These notes show how he failed. He didn't approach the problem thinking of that stuff as a system of people interacting and of them being influential over one another in doing so.
If you don't do that, you cannot realize it doesn't make sense to say that your vote doesn't count. Then whose vote counts? It can't be the one which breaks the tie when counting them since the order doesn't change the results, but something must count somewhere for a decision to be made.
Actually economists prove you wrong... All human actions are assumed to be maximizing utility in economic models, but if you have imperfect information, irrational beings, etc., you do not end up with an optimal result all the time.
That's the brilliance of intervention: you can institute conditions to affect the degrees of possibility and improve upon a free system efficiency.
When I say freedom without rules is slavery I mean to say that rules can make you freer.
Oh, you don't understand what optimal means... "the satisfaction of people's wants given other people's desires to provide for those wants" -- well those are utility-driven concerns.
Where on the graphic do we manage to get both at once? Equilibrium. It's the only place you can end up with no one being frustrated. There, sellers are happy because they got as much as possible for what they sell; buyers are happy because they got as much as possible for their money.
It's not a thoughtless idea that of efficiency... if you really want to bring up economics, continue to the conclusion until the end. An optimal result is everyone satisfied; if we are bellow that, then there is space for improvement.
Do you know what that means? More people satisfied without making others worst off -- that's a Pareto improvement.
@KrugmanTheKing Oh, quite correctly. And voluntary trade is the only way to ensure Pareto movements. Taxation is exactly not, because you make one group off better than another :P
Taxation can improve the efficiency of the entire system. Say I use fiscal policy in a crisis... the impact is obviously short term, but if I did it well enough, we're back near full employment. That means rich people will have more clients... even if I tax them, the tax is just asking everyone to pay to compensate the waste everyone created in the first place.
But it's indeed arguable whether all of the best solutions don't upset some rich people.
@KrugmanTheKing " if I tax them, the tax is just asking everyone to pay to compensate the waste everyone created in the first place."
I'm sorry, how did "everyone" create the crisis in the first place? If you'd like to blame Greenspan, be my guest. His interest policies are what caused this mess.
@KrugmanTheKing Depending on your definition of "free", sure! For Socialists it's one thing, for Libertarians another, for Democrats a third, and Republicans a fourth. What do you mean by "freer"?
Freedom as I describe it is material. It's a matter of degree of possibilities with regard to personal preferences as well. I understand freedom the same way you'd use it applying it to say screws: it's the space you have around, the margins wherein you can play.
If I consider those questions this way, I can solve dilemmas and I can propose solutions that will work. If I take any other, I am stuck with an idealist standpoint: it can't be reconciled with anything.
I can understand that a man who can say no when he's asked something is freer than someone who can't, but I wouldn't say he's as free as he can get. A Libertarian would tell me that guy made a decision in absence of coercion, so he's free... I am sorry, but that's a false dichotomy. I'd say that in many case, those people neither feel free, nor truly are: when you're given the choice between two bad options, there's place for improvement.
I'd quite frankly admit a form of social coercion, of limits within which one operates to solve that issue. It avoids me to make stupid conclusions like life is what you make of it... well, no: you can't play with cards that aren't in your hand.
I hate both notions of determinism and absolute freedom because they just can't apply outside of a thought vacuum. We need to think in terms of degrees and I think Nozick miserably missed the point here.
You are better off here than people in medieval times and they were better than slaves in ancient times. What Nozick did here is a nice feat of rhetoric, period. Very nice, treat people as slaves because they are governed. Once you think for a second, you realize it's quite different. People enjoy more leisure time, can do more things, express their opinions, improve upon their conditions... why didn't he notice it? Because he made a false dichotomy.
@KrugmanTheKing I agree, in the end, you are the master of your own destiny, no matter what the goverment, society, parents our friends think or say about it. Unless they do something about it and phisically restrain you for doing what in the absence of coercion you would had otherwise done, thats the only precondition to true freedom.
No, freedom isn't about necessarily an absence of physical constraint. Freedom bears relevance in social structure depending on what kind of relations you have toward certain institutions, that is to say: it's all about relations of power.
I would certainly agree that the State because of its centralized control over different fields of our lives is a coercive institutions, but it's one of the least coercive in the so-called liberal democracies.
@KrugmanTheKing "...State ... but it's one of the least coercive in the so-called liberal democracies."
Allow me to introduce you to something you've obviously never heard of before.
JAIL
This is where they put you when you don't pay their extortion. How do they get you there? Easy, they point something at you, something you conveniently ignore.
A GUN
But jails and guns are insufficient. There a too many peons. They need something else.
I think that you're missing the whole point. The extortion is done by any institution that bear an economic authority over other people... at least, you can vote at the State level, criticize, petition and organize opposition, but you can't do that with your boss: you have no influence over the policies put in place. Corporations are totalitarian institutions, orders always flowing from above.
@KrugmanTheKing Try telling the government to "fuck off" when the want your home ( see Kelo ), try telling them to "fuck off" when they want your ass in a rice paddy in Vietnam, try telling them to "fuck off" when they want you to pay for killing thousands of innocent children in Iraq.
I can, and have, told my "boss" to fuck off. Didn't get thrown in jail, didn't get shot.
The state needs useful idiots like you, ones that twist words and deceive.
Totalitarianism is a POLITICAL system. wikipedia. org/wiki/Totalitarianism
There is a real definition. Not made up crap.
They need idiots that IGNORE the weapons they use as backup. At best this qualifies you as IGNORANT ( wikipedia. org/wiki/Ignorance ), at worst an outright liar.
The doors at work are never locked to keep you IN. The doors on JAILS are.
Actually we don't say system, we'd say regime -- that's the first mistake. The second one is that I was specifically qualify an institution using an adjective: I wasn't using totalitarianism, but totalitarian institution.
By definition, it means an authority-based social structure within which orders flow from above and wherein only those bellow are accountable to the authority -- the authority not being accountable to them. That's what is a totalitarian/authoritarian institution.
We can say that the Supreme Soviet in the USSR was a totalitarian institution, but so can I say that corporations are because they show the same hierarchical structure.
The coercion they exercise is structural: having no means to control your production, you are left with as only option selling your production potential, that is to say, you ought to rent yourself, to sell your person.
They don't need guns, they just to threaten you of poverty, social stigmas or, if without social
programs, of starvation... Choosing your boss is essentially choosing your master, but it's not freedom since it again relies on surrendering your control over your work -- and very heavily so most of the time.
And you shouldn't say the State at all, but those who govern. If you didn't realize, policies only reflect social will when people organize; if not, they follow privileged interests through many means.
So long as the private property of the means of production exists, politics will be the shadow of business cast over our society, to paraphrase John Dewey: private interests will rule the country.
State control isn't much better... it's only better provided you have influence over the officials -- that is, if they are in some way accountable. The absolute best would for workers to directly own the places wherein which they work.
I'm not in denial... I told you where to look at and that the State was simply more than often the lesser of two evils. I concede upfront that it's coercive: I said it was less authoritarian, more democratic than corporations.
It's all down to how does the institution structure power into social relations... corporations are one way downward; there's at least some reciprocal features between a democratic State and the nation.
@KrugmanTheKing Oh, you're in denial all right. I jumped in when you posted this:
"I would certainly agree that the State because of its centralized control over different fields of our lives is a coercive institutions, but it's one of the LEAST coercive in the so-called liberal democracies." (emphasis added)
I pointed out many ways the state uses GUNS and JAILS in the MOST coercive manner of all - VIOLENCE.
And the technical detail here is that you do not seem to realize that corporation, and in fact to various degrees, any form of organization of labor that implies private ownership of the means of production, constitute the most coercive social structure in our society.
These are real tyrannies wherein people above send the orders bellow -- it's the hierarchical structure that isn't responsive to popular pressures and is never held accountable to them that is tyrannical.
I don't know how far more away from freedom you wanna get than this, but industries run on this principle that everyone answers to the person above, but the person above doesn't have to respond to those bellow. We could very well say of workers that they are slaves because they do not own themselves, nor do they have control over their production: there is no difference between selling yourself and renting yourself.
Why wouldn't I want to suppress the State immediately or even think about rendering it ineffective? Because in concrete and practical terms it means selling people's fate and lives to the greatest bid and handing all the decision power to tyrants.
If you want freedom, you need reciprocity in the processing of decisions and directions. Any structure that deviates from that is by definition authoritarian and private ownership is exactly that which is far worst than a State.
@KrugmanTheKing - But people do not enjoy more leisure time because they are governed, rather in spite this fact.
How much more leisure time would people have if they didn't need to spend 40% of their time working to support the state, and it's interference in their lives. How much better would their conditions be, if 4/10 of the production of the nation were not wasted?
Nozick was intellectually capable, but he got many things wrong. Firstly, he got freedom upside down: we aren't born free... in the real world, we are only as free as circumstances allow. Mistake number two, he didn't account for a social system with his mind relations between people as a starting point, but with individuals. And the final fatal mistake: because of one an two, there could be no systematic responses to the problems his ideas would create.
