The Rob Natelson We Know And Love

From this post at ECW, Rob Natelson is discussing the "torment" faced by businesses in Missoula.  He writes:

Few seem to have noticed the irony here:  Just a few weeks before the hand-wringing about poor economic development began, the Missoula city council (by a 10-2 vote) studiously eschewed wiser counsels and crammed through an intrusive new ordinance regulating how businesses relate to cross-dressers and similar odd balls.

That's not irony.  That's an assumption of relation between unrelated facts, presented as causal reductionism.  In other words, it's bullshit.  It's also the very same argument promoted by Rand Paul.  According to our esteemed former professor, businesses should be able to discriminate against anyone they wish.  In fact, Rob takes it one step further and assumes that businesses won't employ people in Missoula because having to follow the law of the area is, simply put, "tormenting" those businesses.  What's truly sad is that Rob uses his absolutely specious argument that "oddballs" are being protected to carry over his conclusion to an argument he never supports; he holds that businesses do best in unregulated environments.  His only foundation is a fallacy about "cross-dressers" and Butte's difficult business environment.  That might actually be possible ... if, as Rob assumes, the health of a business' bottom line is all that really matters to the employed these employers hire.

Face it, the man is replacing wingnut boiler-plate for actual thought.  If I were so inclined, and I'm not, I would launch into a reductio ad absurdem about private police forces and streets maintained by and for profit and all the results of Rob's fantasy world where "oddballs" are disallowed and business has free reign  (Marcus Daly,  Williams Andrews Clark, anyone?).  Instead, I will trust that the reader is rational and allow you to draw your own conclusions.  That is, before Rob has you send your children to work at the mill to keep them away from cross dressers and oddballs.

Comments

[Montana Cowgirl]

I'd rather encounter an "oddball" in a coffee shop than Rob Natelson. If he had actually attended this ordinance hearing, he'd realize that there were much more businesses in support of its passage than opposed.

[problembear]

the man is obviously insane. arguing with him is cruel and pointless.

http://intelligentdiscontent.com/2008/11/13/montana-human-rights-network-1-rob-natelson-0/

i rest my case...

[Pete Talbot]

Natelson is correct, of course. The reason Macy's shuttered and the Smurfit-Stone Mill closed was directly related to the number of transgendered people living in Missoula. The correlation is obvious. He has as fine a grasp of Missoula economics as he does Constitutional law.