> The overwhelming majority of ethical and moral progression in human history coincided with the extension of private property rights to more and more of the general population, and retracted when those rights were rescinded.
Why is it always the "objective facts" brand of capitalist activists that can immediately after do an extraordinary subjective - and biased - interpretation of a weak historical correlation?
That's just blatant historical revisionism, with clearly no attempt made whatsoever to try to disprove your own claim. You'll have to surgically remove at least 80% of Capitalism's history for it to be even close to true. Even then, you have many societies in "human history" that certainly would argue that their "ethical and moral" progression was significantly better than today's.
>Why is it always the "objective facts" brand of capitalist activists that can immediately after do an extraordinary subjective - and biased - interpretation of a weak historical correlation?
It's consistent across time and the globe for the overwhelming majority of nations transitioning to and from capitalism to any other system. It's not just some singular event that happened once in the 18th century, it's observable right now. I provided examples in another comment.
>You'll have to surgically remove at least 80% of Capitalism's history for it to be even close to true.
Prove it. What is this 80%?
>Even then, you have many societies in "human history" that certainly would argue that their "ethical and moral" progression was significantly better than today's.
Name them and describe how and why.
Why is it always those that insist on ignoring objective historical facts can never substantiate their assertions and rather make axiomatic statements?
I provided explicit examples and illustrated consistency across time and geography. Hand wavy dismissals aren't doing your argument any favors.
> It's consistent across time and the globe for the overwhelming majority of nations transitioning to and from capitalism to any other system. It's not just some singular event that happened once in the 18th century, it's observable right now. I provided examples in another comment.
Not really, Capitalism have also been observed to do its thing without democracy as well. And just moving forward is a pretty low bar, the USSR had lots of progress as well, but it doesn't make Stalinism a good system. It's also fundamentally a correlation, not causation. Would another historical path had a better outcome for the average citizen? Maybe, maybe not.
> Prove it. What is this 80%?
Slavery? Racism? Colonialism? Property requirements to vote? Women suffrage? Supporting brutal regimes in the name of corporate profit? Famine while still exporting? Exploitation fueled by Capitalism's profit and growth motive? Climate and ecological disaster? People dying in the US due to lack of healthcare access? etc...
> Name them and describe how and why.
Come on, you're the one preaching, it's your duty to prove your extraordinary claim against history. Capitalism is like 400 years old. A mere blip. Native American's societies for example thought of people being forced to wage labour their entire life for someones else's enrichment to be not much better than being a slave. Certainly not "freedom" in any case. Not to even mention their thoughts about the concept of private ownership of the commons, as in private property.
> I provided explicit examples and illustrated consistency across time and geography. Hand wavy dismissals aren't doing your argument any favors.
>Not really, Capitalism have also been observed to do its thing without democracy as well
Prove it
> the USSR had lots of progress as well, but it doesn't make Stalinism a good system
Not morally or ethically, which I'll remind you, yet again is what we're talking about. Stay on topic
>Slavery? Racism? Colonialism? Property requirements to vote? Women suffrage? Supporting brutal regimes in the name of corporate profit? Famine while still exporting? Exploitation fueled by Capitalism's profit and growth motive? Climate and ecological disaster? People dying in the US due to lack of healthcare access?
Prove the causative relationship between these things and capitalism, and that they make up 80% of capitalism's history, your original assertion. Why did they exist before capitalism?
Why did many of these good things fail to happen before capitalism? Why do they happen virtually everywhere afterwards?
Capitalist countries are the most ecologically and climate efficient per capita and quality of life.
Exploitative compared to what and where?
Examine severe illness outcomes, pharmaceutical research, medical innovation, and general health of the US (meaning, US citizens have bad health habits) vs elsewhere before you make such ignorant comments.
>Come on, you're the one preaching, it's your duty to prove your extraordinary claim against history. Capitalism is like 400 years old.
Which is why it's remarkable how much progress has occurred under it in such a short period of time, literally my point
>Native American's societies for example thought of people being forced to wage labour their entire life for someones else's enrichment to be not much better than being a slave. Certainly not "freedom" in any case. Not to even mention their thoughts about the concept of private ownership of the commons, as in private property.