I said the whole is no greater than the sum, but is only the aggregate of individual instances (in short, the result is dictated by number). If we follow his thought, no vote ever made a difference to the electoral outcome... for both statements to stand, we must counter-intuitively suppose that each vote mattered in proportion to its statistical weight.
To my sense, freedom is circumstantial and it's ironically freedom without rules which is slavery.
The problem is that you do not realize that the models which could support your answers fail to match reality: the conditions in which their answers are verified do apply to macroeconomics in every single instant.
Those ideas are useful to get a sense of how people would tend to go, but it's cutting corners round purposefully. The maximizing behavior is an assumption, but it leads it stupid conclusions: if you follow that, the Great Depression was the Great Vacation.
I didn't make up the wording, it's from Krugman. The claim I hold here is that freedom is potential and that if you change the conditions wherein people decide, you change the degree in which they are free.
In the Great Depression, people were involuntarily unemployed. Some were bounded not to work. If I borrow and spend as a government, I can prevent that... taxes will affect their lives later, but it will be the lesser of two wastes. And that's what happened with WWII.
Your vote has a probabilistic influence, that is to say, your answer matters, even if you are denied agreement to. The whole is no greater than the sum, but only merely the aggregate of plural individual instances... you have to universalize the process to realize that even a small portion of a decision is still a part of it.
When you are given the right to vote, you no longer are a slave.
Thought-provoking and concise. However I hold that slavery is inherent to any society, if I'm not enslaved by a state, then I'll be enslaved by something else, or enslaved by the collective consiousness. The only way to be truly free is to break away from mainstream society, something which the state allows you to do at the moment. With this in mind, what's the difference?
Thank you! In my view, to be enslaved by "the collective consciousness" seems more of a metaphor of how social forces can exert psychological restraint rather than actual slavery in which people are the property of others. But the reason we interact with people is that we value the mutual benefits of cooperation, and cooperation does not require anyone to be a slave. You don't have to live away from society to be free.
@ReasonAndLiberty It is unconvincing is because of its problems and contradictions. Anarchy State and Utopia is a very good book but all philosophies are convincing until you've read the counter arguments. You stop becoming a slave a 9 by the way, its just rhetorical, if you went in descending order from 9 to 1 the argument would have the opposite effect.
@ReasonAndLiberty Nozick says that people are entitled to the entirety of their labour, but in fact there's nothing in Nozick's theroy to protect people from having the fruits of the labour taken away by the companies people work for as they are in a capitalist system. Sure people own property that facilitates peoples production of goods but if that's your position then the state should be entitled to taxes because it facilitates the production of goods.
@cook119 Here's the breakdown: Someone owns capital. He contracts with labor to build him a factory which will then be his. Then he hires laborers, who under contract voluntarily give him the products of their labor in exchange for payment. All property rights are straight.
The owners don't simply "facilitate" production. They actually own the machinery. That's why they can control access to it.
The state doesn't own anything (especially private factories). Thus It cannot thus control them.
@ReasonAndLiberty Yea but he didn't work for that factory he got others too, and he sets the terms of the contact. Nozick does not specify the terms of what a just transfer is so it could be and in practice often is extortionate especially in countries with weak state apparatus. Owning the machinery and facilitating production are indistinguishable. The state does own things actually, you've misconceived of what the state is there, and therefore does facilitate production.
@ReasonAndLiberty That's not how it works in practice. You distinguished between those two things, I fail to see the distinction that's why I said that.
I see no difference between a physical threat and substantially undermining circumstances, except that in the first case, the issue is individual and, in the second, social.
The reason why many people do not see it is because the coercion which occurs in the second case is about something that didn't -- or rather couldn't -- take place. I wouldn't call just all contracts which are signed without threat because someone could fail to meet their responsibilities in this case.
If a factory owner is universally oppressive, no one will work for him, his revenues will be less than costs, and he will liquidate. If on the other hand, someone does work for him, it means that it is an improvement for his condition. Supply and demand.
It may seem strange, but as a society, I think we fail morally if there was something we could do without minimizing efficiency, but didn't. It reiterates the marxist concern about moral failing in that it's not an individual issue here: you aren't immoral for signing deals in the conditions you describe, but society could be. I disagree with him on socialism for obvious economical reasons, it's just to show how this might operate as critic.
@KrugmanTheKing There's no "society" but an aggregate of individuals. Society doesn't think, it doesn't feel, it doesn't "want." A large portion of the people in society may feel a certain way, but only individuals have free will. Systems do not.
"something we could do without minimizing efficiency, but don't"
All human action ipso facto is utility maximization. If we employ coercion, we are objectively decreasing people's utility.
Actually economists prove you wrong... All human actions are assumed to be maximizing utility in economic models, but if you have imperfect information, irrational beings, etc., you do not end up with an optimal result all the time.
That's the brilliance of intervention: you can institute conditions to affect the degrees of possibility and improve upon a free system efficiency.
When I say freedom without rules is slavery I mean to say that rules make you freer than not.
When I said that we fail as a society to meet our duty, it simply means that with regards to politics, if we can do something to improve the system, we should do it... if you want it to be the aggregate of individuals, then people fail with regards to politics individually.
@KrugmanTheKing Because interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible, making X better off at the expense of Y can never be shown to "benefit society." Society benefits as a whole only when non-coerced interactions take place.
Sure, you can act to change people's opinions, but not by instituting violence.
Respond to this video... Nozick says that taxes are equivalent to forced labour. But there are differences. In forced labour you are prescribed and a task, taxable labour can be do in any number of ways. In fact the state doesn't force you to work at all as it only taxes you earnings that are above the amount required for bare subsistence.
@cook119 Would you call a 100% tax slavery? If yes, then deciding where the labor goes is not a factor in determining slavehood or not. It's the taking of legitimate property.
@ReasonAndLiberty Taking a portion of what someone's earned is very different from slavery for many reasons. Indeed many people consent to taxation, for example in a republic it is a public decision weather people pay taxes. Nozick presents an interesting argument but it doesn't stand up more flexible less rigid ideas of justice are better applicable and theoretically better. I get the breakdown that's why i am aware of its flaws.
It's a matter of degree in terms of potential response. What's illegitimate here is not taking property, it's the situation it creates which is: it will never compensate for the harm it creates.
Taxing a bit, however might actually affect your possibilities positively, despite depriving you of a part of your production. You can be freer with an imposed limit than without. Get your eyes off the principle and look at how it applies and you will understand the irony here.
YES! have been wanting someone to make a really good video of the "Tale of a Slave" but am too cheap to buy video software to do it myself. Using Tom Woods audio was just the icing on the cake!
There is a central flaw in the question. Each stage lacks a clear definition, and instead relies on an implicit understanding of slavery. What this does is allow one to carry the well-defined meaning of slavery over a gradient of divisions in the viewers' minds. The end result is that if you are ignorant or uncritical of the definition of slavery, you are left with the feeling that democracy equals slavery, without a justifiable reason why.
@kDest Please pay attention to the video. A large portion of a person's income is taken away, and what they can put into their body is limited, and they can only influence such decisions if a tie should occur. But there has never been a tie.
Everyone being equally enslaved to everyone else, each person both a slavemaster and a slave, is not equivalent to freedom. That's the core message, and your do not address this amidst your waffle.
"Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others."
en.wikipedia (dot) org/wiki/Slavery
The fact that people can vote on how much of someone's income is taken away and what they can put into their body assumes the communal ownership of all individuals - otherwise people couldn't legitimately vote on such things. Thus the democratic state is an institution of slavery by the dictionary definition, since it is a situation in which human beings literally "own" others.
>>Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others
Thank you. Now watch your video again with that definition in mind. Do you see now how his question is misleading?
>>assumes the communal ownership of all individuals
Only if you axiomatically assume that the basis of law is ownership of everyone by the state, or everyone else. Otherwise what you just described is justified by the fact that these people occupy the same land, and must be able to coexist.
>>Thus the democratic state is an institution of slavery by the dictionary definition, since it is a situation in which human beings literally "own" others.
A democratic government is a voluntary institution which uses laws to maintain a standard of behavior that allows citizens to live together, and enforces empathy through tax programs, in order to benefit its society. Because it is voluntary, it cannot be called slavery. What you refer to as property is moral obligation.
@kDest A democratic government is clearly not voluntary. I'm curious as why you would suggest it is. Also, it does not enforce empathy through taxation. You, and many others, simply believe that is what it should to, but what it actually does is enforce what ever the few hundred people in power want it to (granting that they can get away with it as well). Also, what give you, an elected official, or a majority the right to decide what another person's obligations are?
@kDest Sure, it is voluntary in the same sense that a slave voluntarily works for his master. The slave could choose to put down his tools and stop working, but he would be punished. If I just stopped paying my taxes, I would be put in jail. If I renounced my citizenship, I would be deported, and would lose my property. This is not what is understood to be voluntary, it is just understood to be a choice.
>>Sure, it is voluntary in the same sense that a slave voluntarily works for his master
You assume the conclusion as the premise of your argument, and then use it to justify itself. We are by definition not slaves, because we are not property of anyone else. Therefore the best argument you can make is an abstract one.
