Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>>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, that's literally choosing between the least bad authoritarian entity available for oneself.

You're misdefining "authoritarian". Nothing I described in that example is authoritarian.

>>So let's push democracy into the economic sphere as well since according to you there would be no difference.

You're free to manage your own property however you wish.

> You're misdefining "authoritarian"

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.

> It's a voluntarily assumed dependency.

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.

> then it's voluntary

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

Uhm, what's the blatant violence I'm advocating?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com