You continually speak authoritatively about subjects you clearly do not have any insight into. Native Americans practiced slavery & conquest. Native Americans had private property. They also hadn't invented the wheel and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people a year on top of pyramids. You're regurgitating well known popular myths. Stop deviating off topic
>What explicit examples?
China under Pooh's new crackdown on private property and capitalist tendencies vs it when it opened and extended private property rights. Estonia post-USSR. Zimbabwe vs Botswana. Just a few, modern ones, if we want to go back to the 18th and 19th century the trend was nearly universal in the west.
Which modern, high quality of life, non capitalist countries are less harmful to the environment?
>You have no scruples at all do you? "No insight into" then you go on avoiding the point and just falsely suggesting that I said something I didn't say (treating all historical North American societies as one, which is ridiculous), what a deeply dishonest thing to write, shame on you.
What was your point then? You were leveraging some native American sentiments and factually incorrect popular myths on their beliefs about property ownership to contend falsely that they had better economic systems devoid of profit motive or property.
>I won't be wasting energy on replies that have zero prospect of breaking through that dogma. I can see others have tried with no success.
The irony coming from someone with entirely unsourced, repeatedly demonstrably false assertions, while I have provided endless examples and sources.
Sorry, not sorry for sticking to my well researched and verbosely sources principles and reasoning because random strangers on the internet regurgitate easily countered dogma from ideologues and propagandists.
I can tell you exactly what evidence would look like that would change my mind about any topic I hold strong beliefs about. Meanwhile you can't even stick to one topic.
Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and we ban such accounts regardless of what they're battling for or against. I've therefore banned this one. If you or anyone want further explanation, see these links:
What a sad state of affairs when pushing back against the bullshit spread by the very prolific reactionaries, albeit polite (which is all that matters here), of this site sooner or later gets one banned. To add insult to injury most of them have been posting on HN for many years.
I don't know what you're referring to, but if there are accounts breaking the HN guidelines the way you were doing, which we haven't banned yet, I'd like to know which ones they are.
Everyone thinks that we're secretly siding with their opponents when we do this kind of moderation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), but that feeling is not based in fact. It's just an inversion of your own sympathies. The other side thinks we're ruining the site by secretly siding with you.
You alone can't do anything about the demographics and their biases here. Buy if you honestly believe that HN is somehow politically neutral you're deluded.
It does't require a sociologist to realise that when certain topics degenerates into 500-1000 comments of bullshit and others doesn't even register that this user base has a certain bias.
Finally, what is seen as ideological warfare naturally follows the overton window. I could directly translate liberal/conservative folks posts here into a equivalent socialist narrative instead and it would be seen as ideological warfare because it's simply out of the ordinary.
You can just look through my comment history and the users I've replied to if you're genuinely interested.
Actually I'm not making any argument or claim about political neutrality, and I don't think I've ever made such a claim. That would be a difficult thing to study, if it's even possible.
I'm making an empirical observation about how people with strong political passions react when they get moderated, and the rather obvious root of those reactions. The fact that people of all ideologies and political types react with exactly the same reflex is relevant because it clarifies that root so vividly.
It's funny how reactionaries have gone from "it's not really happening", "it's not man made" to "it's too late anyways" in no time. The same goal remains; to keep doing nothing.
Moving to higher ground only considers the first-order effects of climate change - floods and severe weather. Potential further effects include reduced agricultural output/efficiency, massive migrations of climate refugees, and the destabilization or collapse of national governments. If we do nothing, natural disasters will be the least of our concerns.
The difference is that it's cheaper by Uber pushing down labour costs, a.k.a the driver's compensation. But since that reason isn't as pleasant, vague rationalizations are used instead.
You have people with very classically liberal positions, libertarian positions, 1990's democrat positions, etc being called "alt-right", including some of the recent guests of JRE
You haven't supplied any context into "any position of the authoritarian left". Who are they and what are their positions that you can't disagree with?
Where to start.. Sex/Gender, Abortion, COVID Public Policy, Tech Censorship, "hate Speech", Who should participate in Female sports, any number of other cultural issues...
Then you have topics like Universal Healthcare, Gun Control, etc etc.