>>If I just stopped paying my taxes
Your salary would be garnished, or you would be imprisoned, for not paying your debts on services (the state) you used.
@kDest - If the state decides how a large portion of our earnings are taken away, then yes that is slavery by definition since we are not permitted the full discretion of determining how our labor is used.
As for your admission on what happens if you do not pay such taxes, you seem to have admitted that the point Nozick was making was in fact true.
Not paying your debts is a violation of law. It has nothing to do with slavery.
>>then yes that is slavery by definition
Slavery is the institution of human property. If you do not wish to pay taxes, then you may choose to be poor, below the tax threshold, or you may choose to be a corporation, above the tax threshold.
@kDest - And since none of us agreed to those laws, being forced to pay for goods from a single "provider" (government) is thus done without consent.
Since I am limited in how I may acquire income in order to avoid taxation, the choices I am permitted to make in life without violating the discretion of others is arbitrarily limited. Thus taxation is in fact slavery.
>>And since none of us agreed to those laws, being forced to pay for goods from a single "provider" (government) is thus done without consent
You agreed to the law when you became a citizen. If you do not like the law, you are free to move at any time. You may even be deported. Landlord analogy again, choose a different apartment.
>>Thus taxation is in fact slavery.
Are you the property of someone else, in the literal sense? No. Ergo your assertion is flatly incorrect.
>>How I may decide what happens to the fruits of my own labor is partially dictated by government. Thus it is partial slavery
You are stuck in a logically invalid loop. I believe this is because you absorbed the libertarian axioms which prevent you from distinguishing between yourself and your labor.
>>The manipulation or controlling of any human being is slavery by definition
Con artists are not slavemasters. Prisoners are not slaves. Children are not slaves, etc.
@kDest - What distinction is there between myself and my labor that makes taxation consensual?
As for the false analogies you list, I would consider government to be just as much a con artist as any other criminal organization. Prisoners are slaves - they forfeit their rights because they chose to violate the rights of others. And children rely on parents because they are incapable of living independently of their parents. Any child that can provide for themselves is an exception.
>> Con artists are not slavemasters. Prisoners are not slaves. Children are not slaves, etc.
At least on a symbolic level most of those examples are in fact slaves or slavemasters. Personal manipulation is necessary at childhood but their inevitable indoctrination nontheless makes them a slave to the views and practises they are brought up with, likewise con artists are effectively a microcosm for the type of slavemaster that escapes the traditional view of slavery as this Tale suggests
>>At least on a symbolic level most of those examples are in fact slaves or slavemasters.
The context of this discussion are not figurative definitions of slavery, such as "my boss is a real slavedriver" or "Microsoft has made us slaves to Windows." The context is the primary definition of slavery, as in "Most colored men and women in the south before the second half of the 19th century were slaves."
This video exploits the ambiguity of the first so you'll assume the latter applies.
The definition is relatively simple: a slave is a person who is the property of someone else, either through voluntary contract (Indentured Servitude), involuntary exchange (people bought and sold, with an enforced legal status as non-persons or explicit property).
The video never makes clear what slavery is. It relies on your personal sense, despite the clear definitions of slavery which exist beside our own personal ones.
Because of this, it is impossible to give a stage where slavery ends. Because no clear definition is made, and the implied definition from the language is broad, each stage is slavery because in each stage there is no formal negation of the ability of people to own other people and each proceeding stage inherits the law of the former.
When watching the video, you need to ask yourself what slavery is precisely, and what each stage does to define slavery. It is vague by design.
Because of this, it is impossible to give a stage where slavery ends. Because no clear definition is made, and the implied definition from the language is broad, each stage is slavery because in each stage there is no formal negation of the ability of people to own other people and each proceeding stage inherits the law of the former.
When watching the video, you need to ask yourself what slavery is precisely, and what each stage does to define slavery. It is vague by design.
>> This video exploits the ambiguity of the first so you'll assume the latter applies.
That is really quite a ridiculous assertion. The ambiguous, figurative context of the word is applied in the Tale as a point of it representing the nature of the relationship between citizen and State and the use of the second context is merely to create the analogy. I'm sure none of the viewing audience really believe they are the literaly property of anyone from watching this.
So, essentially, your sole refutation is based in the medium of expression and is more pedantic than it is concerned with the point the video is attempting to convey. In which case it might do to point out your use of the word 'dishonest' suggests the video implies something falsely whereas you seem to believe it merely has the potential to mislead, as it never does explicitly assert we are 'proper slaves (property)'... No true scotsman believes taxes equal slavery.
>>your sole refutation is based in the medium of expression and is more pedantic than it is concerned with the point the video is attempting to convey
It is a matter of logical congruity, not pedantics. There is a conceptual difference between slavery as an institution and slavery as a metaphor, and attempting to stealthily replace one with the other is at best illogical, at worst dishonest.
Also, it has the potential to mislead precisely because it implies a false conclusion.
I think it's clear to anyone with half a brain watching this video that the man speaking, Tom Woods, is providing personal opinion on the profundity of Nozick's Tale. It's a very BRIEF tale as he also mentions, the fact you've managed to waffle this much over it startles me.
>>I think it's clear to anyone with half a brain watching this video that the man speaking, Tom Woods, is providing personal opinion on the profundity of Nozick's Tale.
He is using the tale to equate taxation with institutional slavery. He gets away with this by equivocating conceptual slavery with institutional slavery. That you cannot or will not accept this implied language suggests a personal bias brought on by self-affirming ideological prejudice.
It's quite obvious anyone will have a personal bias in concerns with ideological prejudice as it's impossible to be neutral about such a thing, any such bias has not disabled me from fully grasping that the hypothetical situation does not surmount to equating taxation with institutional slavery, but rather leans on both as anti-concepts to draw a fable-like picture.
>>as it's impossible to be neutral about such a thing
Right.
>>any such bias has not disabled me from fully grasping that the hypothetical situation does not surmount to equating taxation with institutional slavery, but rather leans on both as anti-concepts to draw a fable-like picture
Take it from someone who isn't a member of your ideology, but an outsider observing your kind, that this video does precisely what you believe it doesn't.
To use a prosaic example, if you refuse to pay your rent the landlord may evict you, our garnish your wages, or in cases of extreme belligerence on your part, even imprison you. This is not slavery. It is an agreement you made: you have a room, you pay rent. In our nation, you are provided free military, police, courts, streets, etc. and in exchange you pay taxes. If you dislike the taxes, you may find another apartment (country).
@kDest - The landlord objection fails because they are not territorial sovereigns, you agree to the matter because you choose to enter a contract with that landlord. Where is the equivalent agreement with respect to government control?
And how are all those things you list free if we must pay taxes for them?
@kDest - So you admit in the last sentence of your first paragraph that we are forced to pay for them. Thus your claim that these are free things is refuted by your own admission.
Why does government have the right to impose it's will upon those who live within it's declared borders unless they leave the country altogether? You are begging the question by assuming they already have legitimate power over everyone.
>>So you admit in the last sentence of your first paragraph that we are forced to pay for them
You are "forced" if you choose to become a citizen and incur a debt to the services. If you become a corporation, very poor, or otherwise tax exempt you do not pay for these services.
>>refuted by your own admission
"Free" has multiple meanings.
>>Why does government have the right
They own the territory. You make a contract, called citizenship, to have permission to use their land.
@kDest - Why does government have the right to force me to pay taxes just for living in a certain region? And if my discretion must be limited in order to avoid such measures, how are they voluntary?
Free means you need not pay for it. Commonly accepted definition.
And why does government have a right to the territory?
@kDest - I think you should take a look at "Constitutional Legitimacy" by Randy Barnett and explain your disagreements with it before I recommend it to anyone else.
Section B, "Why 'We the People' is a Fiction" deals with the very same landlord objection you are putting forth.
That is correct. This is why we invent institutions run by people who, though they may not have personal empathy for the individuals cared for by the state, care enough about the problems these people face that they may make political decisions on their behalf, devise aid programs for them, are part of political activism, etc.
None of this is perfect, but it is an improvement from earlier generations of programs and lack thereof.
>>How are these consensual institutions if we have little if any efficacy in deciding who may run
Consent has nothing to do with who is in power or how they govern. Consent deals with your ability to choose to participate in the country, either actively by acquiring citizenship, passively by birth, and your ability to leave the nation at any time.
>>The landlord objection fails
It is an exact analogy. Your inability to perceive the services you pay for does not negate them.
@kDest - It has everything to do with how the people got in power. If you had no control over the outcome then how can you argue anyone consented to government control in the first place?
And no, the landlord analogy fails because landlords are not territorial sovereigns, they produce enough wealth via their labor to legitimately decide how their apartment is used, and the people he collects rent from agreed to the process. Neither is the case for government.
>>If you had no control over the outcome then how can you argue anyone consented to government control in the first place?
You choose voluntarily to maintain citizenship in the state. You may freely move to other states which suit your ideology. You will of course find that your ideology does not work in the real world, so there are few if any libertarian utopias.
>>the landlord analogy fails
It does not. You choose to make the analogy what it isn't.
@kDest - Why does the state have the right to impose it's will as long as I reside in a certain territory? When did I give it the authority to have such power?
