Freedom or servitude?

You guys do realize there's a vast difference from nobody working and being completely required to work or else starve? That's where legislation that actually helps people comes in even if they are still by and large working.

Also I'm not down playing needing to work. But I am saying it's not right to call it freedom like conservatives say. And again government can help. The horror, amiright??

See above

linate wrote:

You guys do realize there's a vast difference from nobody working and being completely required to work or else starve?

You are OK with other people working, just not you.

That's where legislation that actually helps people comes in even if they are still by and large working.

Can you be a little more explicit, what kind of legislation makes it so you don't have to work?

Also I'm not down playing needing to work. But I am saying it's not right to call it freedom like conservatives say.

I'd agree it's not right to call it freedom, but you are the only person I've ever heard call needing to work "freedom". It's also not right to call needing to work a pickle.

And again government can help. The horror, amiright??

You think the government can help you not have to work? Why exactly would they do that?

Understand, the US government has around two million civilian employees, the US Post office adds another 600,000, and the US Military employs another 2.8 million people. All of them have to work for a living, I really don't think you can count on them to recognize how unfair it is that you have to work for a living too (The horror), and then take action to fix that problem.

Maybe don't hold your breath on that one.

Effort and reward has always been the same basic system that perpetuates species survival.

Nowadays the system is somewhat more elaborate, relative to multifarious social demands and expectations.

Nonetheless, existence is still servitude and freedom is death.

Well, I've always been tempted to sit down on a confortable coach watching TV and scratching my balls all day long, but let's be honest, that's not an option. We have bills to pay and like it or not we need to work.

So, I don't know what kind of system you're suggesting in order to not work. You've got to know that communism is much worse, I mean if you are thinking that this ideology can solve your problems you're completely wrong. Just see how Cubans struggle to have at least a meal every day.

I know the US is having problems with the economy because of the oil crisis. I heard you have to have two jobs in order to make ends meet. That's crazy shit but I guess it's temporal.

I tell you an anecdote, maybe it's the life you're looking for. Some Americans work hard half a year in the US and save as much money as they can. Then, they take a vacation for the other half of the year and go to one of these shithole countries in Central America. It's totally possible because the life in these places is incredibly cheap. So, if you put it in perspective, you're basically working half a day without having a shitty life. I don't think you can make it better, unless you want to rob a bank but I would never suggest such thing.

Well, I've always been tempted to sit down on a confortable coach watching TV and scratching my balls all day long, but let's be honest, that's not an option

It is, just make enough savings which allow you to do that.

To urinate is a need.

The toilet system of sewage is a want.

SatanLucy wrote:

It is, just make enough savings which allow you to do that.

Your parents are wealthy, that's why you can scratch your tiny balls all day long.

Your parents are wealthy, that's why you can scratch your tiny balls all day long.

My parents also love me enough to give me money. Well, my dad doesn't, but I still have enough money and can be lazy all day. I am also smart to make savings, so I can keep being lazy if my parents die before me, which with my lifestyle is unlikely.

Your parents must love you a lot to support you even as an adult. When are you going to return the favour?

Who ever said that having to work is synonymous with freedom? I've never heard anyone say that.

Well, people at least say taxing people to help the working class encroaches on freedom tho right?

That sounds like a wildly different statement, though. What's the connection between that and the original statement? I don't see how saying that taxes encroach on freedom implies that working for basic needs is synonymous with freedom.

Also, I'm not sure a lot of people say that second statement, either. The "taxation-is-theft" libertarians would be all about it for sure, but I don't think most people's objections to more taxes is because they think it's encroaching on their freedom. I suppose that wouldn't be totally wrong, in the sense that more taxes means less freedom to do what you want with your money, but that's usually not the objection I hear people making.

I'd like to think on a deep level, that intuitive freedom means an individual gets to choose how best to tackle natural entropy.

SirAnonymous wrote:

Who ever said that having to work is synonymous with freedom? I've never heard anyone say that.

I thought having to work for a living was supposed to be "slavery", when did it become "freedom"?

linate wrote:

"I can't believe people think having to work for basic needs is synonymous with freedom.

I'm pretty sure nobody thinks "freedom" is synonymous with "having to work", consequently, I don't think it's necessary to have a "belief" about it.

It's literally a bunch of rich people hoarding essential resources and telling us to serve them or die."

OK, and when rich people work, who are they serving?

"You Gotta Serve Somebody" - Bob Dylan

Typically evolved somewhat lazy realisation that survival demands effort.

Also overlooking the fact that human societies will always default to a hierarchical system.