I mean the "context" is literally everything
as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.
> as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.
Welcome to HN in [current year]. You can write any nonsense you want and it’s perfectly fine as long as it goes along with the current zeitgeist of the userbase.
I know plenty of Uber drivers who wear a mask alone while on then way to pickup for conscience, as getting reported for not having it can get you kicked off, but yes surely those people are the authoritarians.
> This attribution of a value system, e.g. consumerism or profit-seeking, to capitalism, is misguided
It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably.
> and a way for certain ideological camps to pathologize and stigmatize human freedom.
The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. That's a very poor standard of "freedom". Sure, it can certainly get worse, but this wasn't the freedom that people dreamt of 100 years ago and beyond.
>>It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably.
You're making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that are in the realm of conspiracy theory.
>>The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them.
Nothing you wrote substantiates your first assertion that "The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian."
As for being forced, by the prospect of starvation, to work: as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years ago..
"Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd."
Someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism.
What your argument is based on is inflammatory appeals to emotion, that upon even mimimal examimations, are revealed as totally without substance.
> You're making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that are in the realm of conspiracy theory.
Care to say what?
> Someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism.
No, that's literally choosing between the least bad authoritarian entity available for oneself.
> What your argument is based on is inflammatory appeals to emotion
It is? So let's push democracy into the economic sphere as well since according to you there would be no difference. One worker, one vote.
No, the economic sphere is strictly top-down authoritarian where workers is in a dependency situation wrt to their boss. The pandemic has made that abundantly clear.
> You're free to manage your own property however you wish.
Only if you actually have property to begin with, which most don't by no fault of their own. And what a few do have, by no merit of their own.
>>No, the economic sphere is strictly top-down authoritarian where workers is in a dependency situation wrt to their boss.
It's a voluntarily assumed dependency. Your incoherent moral argument would suggest that something the worker wants - a job to be offered to them - is harming them, and that this offer that the worker chooses over other options - is an act of authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism implies non-consensual interactions. People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves is not 'non-consensual' in any legal or social sense, and the people offering them jobs in this environment are not authoritarians as a result.
A top-down hierarchical structure also does not define authoritarianism. What's authoritarian is the state preventing people from trading their labor for income, to enforce the incoherent moral principles of socialist ideology.
>>Only if you actually have property to begin with, which most don't by no fault of their own. And what a few do have, by no merit of their own.
That doesn't give you a right to rob others of their property.
Property itself is voluntary. If you don't consent to that property as a concept, there is no theft or trespass if you use the same land the farmer does to grow your own food. It's not robbery, the property is an illusion.
The only reason you can call it a right is that it's being forced upon us, and thus everything related to it is too. The job is part of an authoritarian labour division, and the property is the authoritarian part
>>Property itself is voluntary. If you don't consent to that property as a concept, there is no theft or trespass if you use the same land the farmer does to grow your own food. It's not robbery, the property is an illusion.
You could say the same thing about a person's right to their own body. If you don't consent to their body being theirs, there is no rape or violence when you touch them without their consent. Bodily autonomy is an illusion according to this malevolent, bad faith argument.
It's self-evident, from the perspective of any coherent moral framework, that people have a moral right to exclusive access to their own body, and the wealth they produce or acquire in voluntary trade, and that the people who disagree with this have no respect for others, or regard for the best interests of society at large.
Just think how absurd it would be in the Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, if the Grasshopper used your argument to demand the Ant forfeit the food he had painstakingly stored up for the winter, and the disastrous social consequences if this pathological moral framework were socially accepted.
You can't compare an individuals rights with systemic rights and try to draw moral equivalency between those. That's just dishonest.
An individuals right starts and ends with that individual. Private property rights however encompasses the entire system, and all the people within that system, and must therefore be evaluated completely differently, including wrt morals.
You're incorrectly putting a person's right to their property, i.e. their right to make exclusive use of what they produce, into a different category from a person's right to make exclusive use of their body.
Your socialist premise is an arbitrary dictinction to rationalize socialism.
> You're incorrectly putting a person's right to their property, i.e. their right to make exclusive use of what they produce, into a different category from a person's right to make exclusive use of their body.