And explain to me how the landlord analogy is valid if they acquired the building with their own wealth and the people living there explicitly agreed to pay rent? Where are such parallels with respect to government?
>>Where are such parallels with respect to government?
The government acquired the claim to the territory. It (loosely) owns it. Residents consent to the law of their land by becoming citizens, or maintaining residence at the territory.
>>Free means you need not pay for it
It also means available to everyone, accessible, etc.
>>how are they voluntary?
You choose (volunteer) to live here. You could always emigrate, but you prefer to complain.
@kDest - If we are incapable of "feeling" for distant people under market circumstances then how could we have voluntarily chosen to have wealth confiscated for the benefit of other people?
>>how could we have voluntarily chosen to have wealth confiscated for the benefit of other people
There is an obvious difference between being aware, and feeling empathy. We are aware of poverty, but cannot feel empathy for the millions of Americans who live in it.
>>Also, what give you, an elected official, or a majority the right to decide what another person's obligations are?
If you cannot understand this, then take a civics course. It is our basic social contract that we as the governed sustain our government and abide by rules which exist to arbitrate moral and ethical issues between diverse and complicated cultures that must exist together.
No, the error is the conceptual one of conflating slavery as an institution with slavery as an abstract concept. The author could have maliciously equivocated the concept, but he could also simply have muddy thinking.
>>The modern slavery has no institution? LOL. I like your wool sunglasses.
Confusing the abstract concept of slavery with an institution of slavery, and then asserting we have one because the abstract concept may apply under certain rhetorical circumstances, is pure sophistry.
@kDest - Slavery is the inability to make full choices for yourself without affecting the ability of other people to do the same. All phases by this criterion are thus slavery.
>>Slavery is the inability to make full choices for yourself without affecting the ability of other people to do the same.
Incorrect. Look up the definition of slavery. It is a matter of property.
>>All phases by this criterion are thus slavery.
It does not matter if you redefine slavery to suit the video, it is still incorrect. You would be equivocating if you attempted to validate the video by redefining slavery to suit it, so that it applies to the standard definition.
>>If you admit it is a matter of property than where is my misunderstanding of slavery?
Slavery is exactly the ability of people to become property. It does not extend to their private personal possessions. Slavery does not recognize these as portions of the person, therefore one may tax a person and it is not slavery.
>>And how do you think I redefined it in the first place?
You conveniently redefined it so that taxation is slavery.
@kDest - Yes, it very well does extend to how people may use their possessions since they acquired those forms of wealth via their own labor. Thus controlling those possessions is the same as controlling how one may use their own labor.
Taxation is without consent, so yes I define it as what it is.
>>Then what IS? Being a negro with chains is the ONLY form of slavery?
Slavery is a state where a person is the property of another person, either voluntarily through contract (indentured servitude) or involuntarily through trade or conquest (slavery as it is commonly known). In the United States it is not possible for another person to legally own another person. One can detain another person, and that is the closest legal comparison, despite completely different processes.
>>Not owning yourself and the product of your labor IS THE DEFINITION of slavery
The first part is the only one which defines it. The second criterion is irrelevant.
>>If someone takes your income away, then YOU ARE A SLAVE BY DEFINITION
Living in a society is not free. For the protection afforded by it, the rights, the courts, the military, etc. you pay a portion of your income to sustain it. You are flatly mistaken.
@kDest - Owning the product of your labor is indeed perfectly relevant to whether or not one is in a state of slavery. If you are not given the full discretion of how the product of your own labor is used, then that labor is consequently not within your control. Hence taxation is a form of partial slavery.
To clearly show the actual stages one would have to at least include all the US statue code. I think that would be impossible for one human to talk about in their entire lifetime. Probably more than a 1000 humans could talk about. Probably more than 1,000,000.
@kDest "The end result is that if you are ignorant or uncritical of the definition of slavery, you are left with the feeling that democracy equals slavery, without a justifiable reason why."
LOL, when truth "gives you a bad feeling", surely the truth must be wrong, right? HAHAHA.
These notes show how he failed. He didn't approach the problem thinking of that stuff as a system of people interacting and of them being influential over one another in doing so.
If you don't do that, you cannot realize it doesn't make sense to say that your vote doesn't count. Then whose vote counts? It can't be the one which breaks the tie when counting them since the order doesn't change the results, but something must count somewhere for a decision to be made.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing The irrational masses go out to vote. Yes. It happens. Sad that they make poor cost calculations.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
Actually economists prove you wrong... All human actions are assumed to be maximizing utility in economic models, but if you have imperfect information, irrational beings, etc., you do not end up with an optimal result all the time.
That's the brilliance of intervention: you can institute conditions to affect the degrees of possibility and improve upon a free system efficiency.
When I say freedom without rules is slavery I mean to say that rules can make you freer.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing "you do not end up with an optimal result all the time"
Haha, not in accordance with "perfect competition", but only because perfect competition is neither attainable nor desirable.
There is no "optimal result" in economics but the satisfaction of people's wants given other people's desires to provide for those wants.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
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@ReasonAndLiberty
Oh, you don't understand what optimal means... "the satisfaction of people's wants given other people's desires to provide for those wants" -- well those are utility-driven concerns.
Where on the graphic do we manage to get both at once? Equilibrium. It's the only place you can end up with no one being frustrated. There, sellers are happy because they got as much as possible for what they sell; buyers are happy because they got as much as possible for their money.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
It's not a thoughtless idea that of efficiency... if you really want to bring up economics, continue to the conclusion until the end. An optimal result is everyone satisfied; if we are bellow that, then there is space for improvement.
Do you know what that means? More people satisfied without making others worst off -- that's a Pareto improvement.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Oh, quite correctly. And voluntary trade is the only way to ensure Pareto movements. Taxation is exactly not, because you make one group off better than another :P
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
Taxation can improve the efficiency of the entire system. Say I use fiscal policy in a crisis... the impact is obviously short term, but if I did it well enough, we're back near full employment. That means rich people will have more clients... even if I tax them, the tax is just asking everyone to pay to compensate the waste everyone created in the first place.
But it's indeed arguable whether all of the best solutions don't upset some rich people.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
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@KrugmanTheKing " if I tax them, the tax is just asking everyone to pay to compensate the waste everyone created in the first place."
I'm sorry, how did "everyone" create the crisis in the first place? If you'd like to blame Greenspan, be my guest. His interest policies are what caused this mess.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
It's out of the blue, but your icon with the guy and the wine glass is an epic picture.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Ah, I "stole" it from LulzSec
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
Anyway, he's a nice little picture... lol
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
What I am telling you is absolutely true: you can institute rules to make people freer.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Depending on your definition of "free", sure! For Socialists it's one thing, for Libertarians another, for Democrats a third, and Republicans a fourth. What do you mean by "freer"?
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
Freedom as I describe it is material. It's a matter of degree of possibilities with regard to personal preferences as well. I understand freedom the same way you'd use it applying it to say screws: it's the space you have around, the margins wherein you can play.
If I consider those questions this way, I can solve dilemmas and I can propose solutions that will work. If I take any other, I am stuck with an idealist standpoint: it can't be reconciled with anything.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
I can understand that a man who can say no when he's asked something is freer than someone who can't, but I wouldn't say he's as free as he can get. A Libertarian would tell me that guy made a decision in absence of coercion, so he's free... I am sorry, but that's a false dichotomy. I'd say that in many case, those people neither feel free, nor truly are: when you're given the choice between two bad options, there's place for improvement.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
I'd quite frankly admit a form of social coercion, of limits within which one operates to solve that issue. It avoids me to make stupid conclusions like life is what you make of it... well, no: you can't play with cards that aren't in your hand.
I hate both notions of determinism and absolute freedom because they just can't apply outside of a thought vacuum. We need to think in terms of degrees and I think Nozick miserably missed the point here.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
You are better off here than people in medieval times and they were better than slaves in ancient times. What Nozick did here is a nice feat of rhetoric, period. Very nice, treat people as slaves because they are governed. Once you think for a second, you realize it's quite different. People enjoy more leisure time, can do more things, express their opinions, improve upon their conditions... why didn't he notice it? Because he made a false dichotomy.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing I agree, in the end, you are the master of your own destiny, no matter what the goverment, society, parents our friends think or say about it. Unless they do something about it and phisically restrain you for doing what in the absence of coercion you would had otherwise done, thats the only precondition to true freedom.
megatherium100 1 month ago
@megatherium100
No, freedom isn't about necessarily an absence of physical constraint. Freedom bears relevance in social structure depending on what kind of relations you have toward certain institutions, that is to say: it's all about relations of power.
I would certainly agree that the State because of its centralized control over different fields of our lives is a coercive institutions, but it's one of the least coercive in the so-called liberal democracies.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing "...State ... but it's one of the least coercive in the so-called liberal democracies."
Allow me to introduce you to something you've obviously never heard of before.
JAIL
This is where they put you when you don't pay their extortion. How do they get you there? Easy, they point something at you, something you conveniently ignore.
A GUN
But jails and guns are insufficient. There a too many peons. They need something else.