Do you think that there is an alternative, whereby linate can live a continuous life of effortless leisure devoid of any collective input.

SergeantLynch wrote:

Typically evolved somewhat lazy realisation that survival demands effort.

All animals use food to make energy and then they spend this energy to move, find food, keep warm, and stay alive.

It's all so unfair.

OK you guys got me. I shouldnt have called needing to work freedom. Tho some would call working exercising ones freedom which is similar

Work or starve... still a hulluva proposition and maybe we can find some middle ground or lend a helping hand. Thats the main point

"It's literally a bunch of rich people hoarding essential resources and telling us to serve them or die."

Also still true

So, what is on your list of essential resources?

And how might linate acquire these resources if there was no hierarchical structure to human society?

At a push you might find food and water, some sort of rudimentary shelter and learn how to start a fire.

But what about everything else that nowadays you assume will be readily available, demanding very little input from you other than a trip to the shops or simply delivery to your door at the click of a button.

linate wrote:

"It's literally a bunch of rich people hoarding essential resources and telling us to serve them or die."

Also still true

Nope, I can see how someone who sees working as a terrible thing seeing it that way, but it's not really factual.

Nearly half of all employees in the US work for a small business, and the average small business owner makes between $60,000 and $78,000 per year, hardly rich, and they probably think creating jobs serves us.

Most of the rich people you are fussing about got rich by working hard.

If you don't change your attitude towards working, you will never be rich, you will never create jobs, and you will never be happy working for a living.

Freedom is lack of intrusion by other people upon your freedom of action. If you were born severely crippled and physically unable to leave your house, that fact alone does not make you unfree.

Same with having to work for a living. Scarcity is a natural fact of the world. Value has to be created where it didn't previously exist through productive work. You might say "Well, why can't I raid someone else's pantry?" but the answer is that everything in said pantry is not a low-hanging fruit of nature that they happened to pluck before you had the chance. Rather, the food in said pantry is the physical embodiment of someone else's productive work, which does not belong to you unless you trade it for something that is yours (with their consent). The matter comprising said food is natural but there's no way to disentangle the matter from the work that altered its form without destroying the value created.

The issue, I think, is that this is an obvious example but advanced economies become heavily "abstract" in ways that make it hard for the average person to visualize why X belongs to Y. So you get more people who are inclined to challenge the rightful fact of said ownership.

Thats a good point but even small business owners are relatively well off. And 95 percent of them? Work for me or good luck on your own. When thats 95 percent of employment... the bottom line is work or die.

You should be supporting my argumemt as a fellow somewhat progressive minded fellow. Social safety net and all that.

If we cant go pick apples off local trees or plant enough food to feed ourselves at a moments notice we are being deprived of our natural rights. Thus the social contract. libertarians are quick to say taxation is taken at gunpoint but so is deprivation at gun point of the means to reasonably support oneself. Violence is inherent in system

What do you think of my last reply

Thats a good point but even small business owners are relatively well off. And 95 percent of them? Work for me or good luck on your own. When thats 95 percent of employment... the bottom line is work or die.

False dilemma. It's not "work or die". It's "sell your labor, find another source of income/support, or die". Businesses/companies are merely one possible customer of your labor. What about landscapers, who maintain other people's properties and get paid by the homeowners themselves?

If your position is that you ought to be entitled to sell your labor on your own terms even if the other party doesn't agree to buy your labor on said terms, then why stop at business owners? Should a barber who charges an exorbitant price for the worst shave you've ever had in your life be allowed to sue you for avoiding his establishment in favor of a getting your hair cut elsewhere? Since, after all, that's exactly the position employers are in. You sell your labor to them and they are the customer of your labor...which they resell to the public in combination with the labor of others to some synergistic effect. If you object to this, and if you think they bring nothing to the table, then why not sell that same labor to the public directly and cut out the middleman?

And if your labor is useless if not combined with the labor/capital of others, then what's stopping you from forming a work cooperative and pooling your resources? If the answer is that all your prospective partners think they get a better deal (re: more stable work, no personal liabilities, etc.) from conventional employment, then conventional employment does, in fact, have its benefits that justify its existence.

If we cant go pick apples off local trees or plant enough food to feed ourselves at a moments notice we are being deprived of our natural rights.

You're conflating two separate things here (picking fruit from existing trees and planting your own food) so I'll address the first.

How many fruit trees have you come across in your life? Does nature by itself - not counting human agriculture/horticulture/whatever - produce enough food to sustainably feed 8 billion people? No, we've obviously outstripped the carrying capacity of a hunter-gatherer society. Whatever tree you'd pluck an apple from would most likely be stripped bare by the time you got to it, given all the other hungry people in line to do the same thing.