Yes of course I do? Because I just explained why they are different things, which you haven't responded to.
No, there's nothing voluntary about it. Why would anyone accept a coal mining job in the 19th century voluntary?
> People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves
So what? If that required Capitalist property relations we wouldn't exist now. Indirectly forcing someone give up their freedom to work instead of other social structures is a political choice, to the benefit of the propertied, not some commandment by god or whatever.
> That doesn't give you a right to rob others of their property.
It might? It's not up to the propertied class alone to decide what's a right and what's not. They're obviously looking to protect their privileged position like any nobility or monarch of old times.
>>No, there's nothing voluntary about it. Why would anyone accept a coal mining job in the 19th century voluntary?
If someone offers something, and the other person accepts it because they perceive it as being better than any other option they have available to them, then it's voluntary. No court of law, consisting of a jury of your peers, would agree that a contract entered into by a worker, because the worker needed the income to eat, is not voluntary, and that's why you could never get your political project implemented through the judicial process.
>>So what?
So your argumewnt is bogus. I'm explaining that the fact that people are forced to do difficult things to survive does not make the situation authoritarian. Much more is required for the situation to be classified as authoritarian.
>>ndirectly forcing someone give up their freedom to work instead of other social structures is a political choice, to the benefit of the propertied, not some commandment by god or whatever.
This is a blatant lie: no one is forcing any one to give up their freedom to work. This is just a baseless victimhood narrative and false accusation against millions of innocent people.
>>It might? It's not up to the propertied class alone to decide what's a right and what's not.
Well if you're incredibly narcissistic, then you justify robbing people.
No, it's forced upon them by external circumstances. That's also in many cases setup and supported by the very persons exploiting them. Put people in a cage of poverty because you've decided and support that is should be like that then call is voluntary when they are force to give up their freedom is perverse.
No one in their right mind would ever call that a voluntary choice. Sending your children to do life-threatening work in the factory is not a voluntary choice. It's a forced concession. That it wasn't illegal doesn't make it voluntary.
> No court of law
Laws is no objective guide to neither morality nor justice. That's proven by history.
> I'm explaining that the fact that people are forced to do difficult things to survive does not make the situation authoritarian
If course it is. You can't first create and support the conditions then absolve yourself from what you've created when from people are forced to sell their freedom to you to survive.
> This is a blatant lie
What's the lie? Not forced by violence, but forced by the system the propertied support and have a disproportional influence over.
> Well if you're incredibly narcissistic, then you justify robbing people.
Not really? Withholding necessities to gain power over peoples labour and make a profit is pretty pathologically sociopathic and abolishing that state of affairs is righteous, not robbery.
>>No, it's forced upon them by external circumstances.
Like I said, in no context outside of socialist propaganda, is the external circumstances that involve no violence or threats of it, are considered to make the decisions one makes nonvoluntary.
>>Laws is no objective guide to neither morality nor justice. That's proven by history.
The law here is that voluntary contracts are valid, and no court of your peers would deem a contract involuntary based on the reasoning you're providing, showing your definition of words is unconventional, and thus misleading in the context of ordinary dialogue.
>>If course it is. You can't first create and support the conditions then absolve yourself from what you've created when from people are forced to sell their freedom to you to survive.
1. Employers did not create conditions that limited the options of job applicants.
2. Your claim that people who choose to work for pay are selling their freedom is an inflammatory characterization to falsely portray workers as victims of employers. It's an utterly dishonorable ideological framework that seeks to demonize the successful to rationalize robbing them.
>>What's the lie? Not forced by violence, but forced by the system the propertied support and have a disproportional influence over.
It's a blatant lie that makes the logical leap that not assenting to mass-socialist expropriation is tantamount to depriving others of their legitimate rights.
It's a degenerate claim based on perverse ideological premises.
>>Not really? Withholding necessities to gain power over peoples labour and make a profit is pretty pathologically sociopathic and abolishing that state of affairs is righteous, not robbery.
It's narcissistic of you to claim someone witholding necessities that belong to them, gives you the right to rob them. You believe what others earned belongs to you, and that you have a right to threaten them with violence to coerce them to forfeit it. It's a fundamentally sociopathic outlook.
