I visited the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) in Great Barrington, MA a little over a week ago and met Jeffrey Tucker for my first time. He’s the editorial director there. We got talking about his early life in Lubbock, TX and he told me an interesting story about how his grandfather, to avoid discrimination against himself for a physical problem, started serving an underserved and probably discriminated-against community whose members didn’t care about this physical problem. So each sided acted to deal with people who were discriminated against (assuming his grandfather’s fear of discrimination was justified.)
Jeffrey gave me permission to blog about it, but I didn’t get to it.
Jeffrey did, and here’s the result.
READER COMMENTS
Matthias Görgens
May 5 2019 at 10:54pm
I like how nobody in the story needed and noble motives.
The German discounter Aldi has a similar history: they brought in products for the Italian Gastarbeiter very early on. They got extra lucky, because Italian cuisine went mainstream in Germany over time.
Matthias Görgens
May 5 2019 at 10:54pm
… needed any noble motives.
Phil H
May 6 2019 at 3:53am
It’s a good story. I’d be a little bit careful about what conclusions to draw from it.
Overcoming adversity is possible with ingenuity and hard work – yes
Fair markets can be a good mechanism for overcoming discrimination – yes
Discrimination doesn’t matter if there are fair markets – no
No action should be taken against discrimination except the maintenance of fair markets – no
Still, it’s a good story. I might get my kids to read it this evening!
David Seltzer
May 6 2019 at 7:10pm
Phil, fair point. As for discrimination in free markets, I observed much less discrimination, growing up in the steel city of Gary Indiana. US Steel, Inland Steel and several others, populated NW Indiana in the 50’s and 60’s. These were the economic attractors. My Point. Spontaneous order brought about the Great Migration North to Gary, Chicago, Detroit and other manufacturing cities. Along with that migration came WWII post war refugees from Poland, Germany, Greece and other parts of Europe. My neighbors were Black, Hispanic, Irish, Greek, and several other cultures. My family is Jewish. We lived together and dined at each other’s table. My first real exposure to virulent discrimination and outright racism occurred when I was assigned to my first military duty station in Texas.
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