Trump’s Anti-DEI Policy and Private-Sector Dictatorship
President Trump has upended the liberal/progressive policy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by decreeing its immediate end within the federal government. Is that a good thing? Conservatives sure think so. My position? I don’t really care how presidents run their welfare-state, warfare-state departments and agencies. I’m with Murray Rothbard when he was asked about the importance of ferreting out communists in the federal government. He responded — just abolish the jobs and the problem goes away. By the same token, dismantle all the agencies and departments relating to the welfare state, the managed economy, the national-security state, the drug war, and the war on immigrants, and you don’t have much left over to be too concerned about with respect to how the federal government is being run.
What is concerning, however, especially insofar as dictatorship is concerned, is Trump’s efforts to rid private-sector entities of DEI. What authority does a U.S. president have under the U.S. Constitution to dictate the policies of private-sector companies?
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In a genuinely free society, a private company has the right to run its affairs any way it wants. If it wants to establish a policy of DEI, it has the right to do so. If it wants to adopt an anti-DEI policy, that is its right too. It’s a privately owned company. As such, it has the right to adopt whatever policies it wants.
Insofar as libertarianism is concerned, it’s important to keep in mind that a pro-DEI policy for a private sector company is no more libertarian than an anti-DEI policy. The libertarian position is that everyone in the private sector should be free to adopt its own policy, whether it’s pro-DEI or anti-DEI.
By the same token, people are free to avoid or boycott private establishments because of the policies they adopt. That includes both consumers and employees. If a company begins losing market share or is unable to employ competent employees, that’s a signal to the company that it might want to change directions. But in a free society, it isn’t required to do so.
It’s worth asking: Why are so many private companies suddenly deciding to abandon the DEI policies that they have worked
Article from The Future of Freedom Foundation
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