IDIOTS LIKE YOU.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@jeffiek
I think that you're missing the whole point. The extortion is done by any institution that bear an economic authority over other people... at least, you can vote at the State level, criticize, petition and organize opposition, but you can't do that with your boss: you have no influence over the policies put in place. Corporations are totalitarian institutions, orders always flowing from above.
The State is least coercive, more democratic.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Try telling the government to "fuck off" when the want your home ( see Kelo ), try telling them to "fuck off" when they want your ass in a rice paddy in Vietnam, try telling them to "fuck off" when they want you to pay for killing thousands of innocent children in Iraq.
I can, and have, told my "boss" to fuck off. Didn't get thrown in jail, didn't get shot.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing "Corporations are totalitarian"
The state needs useful idiots like you, ones that twist words and deceive.
Totalitarianism is a POLITICAL system. wikipedia. org/wiki/Totalitarianism
There is a real definition. Not made up crap.
They need idiots that IGNORE the weapons they use as backup. At best this qualifies you as IGNORANT ( wikipedia. org/wiki/Ignorance ), at worst an outright liar.
The doors at work are never locked to keep you IN. The doors on JAILS are.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@jeffiek
Actually we don't say system, we'd say regime -- that's the first mistake. The second one is that I was specifically qualify an institution using an adjective: I wasn't using totalitarianism, but totalitarian institution.
By definition, it means an authority-based social structure within which orders flow from above and wherein only those bellow are accountable to the authority -- the authority not being accountable to them. That's what is a totalitarian/authoritarian institution.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@jeffiek
We can say that the Supreme Soviet in the USSR was a totalitarian institution, but so can I say that corporations are because they show the same hierarchical structure.
The coercion they exercise is structural: having no means to control your production, you are left with as only option selling your production potential, that is to say, you ought to rent yourself, to sell your person.
They don't need guns, they just to threaten you of poverty, social stigmas or, if without social
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@jeffiek
programs, of starvation... Choosing your boss is essentially choosing your master, but it's not freedom since it again relies on surrendering your control over your work -- and very heavily so most of the time.
And you shouldn't say the State at all, but those who govern. If you didn't realize, policies only reflect social will when people organize; if not, they follow privileged interests through many means.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@jeffiek
So long as the private property of the means of production exists, politics will be the shadow of business cast over our society, to paraphrase John Dewey: private interests will rule the country.
State control isn't much better... it's only better provided you have influence over the officials -- that is, if they are in some way accountable. The absolute best would for workers to directly own the places wherein which they work.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Get back to me when you can admit the existence of jails and guns and who uses them.
You are in denial. Take your sorry ignorant ass and get help.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@jeffiek
I'm not in denial... I told you where to look at and that the State was simply more than often the lesser of two evils. I concede upfront that it's coercive: I said it was less authoritarian, more democratic than corporations.
It's all down to how does the institution structure power into social relations... corporations are one way downward; there's at least some reciprocal features between a democratic State and the nation.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Oh, you're in denial all right. I jumped in when you posted this:
"I would certainly agree that the State because of its centralized control over different fields of our lives is a coercive institutions, but it's one of the LEAST coercive in the so-called liberal democracies." (emphasis added)
I pointed out many ways the state uses GUNS and JAILS in the MOST coercive manner of all - VIOLENCE.
You have not refuted a single point.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing You're so far in denial, it appears that you can't even type the word GUN or JAIL. I can't find either in any of you posts.
jeffiek 1 month ago
@megatherium100
And the technical detail here is that you do not seem to realize that corporation, and in fact to various degrees, any form of organization of labor that implies private ownership of the means of production, constitute the most coercive social structure in our society.
These are real tyrannies wherein people above send the orders bellow -- it's the hierarchical structure that isn't responsive to popular pressures and is never held accountable to them that is tyrannical.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@megatherium100
I don't know how far more away from freedom you wanna get than this, but industries run on this principle that everyone answers to the person above, but the person above doesn't have to respond to those bellow. We could very well say of workers that they are slaves because they do not own themselves, nor do they have control over their production: there is no difference between selling yourself and renting yourself.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@megatherium100
Why wouldn't I want to suppress the State immediately or even think about rendering it ineffective? Because in concrete and practical terms it means selling people's fate and lives to the greatest bid and handing all the decision power to tyrants.
If you want freedom, you need reciprocity in the processing of decisions and directions. Any structure that deviates from that is by definition authoritarian and private ownership is exactly that which is far worst than a State.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@megatherium100
To the extent that a State is democratic, it's far better than a private tyranny.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing - But people do not enjoy more leisure time because they are governed, rather in spite this fact.
How much more leisure time would people have if they didn't need to spend 40% of their time working to support the state, and it's interference in their lives. How much better would their conditions be, if 4/10 of the production of the nation were not wasted?
mpc91 1 month ago
Nozick was intellectually capable, but he got many things wrong. Firstly, he got freedom upside down: we aren't born free... in the real world, we are only as free as circumstances allow. Mistake number two, he didn't account for a social system with his mind relations between people as a starting point, but with individuals. And the final fatal mistake: because of one an two, there could be no systematic responses to the problems his ideas would create.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
I said the whole is no greater than the sum, but is only the aggregate of individual instances (in short, the result is dictated by number). If we follow his thought, no vote ever made a difference to the electoral outcome... for both statements to stand, we must counter-intuitively suppose that each vote mattered in proportion to its statistical weight.
To my sense, freedom is circumstantial and it's ironically freedom without rules which is slavery.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing "freedom without rules which is slavery"
I fail to see ANYONE who advocates this.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
The problem is that you do not realize that the models which could support your answers fail to match reality: the conditions in which their answers are verified do apply to macroeconomics in every single instant.
Those ideas are useful to get a sense of how people would tend to go, but it's cutting corners round purposefully. The maximizing behavior is an assumption, but it leads it stupid conclusions: if you follow that, the Great Depression was the Great Vacation.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
I didn't make up the wording, it's from Krugman. The claim I hold here is that freedom is potential and that if you change the conditions wherein people decide, you change the degree in which they are free.
In the Great Depression, people were involuntarily unemployed. Some were bounded not to work. If I borrow and spend as a government, I can prevent that... taxes will affect their lives later, but it will be the lesser of two wastes. And that's what happened with WWII.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@StatelessLiberty
No, Nozick got the idea wrong.
Your vote has a probabilistic influence, that is to say, your answer matters, even if you are denied agreement to. The whole is no greater than the sum, but only merely the aggregate of plural individual instances... you have to universalize the process to realize that even a small portion of a decision is still a part of it.
When you are given the right to vote, you no longer are a slave.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing "When you are given the right to vote, you no longer are a slave."
Just because they decided to let you blabber on for a few more seconds before they slit your throat you are then no longer aggressed against?
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
Flawed. Being able to vote is not being not a slave. What if I don't want to participate, period? Still assuming that taxation is legitimate, are we?
SomethingSea1 3 months ago
What is the piano music in the background?
AdHavoc 5 months ago
@AdHavoc
It's "Earth: The Pale Blue Dot (Instrumental)" by Michael Marantz
The short film it was used in can be found here: /watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0
I bought it from here: itunes (dot) apple (dot) com/us/album/earth-the-pale-blue-dot-instrumental/id414747613?i=414747637&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
StatelessLiberty 5 months ago
To compliment this excellent video listen to Bill Hicks and George Carlin.
The financial donors of Republicans and Democrats benefit from lack of awareness.
People with lifestyles of apathy and indifference are part of the problem this video speaks about.
lamourlupus 5 months ago
Thought-provoking and concise. However I hold that slavery is inherent to any society, if I'm not enslaved by a state, then I'll be enslaved by something else, or enslaved by the collective consiousness. The only way to be truly free is to break away from mainstream society, something which the state allows you to do at the moment. With this in mind, what's the difference?
DeoMachina 5 months ago
@DeoMachina
Thank you! In my view, to be enslaved by "the collective consciousness" seems more of a metaphor of how social forces can exert psychological restraint rather than actual slavery in which people are the property of others. But the reason we interact with people is that we value the mutual benefits of cooperation, and cooperation does not require anyone to be a slave. You don't have to live away from society to be free.
StatelessLiberty 5 months ago
To those still unconvinced, consider looking up "George Ought To Help" online and watch the video.
This is not a utopian dream or intellectual fancy. This is real life. Real guns. Real property.
ReasonAndLiberty 5 months ago 10
@ReasonAndLiberty - I second your endorsement.
That video is probably the best summarization of why compassion by force is not compassion at all!
Hope bitbutter keeps making more vids in the future of that caliber.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty It is unconvincing is because of its problems and contradictions. Anarchy State and Utopia is a very good book but all philosophies are convincing until you've read the counter arguments. You stop becoming a slave a 9 by the way, its just rhetorical, if you went in descending order from 9 to 1 the argument would have the opposite effect.
cook119 4 months ago
@cook119 Examples of said problems?