For all your baseless claims, based on ideological narratives, of employers "forcing" employers to do things, you are the only one here advocating blatant violence and imposition.
This naked robbery you advocate is what all of your mental gymnastics and leaps of logic is intended to rationalize.
> is the external circumstances that involve no violence or threats of it
No, it's common sense. Do you honestly believe asking 100 people on the street that most would deem that voluntary? No, they would just say something like "yeah, it's sad, they had no other choice the poor fellas". That's not voluntary by any reasonable definition that's not self-serving.
And in fact, it does involve the threat of violence, albeit indirect, in the form of starvation. Just because your notion of violence only conveniently recognizes direct violence doesn't mean that that's the objective truth.
> The law here is that voluntary contracts are valid
Once again, you're using the law to support a moral common sense question, "court of peers" are bound to judge according to what the current law says, not what they think is obviously true.
> Employers did not create conditions that limited the options of job applicants.
Well, of course not all, but certainly the largest one and the owners behind them. This is a system issue, not an individual one.
> that seeks to demonize the successful to rationalize robbing them
Sigh, more suggestions to envy as motivation.
> It's a blatant lie that makes the logical leap that not assenting to mass-socialist expropriation is tantamount to depriving others of their legitimate rights.
That's not really explaining to me what the lie is, just a temper tantrum.
> It's a degenerate claim based on perverse ideological premises.
What makes my claims "degenerate based on perverse ideological premises" but not yours?
> You believe what others earned belongs to you
Earned is subjective, and in many cases not even remotely true under Capitalism due obvious things like inheritance.
> , and that you have a right to threaten them with violence to coerce them to forfeit it.
It's actually the exact opposite. Abolishing private-property rights removes the owners right to violence. No need to do any violence from the side that are abolishing them. For example: land that one was forbidden to enter under the threat of violence from the property-owner is now free to pass through. Only the property owner's threat of violence has been removed.
> you are the only one here advocating blatant violence and imposition
There is nothing of substance to argue against. Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless.
It's also extremely inflammatory, making this accusation totally irresponsible, and it unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression.
>>No, it hasn't.
Economists who have studied development say it is:
> Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless, extremely inflammatory, and totally irresponsible.
Why?
> It's totally irresponsible, and it's unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression.
More emotional stuff.
> Economists who have studied development say it is:
That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well), not that people spend their lives in toil.
> The pursuit of captial accumulation is always dependent on the exploitation of someone's labour / time somewhere.
So what's wrong here? Are not capitalists exploiting the labour and time of others to accumulate capital? It's self-evident that they do.
Maybe you think that you can send just send the top 50 capitalists to the planet Mars and out comes a terraformed planet? Simply by their immense power of innovation?
>>Are not capitalists exploiting the labour and time of others to accumulate capital?
They are not in any way exploiting the labor and time of others, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word 'exploit', where it connotes an immoral act that causes harm. They are trading resources for that labor and time, by making an offer that the worker is happy to take over all others. Your moral framework is totally incoherent, as it would imply that an offer that a worker is happy to receive, is an act of authoritarianism toward that worker.
> They are not in any way exploiting the labor and time of others, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word 'exploit',
I think some very clearly are. Obviously there's level degrees here. But on the systematic level it's clearly that Capitalism depends on other people being a means to an end of other, wealthier, people. That due to their property, and others lack thereof, can indirectly force people to labour for their benefit. Thus exploiting them due to the unequal distribution of property/capital in a society that require it to survive.
> They are trading resources for that labor and time, by making an offer that the worker is happy to take over all others
That's not a "happy trade". It's a concession due to worse alternatives because the system people find themselves in offer no other alternatives for millions upon millions of people. That's not freedom.
> Your moral framework is totally incoherent, as it would imply that an offer that a worker is happy to receive, is an act of authoritarianism toward that worker.
No, it's not. People pick the less worse option all the time under authoritarian structures.
You're consistently shallow in your thinking and not bothering to dive a few steps deeper and ask simple questions like why people would accept a 19th century mining job or their modern equivalents? Were those mining jobs "happy trades"?
