal
    I don’t believe that Pay­pal made this deci­sion based on the well-being of their employ­ees, but rather was sim­ply polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. We shall see.

    1. Cor­rect­ness
      [quote=Dad]I don’t believe that Pay­pal made this deci­sion based on the well-being of their employ­ees, but rather was sim­ply polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. We shall see.[/quote]

      At the very least, large num­bers of Pay­pal’s own employ­ees (still very Bay Area-cen­tric) would be dis­il­lu­sioned. Mess­ing with morale is dan­ger­ous. Maybe that’s a form of kow­tow­ing to pop­u­lar opin­ion, but when it’s the pop­u­lar opin­ion of your own employ­ees and man­age­ment, I’ll call that an eco­nom­ic deci­sion rather than a polit­i­cal one.

      Also, as Mar­co Rubio said to Trump, it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly about being polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, but just plain correct. 

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