travelsouth wrote:OutWest wrote:but you entirely refuse to grasp the concept that individual freedom
Key word there is INDIVIDUAL... not organization or business. If you are a god damn church you better serve all your community because we are letting you operate tax free. If you are a business you damn well better serve your community because the only color you care about in business is green.
As someone who likes many tenets of the libertarian movement let me be the first one to say I believe in individual freedom not organizational freedom. We hold a business (and if you don't think a church is a business you are loco) to different standards. I don't think the national hobby shop chain or chicken shop gets to discriminate. And if you pass a basket around for money and you don't pay taxes on that, then you can go ahead and serve the community as well.
No, a fundamental right of business is the right to discriminate between customers. Mind you, discriminating because someone is gay or a race you don't like I think isn't the smartest idea. But in painting for example, there are some brands of paint I would refuse to use. Let's say I want all my customers using Benjamin Moore because I like it and think it's good paint. But a customer wants me to use $15 a gallon paint from a chain store on his house. I don't wish to use said paint because the quality is not good, it would be harder to work with, possibly need more coats, whatever. If the customer doesn't want to use the paint I wish to use and pay $30 a gallon for nicer paint from a brand I like and feel comfortable using, I say bye bye and tell the customer to find someone else. Because I would not want to put my name on something that would be substandard, or do more labor and get a worse result all because "the customer is always right!" That's a fundamental right in business, the ability to refuse a customer
for any reason. Same with renting a house, whatever, you get to choose your customers, if someone just *seems* like an obvious heroin addict or something, you have every right to refuse them and look for someone else who seems like they would be a better renter of your property.
As far as religious institutions, they are not the only tax free organizations. There is not an obligation to "serve the community" for a religious institution, and if you think so it is likely because of Christianity giving you that thought process. Religion is about worshipping whatever god or deity you believe in, learning about it, or discussing beliefs. Most religions do advocate community service, but they are not obligated to serve the community. Lots of organizations for better or worse are tax free. Ralph Nader's non-profit is tax free and he makes $500-700K a year and has a 4 million net worth. Most sporting organizations are surprisingly, tax free, but make boatloads of money and again have CEOs making half a million or a million a year. Whether or not you think this is bad or should be changed, this is the way things are. At the very least for almost all religious institutes except for Scientology, while they can ask for money from you, or strongly persuade you to give money to them, you do not have to pay money for their services. Thus why it's a good thing they are tax exempt. To show up to church on Sunday you do not have to pay $5 or $10 for a ticket to church. Meanwhile things like sports, to participate in sports, you have to pay to just show up for the activity, pay competition fees, spectator fees, etc. I mean, to some extent, everything is a scam, so megachurch pastors get gobs of money, but so do do-nothing CEOs of sporting organizations in USA that haven't won Olympic medals in 20 years that charge membership fees. So if you believe a broader look at tax exempt status is looked at, then maybe so, but it's not just religion who is guilty of abuse of it, and I would say they are pretty minor players in it (for example, the NFL was tax exempt.)