ReasonAndLiberty 4 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty Nozick says that people are entitled to the entirety of their labour, but in fact there's nothing in Nozick's theroy to protect people from having the fruits of the labour taken away by the companies people work for as they are in a capitalist system. Sure people own property that facilitates peoples production of goods but if that's your position then the state should be entitled to taxes because it facilitates the production of goods.
cook119 4 months ago
@cook119 Here's the breakdown: Someone owns capital. He contracts with labor to build him a factory which will then be his. Then he hires laborers, who under contract voluntarily give him the products of their labor in exchange for payment. All property rights are straight.
The owners don't simply "facilitate" production. They actually own the machinery. That's why they can control access to it.
The state doesn't own anything (especially private factories). Thus It cannot thus control them.
ReasonAndLiberty 3 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty Yea but he didn't work for that factory he got others too, and he sets the terms of the contact. Nozick does not specify the terms of what a just transfer is so it could be and in practice often is extortionate especially in countries with weak state apparatus. Owning the machinery and facilitating production are indistinguishable. The state does own things actually, you've misconceived of what the state is there, and therefore does facilitate production.
cook119 3 months ago
@cook119 If no one likes the contract, they need not sign it. A just transfer is any which is not backed by a threat of coercion.
"Owning the machinery and facilitating production are indistinguishable"
How so?
ReasonAndLiberty 3 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty That's not how it works in practice. You distinguished between those two things, I fail to see the distinction that's why I said that.
cook119 3 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
I see no difference between a physical threat and substantially undermining circumstances, except that in the first case, the issue is individual and, in the second, social.
The reason why many people do not see it is because the coercion which occurs in the second case is about something that didn't -- or rather couldn't -- take place. I wouldn't call just all contracts which are signed without threat because someone could fail to meet their responsibilities in this case.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
Comment removed
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Causation is the entire difference.
If a factory owner is universally oppressive, no one will work for him, his revenues will be less than costs, and he will liquidate. If on the other hand, someone does work for him, it means that it is an improvement for his condition. Supply and demand.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
It may seem strange, but as a society, I think we fail morally if there was something we could do without minimizing efficiency, but didn't. It reiterates the marxist concern about moral failing in that it's not an individual issue here: you aren't immoral for signing deals in the conditions you describe, but society could be. I disagree with him on socialism for obvious economical reasons, it's just to show how this might operate as critic.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing There's no "society" but an aggregate of individuals. Society doesn't think, it doesn't feel, it doesn't "want." A large portion of the people in society may feel a certain way, but only individuals have free will. Systems do not.
"something we could do without minimizing efficiency, but don't"
All human action ipso facto is utility maximization. If we employ coercion, we are objectively decreasing people's utility.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
Actually economists prove you wrong... All human actions are assumed to be maximizing utility in economic models, but if you have imperfect information, irrational beings, etc., you do not end up with an optimal result all the time.
That's the brilliance of intervention: you can institute conditions to affect the degrees of possibility and improve upon a free system efficiency.
When I say freedom without rules is slavery I mean to say that rules make you freer than not.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
When I said that we fail as a society to meet our duty, it simply means that with regards to politics, if we can do something to improve the system, we should do it... if you want it to be the aggregate of individuals, then people fail with regards to politics individually.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing Because interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible, making X better off at the expense of Y can never be shown to "benefit society." Society benefits as a whole only when non-coerced interactions take place.
Sure, you can act to change people's opinions, but not by instituting violence.
ReasonAndLiberty 1 month ago
Respond to this video... Nozick says that taxes are equivalent to forced labour. But there are differences. In forced labour you are prescribed and a task, taxable labour can be do in any number of ways. In fact the state doesn't force you to work at all as it only taxes you earnings that are above the amount required for bare subsistence.
cook119 4 months ago
@cook119 Would you call a 100% tax slavery? If yes, then deciding where the labor goes is not a factor in determining slavehood or not. It's the taking of legitimate property.
ReasonAndLiberty 3 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty Taking a portion of what someone's earned is very different from slavery for many reasons. Indeed many people consent to taxation, for example in a republic it is a public decision weather people pay taxes. Nozick presents an interesting argument but it doesn't stand up more flexible less rigid ideas of justice are better applicable and theoretically better. I get the breakdown that's why i am aware of its flaws.
cook119 3 months ago
@ReasonAndLiberty
It's a matter of degree in terms of potential response. What's illegitimate here is not taking property, it's the situation it creates which is: it will never compensate for the harm it creates.
Taxing a bit, however might actually affect your possibilities positively, despite depriving you of a part of your production. You can be freer with an imposed limit than without. Get your eyes off the principle and look at how it applies and you will understand the irony here.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
Respond to this video... Basically read a book, any book on political philosophy and it will have loads of these.
cook119 4 months ago
YES! have been wanting someone to make a really good video of the "Tale of a Slave" but am too cheap to buy video software to do it myself. Using Tom Woods audio was just the icing on the cake!
BigDaddyDJD 5 months ago
Amazing video, never thought of it this way.
MrFireballbren 5 months ago
@MrFireballbren Appreciate the complement!
StatelessLiberty 5 months ago
I see what you did there. =)
MrFireballbren 5 months ago
This is GENIUS!
jtizz711 5 months ago
Good job with the video.
Nielsio 5 months ago 5
@Nielsio Thanks a lot!
StatelessLiberty 5 months ago
There is a central flaw in the question. Each stage lacks a clear definition, and instead relies on an implicit understanding of slavery. What this does is allow one to carry the well-defined meaning of slavery over a gradient of divisions in the viewers' minds. The end result is that if you are ignorant or uncritical of the definition of slavery, you are left with the feeling that democracy equals slavery, without a justifiable reason why.
kDest 6 months ago
@kDest Please pay attention to the video. A large portion of a person's income is taken away, and what they can put into their body is limited, and they can only influence such decisions if a tie should occur. But there has never been a tie.
Everyone being equally enslaved to everyone else, each person both a slavemaster and a slave, is not equivalent to freedom. That's the core message, and your do not address this amidst your waffle.
StatelessLiberty 6 months ago 9
@StatelessLiberty
>>A large portion of a person's income is taken away
Not slavery.
>>what they can put into their body is limited
Not slavery.
>>they can only influence such decisions if a tie should occur
Not slavery.
>>Everyone being equally enslaved to everyone else
And there you have it. You conflate slavery, the institution, with slavery, the conceptual adjective.
You made the conceptual error as the creator of this video intended you to make.
kDest 6 months ago
@kDest
"Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others."
en.wikipedia (dot) org/wiki/Slavery
The fact that people can vote on how much of someone's income is taken away and what they can put into their body assumes the communal ownership of all individuals - otherwise people couldn't legitimately vote on such things. Thus the democratic state is an institution of slavery by the dictionary definition, since it is a situation in which human beings literally "own" others.
StatelessLiberty 6 months ago 17
@StatelessLiberty
>>Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others
Thank you. Now watch your video again with that definition in mind. Do you see now how his question is misleading?
>>assumes the communal ownership of all individuals
Only if you axiomatically assume that the basis of law is ownership of everyone by the state, or everyone else. Otherwise what you just described is justified by the fact that these people occupy the same land, and must be able to coexist.
kDest 5 months ago
@StatelessLiberty
>>Thus the democratic state is an institution of slavery by the dictionary definition, since it is a situation in which human beings literally "own" others.
A democratic government is a voluntary institution which uses laws to maintain a standard of behavior that allows citizens to live together, and enforces empathy through tax programs, in order to benefit its society. Because it is voluntary, it cannot be called slavery. What you refer to as property is moral obligation.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest A democratic government is clearly not voluntary. I'm curious as why you would suggest it is. Also, it does not enforce empathy through taxation. You, and many others, simply believe that is what it should to, but what it actually does is enforce what ever the few hundred people in power want it to (granting that they can get away with it as well). Also, what give you, an elected official, or a majority the right to decide what another person's obligations are?
triath999 5 months ago
@triath999
>>A democratic government is clearly not voluntary.
A democratic government derives its authority from the consent of those it governs. This is by definition voluntary.
>>I'm curious as why you would suggest it is.
If you do not agree with the state's citizenship contract, you may leave it at any time.
>>Also, it does not enforce empathy through taxation.
Social programs are an example of a state helping people that would be ignored due to our inability to feel for distant people.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest Sure, it is voluntary in the same sense that a slave voluntarily works for his master. The slave could choose to put down his tools and stop working, but he would be punished. If I just stopped paying my taxes, I would be put in jail. If I renounced my citizenship, I would be deported, and would lose my property. This is not what is understood to be voluntary, it is just understood to be a choice.
triath999 5 months ago
@triath999
>>Sure, it is voluntary in the same sense that a slave voluntarily works for his master
You assume the conclusion as the premise of your argument, and then use it to justify itself. We are by definition not slaves, because we are not property of anyone else. Therefore the best argument you can make is an abstract one.
>>If I just stopped paying my taxes
Your salary would be garnished, or you would be imprisoned, for not paying your debts on services (the state) you used.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - If the state decides how a large portion of our earnings are taken away, then yes that is slavery by definition since we are not permitted the full discretion of determining how our labor is used.
As for your admission on what happens if you do not pay such taxes, you seem to have admitted that the point Nozick was making was in fact true.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>the point Nozick was making
Not paying your debts is a violation of law. It has nothing to do with slavery.
