Many interesting criticism of Rand Paul’s opposition to the 1964 civil rights acts have focused on how violence was used to enforce a cartel of racism in the Jim Crow south.
This enforcement of a cartel seems like it might fall prey to a public goods problem. That is a racist could free ride on someone else’s enforcement activity without contributing to it. This might lead to inadequate effort to successfully enforce the racist cartels.
It seems a little ironic that libertarians that in other cases would likely minimize the importance of the public goods problem would have to rely on it dismiss racism from a cartel.
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