You have not substantiated this absurd claim in any way.
>>But on the systematic level it's clearly that Capitalism depends on other people being a means to an end of other, wealthier, people.
There is absolutely no dependence on there being wealth inequality, let alone on the employer being wealthier than the employee, for a free market economy to operate. A wealthy doctor can be hired by a poor hotdog stand owner for example.
>>It's a concession due to worse alternatives because the system people find themselves in offer no other alternatives for millions upon millions of people. That's not freedom.
Like I said, people having bad options doesn't make the situation "authoritarian". This is an extremely loaded term, and when you use it you are accusing someone of repressing others, and that someone according to your crude socialist narrative is ANY ONE who has been successful.
You are not being careful in how you use the term, to ensure it actually applies. You're doing sloppy mental gymnastics, where you equate any negativity, or situation of disempowerment, with "authoritarian" circumstances, and then making a leap from this premise, to accusing employers of being the oppressors. It's just sloppy, careless leaps of logic.
Like I said, people needing to pick one of the several difficult options available to them, in order to earn enough to eat is, as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years, the nature of reality, that exists with or without authoritarianism:
"Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd."
Moreover, someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism.
>>No, it's not. People pick the less worse option all the time under authoritarian structures.
Yes, it is. It's not just that people pick less worse options in the free market structure. It's that the person providing the "less worse option" is not doing anything to worsen the other options available to the person they are making their offer to. In an authoritarian structure, the authoritarian actor is using violence, or the threats of it, to deprive the oppressed party of other options.
>>You're consistently shallow in your thinking and not bothering to dive a few steps deeper and ask simple questions like why people would accept a 19th century mining job or their modern equivalents? Were those mining jobs "happy trades"?
Your questions are irrelevant. You're being sloppy with definitions, and the inflammatory accusations you make based on those definitions. No, what the employer does, in offering a job, is not authoritarian, and it's irresponsible for you to not consider the harm to an innocent party that is done when you make a wrongful accusation, and critically analyze the validity of the accusation, before you make it.
You're not fact-checking and trying to be objective. You're not being responsible toward other people when you make these types of crude blanket accusations without due diligence.
> You're not fact-checking and trying to be objective
What fact-checking have I missed? In what way do you even begin to imagine that this discussion can be objective?
> or a free market economy to operate
I wrote Capitalism, not a "free-market economy" which is a entirely theoretical concept that can never exist in practice. Only Capitalism and its concentration and wealth and power can actually exists.
> Like I said, people having bad options doesn't make the situation "authoritarian"
The CEO of the company is the authoritarian ruler of that company, that's pretty obvious? Yes, if you're privileged, you may be able to switch to another authoritarian instead. If you want to use another word for that relationship, I'm fine with it, the word isn't the important point here. But it's lack of freedom and democracy in the economic sphere and thus under Capitalism.
> according to your crude socialist narrative is ANY ONE who has been successful
That doesn't sound very objective.
> Like I said, people needing to pick one of the several difficult options available to them, in order to earn enough to eat is, as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years, the nature of reality, that exists with or without authoritarianism:
No, it's not "the nature of reality". Other societies throughout human history didn't require selling your freedom most of your life. So that's objectively false. These are systematic conditions intentionally created by humans to the primary benefit of a subset of them.
> It's that the person providing the "less worse option" is not doing anything to worsen the other options available to the person they are making their offer to.
But they are? If they support the concentration of wealth and capital into the few, making it exclusive use to them, forces others to accept their offer.
> and it's irresponsible for you to not consider the harm to an innocent party that is done when you make a wrongful accusation, and critically analyze the validity of the accusation, before you make it.
What? What are the harm, innocent party, wrongful accusation supposed to be here?
Like checking to see if the word 'authoritarian' applies to employers. Your logic supporting such an absurd notion is based on lazy leaps and non-existent critical analysis, showing a general sloppiness and irresponsibility in your proclivity to make accusations.
>>I wrote Capitalism, not a "free-market economy" which is a entirely theoretical concept that can never exist in practice.
This is just a pedantic, bad faith argument. Capitalism is synonymous with a free market economy in most contexts that these terms are used, and we can still comment on systems even if they don't exist in an absolutist form.