>>then yes that is slavery by definition
Slavery is the institution of human property. If you do not wish to pay taxes, then you may choose to be poor, below the tax threshold, or you may choose to be a corporation, above the tax threshold.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - And since none of us agreed to those laws, being forced to pay for goods from a single "provider" (government) is thus done without consent.
Since I am limited in how I may acquire income in order to avoid taxation, the choices I am permitted to make in life without violating the discretion of others is arbitrarily limited. Thus taxation is in fact slavery.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>And since none of us agreed to those laws, being forced to pay for goods from a single "provider" (government) is thus done without consent
You agreed to the law when you became a citizen. If you do not like the law, you are free to move at any time. You may even be deported. Landlord analogy again, choose a different apartment.
>>Thus taxation is in fact slavery.
Are you the property of someone else, in the literal sense? No. Ergo your assertion is flatly incorrect.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - How did I agree to become a citizen? And why does government have the right to declare me as such just for being born under it's control?
How I may decide what happens to the fruits of my own labor is partially dictated by government. Thus it is partial slavery.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>How I may decide what happens to the fruits of my own labor is partially dictated by government. Thus it is partial slavery
You are stuck in a logically invalid loop. I believe this is because you absorbed the libertarian axioms which prevent you from distinguishing between yourself and your labor.
>>The manipulation or controlling of any human being is slavery by definition
Con artists are not slavemasters. Prisoners are not slaves. Children are not slaves, etc.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - What distinction is there between myself and my labor that makes taxation consensual?
As for the false analogies you list, I would consider government to be just as much a con artist as any other criminal organization. Prisoners are slaves - they forfeit their rights because they chose to violate the rights of others. And children rely on parents because they are incapable of living independently of their parents. Any child that can provide for themselves is an exception.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>What distinction is there between myself and my labor that makes taxation consensual?
Consent has nothing to do with it. Answer a simple question: are you literal property? That is what slavery means.
>>I would consider government
It doesn't matter what you consider government to be.
>>Prisoners are slaves
They are actually detained citizens. They are not owned by anybody, but special laws keep society safe by restraining them.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Yes, my body is my own property.
Government has no valid right over the territory it claims.
I guess with respect to prisoners I can agree they are not slaves if they forfeited their freedom by disrupting the freedom of others.
StateExempt 5 months ago
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@StateExempt
>>Yes, my body is my own property
Incorrect. Your body is not property. The moment it becomes property it can be bought and sold.
>>Government has no valid right over the territory it claims
This is just an empty assertion. Government has legitimate right for the same reason any property rights exist.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
>> Con artists are not slavemasters. Prisoners are not slaves. Children are not slaves, etc.
At least on a symbolic level most of those examples are in fact slaves or slavemasters. Personal manipulation is necessary at childhood but their inevitable indoctrination nontheless makes them a slave to the views and practises they are brought up with, likewise con artists are effectively a microcosm for the type of slavemaster that escapes the traditional view of slavery as this Tale suggests
jam11049 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>At least on a symbolic level most of those examples are in fact slaves or slavemasters.
The context of this discussion are not figurative definitions of slavery, such as "my boss is a real slavedriver" or "Microsoft has made us slaves to Windows." The context is the primary definition of slavery, as in "Most colored men and women in the south before the second half of the 19th century were slaves."
This video exploits the ambiguity of the first so you'll assume the latter applies.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest Why not produce an explicit definition of slavery and say at which stage in the tale the slavery ends.
StatelessLiberty 5 months ago
@StatelessLiberty
The definition is relatively simple: a slave is a person who is the property of someone else, either through voluntary contract (Indentured Servitude), involuntary exchange (people bought and sold, with an enforced legal status as non-persons or explicit property).
The video never makes clear what slavery is. It relies on your personal sense, despite the clear definitions of slavery which exist beside our own personal ones.
kDest 5 months ago
@StatelessLiberty
Because of this, it is impossible to give a stage where slavery ends. Because no clear definition is made, and the implied definition from the language is broad, each stage is slavery because in each stage there is no formal negation of the ability of people to own other people and each proceeding stage inherits the law of the former.
When watching the video, you need to ask yourself what slavery is precisely, and what each stage does to define slavery. It is vague by design.
kDest 5 months ago
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@StatelessLiberty
Because of this, it is impossible to give a stage where slavery ends. Because no clear definition is made, and the implied definition from the language is broad, each stage is slavery because in each stage there is no formal negation of the ability of people to own other people and each proceeding stage inherits the law of the former.
When watching the video, you need to ask yourself what slavery is precisely, and what each stage does to define slavery. It is vague by design.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
>> This video exploits the ambiguity of the first so you'll assume the latter applies.
That is really quite a ridiculous assertion. The ambiguous, figurative context of the word is applied in the Tale as a point of it representing the nature of the relationship between citizen and State and the use of the second context is merely to create the analogy. I'm sure none of the viewing audience really believe they are the literaly property of anyone from watching this.
jam11049 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>as a point of it representing the nature of the relationship between citizen and State
Which is used incorrectly when it attempts to justify the assertion that we are proper slaves (property).
>>the use of the second context is merely to create the analogy
Not really. The figurative use of the word speaks for itself. Its inclusion is dishonest.
>>none of the viewing audience really believe they are the literaly property
Except they do. They believe taxes equal slavery.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
So, essentially, your sole refutation is based in the medium of expression and is more pedantic than it is concerned with the point the video is attempting to convey. In which case it might do to point out your use of the word 'dishonest' suggests the video implies something falsely whereas you seem to believe it merely has the potential to mislead, as it never does explicitly assert we are 'proper slaves (property)'... No true scotsman believes taxes equal slavery.
jam11049 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>your sole refutation is based in the medium of expression and is more pedantic than it is concerned with the point the video is attempting to convey
It is a matter of logical congruity, not pedantics. There is a conceptual difference between slavery as an institution and slavery as a metaphor, and attempting to stealthily replace one with the other is at best illogical, at worst dishonest.
Also, it has the potential to mislead precisely because it implies a false conclusion.
kDest 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>as it never does explicitly assert we are 'proper slaves (property)'... No true scotsman believes taxes equal slavery
Watch the end of the video, where it mentions taxes. It does not assert it openly but clearly implies that taxation amounts to slavery.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
I think it's clear to anyone with half a brain watching this video that the man speaking, Tom Woods, is providing personal opinion on the profundity of Nozick's Tale. It's a very BRIEF tale as he also mentions, the fact you've managed to waffle this much over it startles me.
jam11049 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>I think it's clear to anyone with half a brain watching this video that the man speaking, Tom Woods, is providing personal opinion on the profundity of Nozick's Tale.
He is using the tale to equate taxation with institutional slavery. He gets away with this by equivocating conceptual slavery with institutional slavery. That you cannot or will not accept this implied language suggests a personal bias brought on by self-affirming ideological prejudice.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
It's quite obvious anyone will have a personal bias in concerns with ideological prejudice as it's impossible to be neutral about such a thing, any such bias has not disabled me from fully grasping that the hypothetical situation does not surmount to equating taxation with institutional slavery, but rather leans on both as anti-concepts to draw a fable-like picture.
jam11049 5 months ago
@jam11049
>>as it's impossible to be neutral about such a thing
Right.
>>any such bias has not disabled me from fully grasping that the hypothetical situation does not surmount to equating taxation with institutional slavery, but rather leans on both as anti-concepts to draw a fable-like picture
Take it from someone who isn't a member of your ideology, but an outsider observing your kind, that this video does precisely what you believe it doesn't.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
>> Take it from someone who isn't a member of your ideology
I've a worrying feeling you've presupposed a little too much about me, which ideology is this you're referencing?
jam11049 5 months ago
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@jam11049
>>I've a worrying feeling you've presupposed a little too much about me, which ideology is this you're referencing?
The umbrella of libertarianism, probably one of the anarchist branches.
kDest 5 months ago
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@StateExempt
>>How did I agree to become a citizen?
You were born here, or applied for citizenship.
>>And why does government have the right to declare me as such just for being born under it's control?
Convenience and historical precedent.
kDest 5 months ago
@triath999
>>I would be deported, and would lose my property
To use a prosaic example, if you refuse to pay your rent the landlord may evict you, our garnish your wages, or in cases of extreme belligerence on your part, even imprison you. This is not slavery. It is an agreement you made: you have a room, you pay rent. In our nation, you are provided free military, police, courts, streets, etc. and in exchange you pay taxes. If you dislike the taxes, you may find another apartment (country).
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - The landlord objection fails because they are not territorial sovereigns, you agree to the matter because you choose to enter a contract with that landlord. Where is the equivalent agreement with respect to government control?
And how are all those things you list free if we must pay taxes for them?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>And how are all those things you list free if we must pay taxes for them?
They are free as in always available, not free as in gratis. Every citizen and most residents may access them, at any time. That is what you pay for.
>>Where is the equivalent agreement with respect to government control?
Citizenship is your lease. You may revoke it and move to another state.
>>Hence taxation is a form of partial slavery.
