Shove it, Milton Friedman

Last Thursday was my last Property class before today. It ended with libertarian kid (the one who essentially advocated racism last semester in Civ Pro) arguing that there should be no rules against excluding people from private property, mostly businesses, because the rationality of the market would create incentives not to discriminate, so rules against discrimination are unnecessary. Well today we picked up right where we left off. He reiterated that argument. Another kid, I believe supported it. Then Gunner also chimed in with some measure of support, though it was sort of difficult to pick out his position from the rest of the inane, self-important comments he made. But I was done listening to this crap about the rationality of the market.

So I raised my hand, and got called on. Basically: "This type of Milton Friedman-esk argument that the rationality of the market will work everything out is just empirically false. Historically it doesn't work. Look at the picture on page 125. [It's a picture of a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in the 1960's.] And it doesn't work today. Also, the argument that was made that it is irrational for a business to discriminate because they lose so many consumers can be wrong. A business that discriminates can also be more popular than one that doesn't because it will attract other people who believe in that type of discrimination, further incentivizing discrimination."
My professor responded, "Well, what about the argument that we just haven't given the market enough time to adjust?"
To which I immediately said, "Sure, let's give it another hundred years."
Moving on.

Someone behind me whispered "Good job." And later on a lot of other people shared their approval, many liked my last little crack to the professor. Good, lots of other people aren't dumb libertarians.
Sorry for the overt politics, but I think it's a fairly obvious point. Just look at history. Also, discrimination is a largely irrational thing. The proposed fix is the rationality of the market. But you can't fix something that is irrational through rationality. You can throw all the logic you want at them, but their view isn't based on logic, so logic probably won't change it.