>>Only Capitalism and its concentration and wealth and power can actually exists.
No, capitalism is synomous with free markets, and concentration of wealth is totally orthogonal to a free market economy.
And as for ideologies, capitalism doesn't exist. What socialist ideologues refer to as capitalism is nothing more than people having a right to own what they produce and acquire in trade in trade, and to do with what they own as they wish.
This propaganda is intended to depict human liberty as unnatural, and socialist repression as the natural order of things. It's extreme deception motivated by a delusional utopianist fantasy.
>>The CEO of the company is the authoritarian ruler of that company, that's pretty obvious?
One more time, since you didn't read it last time:
Authoritarianism implies non-consensual interactions. People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves is not 'non-consensual' in any legal or social sense, and the people offering them jobs in this environment are not authoritarians as a result.
A top-down hierarchical structure also does not define authoritarianism. What's authoritarian is the state preventing people from trading their labor for income, to enforce the incoherent moral principles of socialist ideology.
>>No, it's not "the nature of reality". Other societies throughout human history didn't require selling your freedom most of your life. So that's objectively false. These are systematic conditions intentionally created by humans to the primary benefit of a subset of them
No, working for pay, or to raise crop to eat, is not selling one's freedom. That's a inflammatory characterization of doing what one must to survive and in no way involves an oppressive abrogation of freedom.
And economic history shows people being responsible for themselves, and being unable to pillage others, is in the clear interest of humanity at large, with societies that enshrined these principles of liberty and rejected those lies, like socialism, that rationalize tyranny, seeing the fastest reduction in poverty.
As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society, with your reference to "systematic conditions" that you imply could allow one to not have to work to eat, oh yes, Bastiat addressed that too:
"He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd.
The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. The Tyrant is still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government. We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it "I should like to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could you not facilitate the thing for me? By this means shall I gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace."
>>But they are? If they support the concentration of wealth and capital into the few, making it exclusive use to them, forces others to accept their offer.
You have provided no evidence that someone offering a job, in order to create a productive enterprise that will enrich both themselves and the consumer, is harming the worker by making other options worse for them.
This is just the zero sum fallacy that assumes one business' profit is another's loss, that centuries of economic history disproves and basic economics invalidates.
>>What? What are the harm, innocent party, wrongful accusation supposed to be here?
I explained very clearly, your disingenuous obtuseness notwithstanding. You're accusing employers of being oppressors based on the flimsiest of logic.
> Like checking to see if the word 'authoritarian' applies to employers
Have you never heard someone calling their boss "authoritarian"? I used it as a description of an unfree, undemocratic, top-down system that's used in our economic sphere under capitalism, if you don't like that one, pick something else that describes that. The specific word used is not what's important here.
> Capitalism is synonymous with a free market economy in most contexts that these terms are used.
> No, capitalism is synomous with free markets, and concentration of wealth is totally orthogonal to a free market economy.
No, it's not. That's just historical revisionism. It's a system based on exclusive ownership of property etc. Societies have traded stuff throughout history without Capitalism and its institution of private-property rights etc.
> People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves is not 'non-consensual' in any legal or social sense
Well, it is already illegal for children and legality is still not a guide for morality. It's definitely in a social sense, which I have already explained.
Also, I've already explained - you even quoted it - that it's not "forced by nature" like some natural law. It's man made. Proven by the fact that societies through history didn't have capitalist wage labour and did just fine wrt food.
> This propaganda is intended to depict human liberty as unnatural, and socialist repression as the natural order of things.
> It's extreme deception motivated by a delusional utopianist fantasy.
> to enforce the incoherent moral principles of socialist ideology.
> Objective reality deems socialism a crude ideological narrative.
> like socialism, that rationalize tyranny,
> As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society
More of your non-emotional objectiveness I see.
> You have provided no evidence that someone offering a job
Well, of course it's not the the act itself of offering a job, it's supporting and perpetuating the system - Capitalism - that sets up those conditions in the first place. Why do you have such a hard time of keeping this on a systemic level?