Slavery is exactly the capacity for people to become property.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - So you admit in the last sentence of your first paragraph that we are forced to pay for them. Thus your claim that these are free things is refuted by your own admission.
Why does government have the right to impose it's will upon those who live within it's declared borders unless they leave the country altogether? You are begging the question by assuming they already have legitimate power over everyone.
And by your own definition taxation is slavery.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>So you admit in the last sentence of your first paragraph that we are forced to pay for them
You are "forced" if you choose to become a citizen and incur a debt to the services. If you become a corporation, very poor, or otherwise tax exempt you do not pay for these services.
>>refuted by your own admission
"Free" has multiple meanings.
>>Why does government have the right
They own the territory. You make a contract, called citizenship, to have permission to use their land.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Why does government have the right to force me to pay taxes just for living in a certain region? And if my discretion must be limited in order to avoid such measures, how are they voluntary?
Free means you need not pay for it. Commonly accepted definition.
And why does government have a right to the territory?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@kDest - I think you should take a look at "Constitutional Legitimacy" by Randy Barnett and explain your disagreements with it before I recommend it to anyone else.
Section B, "Why 'We the People' is a Fiction" deals with the very same landlord objection you are putting forth.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@kDest If people are unable to feel for distant people, then the state would not be able to either. The state is just a group of people.
triath999 5 months ago
@triath999
>>then the state would not be able to either
That is correct. This is why we invent institutions run by people who, though they may not have personal empathy for the individuals cared for by the state, care enough about the problems these people face that they may make political decisions on their behalf, devise aid programs for them, are part of political activism, etc.
None of this is perfect, but it is an improvement from earlier generations of programs and lack thereof.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - How are these consensual institutions if we have little if any efficacy in deciding who may run, and cannot stand a chance at influencing?
watch?v=6uR4lqa7IK4
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>How are these consensual institutions if we have little if any efficacy in deciding who may run
Consent has nothing to do with who is in power or how they govern. Consent deals with your ability to choose to participate in the country, either actively by acquiring citizenship, passively by birth, and your ability to leave the nation at any time.
>>The landlord objection fails
It is an exact analogy. Your inability to perceive the services you pay for does not negate them.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - It has everything to do with how the people got in power. If you had no control over the outcome then how can you argue anyone consented to government control in the first place?
And no, the landlord analogy fails because landlords are not territorial sovereigns, they produce enough wealth via their labor to legitimately decide how their apartment is used, and the people he collects rent from agreed to the process. Neither is the case for government.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>If you had no control over the outcome then how can you argue anyone consented to government control in the first place?
You choose voluntarily to maintain citizenship in the state. You may freely move to other states which suit your ideology. You will of course find that your ideology does not work in the real world, so there are few if any libertarian utopias.
>>the landlord analogy fails
It does not. You choose to make the analogy what it isn't.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Why does the state have the right to impose it's will as long as I reside in a certain territory? When did I give it the authority to have such power?
And explain to me how the landlord analogy is valid if they acquired the building with their own wealth and the people living there explicitly agreed to pay rent? Where are such parallels with respect to government?
StateExempt 5 months ago
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@StateExempt
>>Where are such parallels with respect to government?
The government acquired the claim to the territory. It (loosely) owns it. Residents consent to the law of their land by becoming citizens, or maintaining residence at the territory.
>>Free means you need not pay for it
It also means available to everyone, accessible, etc.
>>how are they voluntary?
You choose (volunteer) to live here. You could always emigrate, but you prefer to complain.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - If we are incapable of "feeling" for distant people under market circumstances then how could we have voluntarily chosen to have wealth confiscated for the benefit of other people?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>how could we have voluntarily chosen to have wealth confiscated for the benefit of other people
There is an obvious difference between being aware, and feeling empathy. We are aware of poverty, but cannot feel empathy for the millions of Americans who live in it.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - So why would one system lead to more compassion for the poor than the other?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@triath999
>>Also, what give you, an elected official, or a majority the right to decide what another person's obligations are?
If you cannot understand this, then take a civics course. It is our basic social contract that we as the governed sustain our government and abide by rules which exist to arbitrate moral and ethical issues between diverse and complicated cultures that must exist together.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
>You made the conceptual error as the creator of this video intended you to make.
The error was questioning the system. You are not supposed to do that. I think the creator needs a bit of mental adjustment.
kurtu5 5 months ago
@kurtu5
>>The error was questioning the system.
No, the error is the conceptual one of conflating slavery as an institution with slavery as an abstract concept. The author could have maliciously equivocated the concept, but he could also simply have muddy thinking.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest
The modern slavery has no institution? LOL. I like your wool sunglasses.
kurtu5 5 months ago
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@kurtu5
>>The modern slavery has no institution? LOL. I like your wool sunglasses.
Confusing the abstract concept of slavery with an institution of slavery, and then asserting we have one because the abstract concept may apply under certain rhetorical circumstances, is pure sophistry.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Slavery is the inability to make full choices for yourself without affecting the ability of other people to do the same. All phases by this criterion are thus slavery.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>Slavery is the inability to make full choices for yourself without affecting the ability of other people to do the same.
Incorrect. Look up the definition of slavery. It is a matter of property.
>>All phases by this criterion are thus slavery.
It does not matter if you redefine slavery to suit the video, it is still incorrect. You would be equivocating if you attempted to validate the video by redefining slavery to suit it, so that it applies to the standard definition.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - If you admit it is a matter of property than where is my misunderstanding of slavery?
And how do you think I redefined it in the first place?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>If you admit it is a matter of property than where is my misunderstanding of slavery?
Slavery is exactly the ability of people to become property. It does not extend to their private personal possessions. Slavery does not recognize these as portions of the person, therefore one may tax a person and it is not slavery.
>>And how do you think I redefined it in the first place?
You conveniently redefined it so that taxation is slavery.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Yes, it very well does extend to how people may use their possessions since they acquired those forms of wealth via their own labor. Thus controlling those possessions is the same as controlling how one may use their own labor.
Taxation is without consent, so yes I define it as what it is.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@StateExempt
>>Thus controlling those possessions is the same as controlling how one may use their own labor.
Manipulating or controlling a person is not equivalent to owning them. The definition of slavery is strictly ownership of a person.
>>So why would one system lead to more compassion for the poor than the other?
Clarify the systems for a context of comparison.
>>Why does the state have the right
They have claim to that territory. As the loosely defined owners, they have jurisdiction.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - The manipulation or controlling of any human being is slavery by definition.
I make my comparison between majority rule and market discretion.
Why does government have a claim to the territory?
StateExempt 5 months ago
@kDest "Not slavery."
Then what IS? Being a negro with chains is the ONLY form of slavery?
Not owning yourself and the product of your labor IS THE DEFINITION of slavery. If someone takes your income away, then YOU ARE A SLAVE BY DEFINITION.
RuddODragonFear 5 months ago
@RuddODragonFear
>>Then what IS? Being a negro with chains is the ONLY form of slavery?
Slavery is a state where a person is the property of another person, either voluntarily through contract (indentured servitude) or involuntarily through trade or conquest (slavery as it is commonly known). In the United States it is not possible for another person to legally own another person. One can detain another person, and that is the closest legal comparison, despite completely different processes.
kDest 5 months ago
@RuddODragonFear
>>Not owning yourself and the product of your labor IS THE DEFINITION of slavery
The first part is the only one which defines it. The second criterion is irrelevant.
>>If someone takes your income away, then YOU ARE A SLAVE BY DEFINITION
Living in a society is not free. For the protection afforded by it, the rights, the courts, the military, etc. you pay a portion of your income to sustain it. You are flatly mistaken.
kDest 5 months ago
@kDest - Owning the product of your labor is indeed perfectly relevant to whether or not one is in a state of slavery. If you are not given the full discretion of how the product of your own labor is used, then that labor is consequently not within your control. Hence taxation is a form of partial slavery.
StateExempt 5 months ago
@kDest
To clearly show the actual stages one would have to at least include all the US statue code. I think that would be impossible for one human to talk about in their entire lifetime. Probably more than a 1000 humans could talk about. Probably more than 1,000,000.
kurtu5 5 months ago
@kDest Each stage seemed very clearly defined to me. Perhaps you need to enhance your listening comprehension brah.
RuddODragonFear 5 months ago
@kDest "The end result is that if you are ignorant or uncritical of the definition of slavery, you are left with the feeling that democracy equals slavery, without a justifiable reason why."
LOL, when truth "gives you a bad feeling", surely the truth must be wrong, right? HAHAHA.
RuddODragonFear 5 months ago
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@RuddODragonFear
>>LOL, when truth "gives you a bad feeling", surely the truth must be wrong, right? HAHAHA.
Define slavery, without first looking it up in a book. Now apply it to what the implied definition of slavery is in this video. What do you see?
kDest 5 months ago
Definitely an excellent thought experiment on the nature of government and the electoral process we use to try and influence it.
I will probably be linking to this time and time again. Thanks for the awesome upload!
StateExempt 6 months ago 2
@StateExempt STFU you blocker cunt
paramedion 6 months ago
@paramedion - About what?
StateExempt 6 months ago