"Now that's just a ridiculous strawman", you might say, "because I'm talking about picking apples for pleasure in the society we have now". But if you take away the private property rights that currently bar you from picking an apple on someone else's land, then you take away the property rights that allow a man to plant, say, a tree farm without fearing that a mob of random people won't come along and chop down all the trees to carry off the wood for kindling or lumber or what have you.

And then why would the tree farm exist at all if he had no reasonable expectation of return on his investment, or so much as the ability to recoup his costs? Wouldn't that land lie fallow? Wouldn't the logging industry be incentivized to practice reckless deforestation as opposed to sustainable tree farming? What would keep them from chopping down the trees in your yard?

linate wrote:

Thats a good point but even small business owners are relatively well off.

Why is it a problem that “even small business owners are relatively well off”, do you just resent anyone more well off than you? If you resent work, you will always be doing poorly compared to people that choose to work hard, you will go through life being a resentful person, that doesn’t strike me as a very good way to live your life.

And 95 percent of them? Work for me or good luck on your own.

I certainly don't think you can speak for 95% of small business owners, especially with an attitude towards work that none of them share with you. I think what they are actually saying is “Work for me, or work for somebody else, or work for yourself, that’s what I chose to do, and working for myself is why I ended up a small business owner that creates jobs.

When thats 95 percent of employment... the bottom line is work or die.

I suppose you can say that's the bottom line for everybody, and for every animal, I just don’t see the point of putting it that way, it strikes me as irrelevant and pointless. 

You should be supporting my argumemt as a fellow somewhat progressive minded fellow. Social safety net and all that.

I don’t know what “progressive minded” and “social safety net” have to do with it, this idea that life involves work crosses all political ideologies, it crosses all species actually, it’s just a fundamental fact of reality. Life is a process of expending energy to obtain energy; that’s just the way things are.  Food, shelter, relationships, family, friends, all of the things we associate with a good like requires work

I can’t support your argument because I don’t really see an argument, all I see is a negative attitude toward work that is unworkable in my mind, if you go through life resenting work, you will always be an unhappy and resentful person. I just don’t see the point. Do you play sports, have a hobby, play games, are in a relationship, all those things involve work for the purpose of enjoyment, making life better for you and others. 

Your so-called “argument” is just a thought process that I can’t connect with in any way. I’m retired now, but I can tell you that the best times involved work, I certainly didn’t resent the work, I relished the accomplishments. As a husband, father, athlete, successful career, service to others, all of it was a matter of enjoying the results of hard work. It will be tragic in one day you look back on your life and resent the effort, rather than relish the accomplishments. I think the times I most value, the times I most enjoyed, are the times I worked the hardest, especially when it involved teamwork, joint effort towards common goals is the most gratifying work, service to others is the most gratifying work, everything worth doing is a matter of working to accomplish goals.

If we cant go pick apples off local trees or plant enough food to feed ourselves at a moments notice we are being deprived of our natural rights.

How exactly is that a natural right? Even if you could go pick apples off local trees, that is still working, no matter what, you work to survive, the bottom line is the trees are telling you work for your apples or die.

Thus the social contract. libertarians are quick to say taxation is taken at gunpoint but so is deprivation at gun point of the means to reasonably support oneself. Violence is inherent in system

Nonsense, excessive drama doesn’t make your attitude into a point, nobody is making you work at gun point, there is nothing violent about the fact that you have to expend energy to live, it’s the natural way of the world. When you accept that, you can start enjoying life.

I think you said it right.

"The issue, I think, is that this is an obvious example but advanced economies become heavily "abstract" in ways that make it hard for the average person to visualize why X belongs to Y. So you get more people who are inclined to challenge the rightful fact of said ownership."

Except it's not an unbidled right to ownership. The social contract must exist. You are right that this all becomes abstract in modern society. But the proper conclusion isn't necessarily unbridled property rights and taxation is theft jargon. At least when it comes to excessive wealth. If you break down wealth as compared to land, the top one percent own a fourth the next ten percent own a fourth and the rest own less than half with the bottom fighting for beans. If land and opportunity were really split like that it'd be obvious thow unfair it is. But just because modern society is structured the way it is, abstractly as you put it, you think excessive wealth vis a vis destitution is just and fair. I'm just pointing out that there's two sides to the coin and not to look at it myopically like conservatives do. As long as you are depriving natural resources at gun point, the social contract will always exist