> You're accusing employers of being oppressors based on the flimsiest of logic
I'm discussing this as a systemic issue, not an individual. That should be obvious by now. And some employers certainly are oppressors, but the edge is towards the capitalist-class, not the local shopkeeper or whatever.
>>Have you never heard someone calling their boss "authoritarian"?
That is a figurative use of the term, and this kind of hyperbolic and even misleading use of language in informal dialogue is common. That doesn't mean you can describe anything top-down as authoritarian in formal terms. In any serious discussion, such a definition would be completely rejected as overly broad.
>>The specific word used is not what's important here.
Given the specific word use makes a particular claim, that is the basis for your other claims, it's extremely important.
Authoritarian means non-consensual. Free market interactions are by definition consensual, as deemed by a jury of citizens.
>>No, it's not. That's just historical revisionism.
No, this is just your projection. You're engaging in historical revisionism. The standard use of the term 'capitalism' is synomous with free markets.
>>Well, it is already illegal for children and legality is still not a guide for morality.
Courts deem children to not have the ability to provide consent, which is unlike adults, so your example shows nothing. As for "legality is still not a guide for morality", in this case, the law is moral, since it says only consensual contracts are valid, with random samplings of citizens, formed as juries, making the determination.
>>It's definitely in a social sense, which I have already explained.
No, the social sense of "non-consensual" is someone threatening someone else with violence to deprive them of other options. It is not "people being required to work in order to acquire resources to feed themselves".
>>Also, I've already explained - you even quoted it - that it's not "forced by nature" like some natural law. It's man made. Proven by the fact that societies through history didn't have capitalist wage labour and did just fine wrt food.
That's a totally absurd claim: there were no societies that didn't have free markets / capitalism / work-for-wages and did "just fine wrt food".
>>More of your non-emotional objectiveness I see.
That you see no need to get emotional about socialist tyranny shows the lack of conscience behind your crude ideologically motivated position.
>>Well, of course it's not the the act itself of offering a job, it's supporting and perpetuating the system - Capitalism - that sets up those conditions in the first place.
I've already addressed this fallacious argument. I'll post it again:
As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society, with your reference to "systematic conditions" that you imply could allow one to not have to work to eat, oh yes, Bastiat addressed that too:
"He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd.
The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. The Tyrant is still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government. We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it "I should like to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could you not facilitate the thing for me? By this means shall I gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace."
>>I'm discussing this as a systemic issue, not an individual.
You were earlier implying any one employing someone is an oppressor. That you don't take responsibility for this shows a general recklessness toward politics.
> Given the specific word use makes a particular claim, that is the basis for your other claims, it's extremely important.
No, but it's always nice to focus on semantics if you got little else to say.
> No, this is just your projection. You're engaging in historical revisionism. The standard use of the term 'capitalism' is synomous with free markets.
Are you really suggesting that a system of private property rights is not a fundamental part of 'Capitalism'? And that it's historical revisionism to claim that?
> formed as juries
What jury? Do you think this issue would be treated by a jury if reported? Even if it would be in-front of a jury, a jury is supposed to follow the law, it's not acting in an objective vacuum. That's ridiculous.
> Courts deem children to not have the ability to provide consent, which is unlike adults, so your example shows nothing.
Yeah, and that's obviously a subjective interpretation? The same can easily be said about adults forced to work by the conditions put in place by the system they live in. Currently under capitalism it isn't seen as non-consensual, since that clearly wouldn't work, but maybe it will be seen as obviously so in 100 years?
> That's a totally absurd claim: there were no societies that didn't have free markets / capitalism / work-for-wages and did "just fine wrt food".
What's absurd about historical societies not having capitalist wage-labor and did fine without it? No societies? Haha, that's so ridiculously obvious historical revisionism it's entertaining.
>That you see no need to get emotional about socialist tyranny shows the lack of conscience behind your crude ideologically motivated position.
I'm not sure what socialist tyranny I have promoted in this thread?
> oh yes, Bastiat addressed that too:
What part of that quote more specifically do you feel addresses some point? It's mostly low signal-to-noise gibberish.
> You were earlier implying any one employing someone is an oppressor
Yes, and that was regarding trivial semantics that doesn't remove the core of this discussion namely the non-free nature of capitalism.
