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what's wrong with economics

phildwyer said:
It's not really though, is it? It makes perfect rational sense. Anyone who is not a natural slave would die rather than be enslaved. As you say, Hegel expanded on this ancient argument, under the inspiration of the successful slave revolt in Haiti, which established that Africans were not natural slaves.
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Which is only proof that were he alive today, Hegel would be an internet hardman frequently photographed rubbing works by Hayek over an intimate body area.
 
kabbes said:
You implied that working not as a slave was voluntary. And yet working is coerced by making the consequences be akin to those a slave suffered if the slave refused to work.
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Ugh.

Someone who chooses to work has not been coerced in any shape or form. Having to work is not slavery. Slavery implies you are forced into a choice by a third party, which you are not. You have many choices and working is one of them, I talked about this several times already if you went back and read my posts. If you are trying to interfere with someone choice to work, you are forcefully trying to rule them. Which is a form of coercion.
 
7000Miles said:
Like I said before, people are missing my points. What I was trying to say was that simply because someone at one point in the past was on land that doesn't mean its theirs for good. If they built a house and lived there consistently, or owned the deeds etc. its their land. If they built it in 1000 BC and left it a year later without writing any kind of legal or similar document whats the issue with someone taking it over in 2014? They are no longer occupying it, are long dead, and don't have the rights to it any longer.
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No, you missed my point. Throughout history land suitable for homesteading has been occupied. If it exists, its so rare as to be practically non-existent.
 
7000Miles said:
No, it doesn't exist. It is a voluntary agreement between two parties. An agreement is made to exchange labor for something, usually money or a "wage", so then it cannot possibly be slavery because slavery is involuntary servitude.
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It's hardly voluntary.
 
7000Miles said:
No it isn't. You are not forced to work, therefore it in not involuntary. You have many choices in life, starve, start a business, work for someone else, be self-employed, hunt for food, beg etc. The business owner is simply giving you one more. The business owner is actually giving you an extra option
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You're serious aren't you? Starvation as a choice. Wonderful.
 
7000Miles said:
I know what you are trying to say, but no. Private property is a right, and a person attempting to destroy or trespass is committing a crime. It is not an involuntary contract as such, because one person is not respecting the rights of another. A right is different than a contract two people agree to. Saying "I don't recognise private property, so it doesn't exist and I can do X and Y to another person's property" is ridiculous.
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What makes private property "a right"?
 
When you believe that everybody is 'missing the point' should make you take pause and wonder why that might be.
 
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7000Miles said:
Ugh.

Someone who chooses to work has not been coerced in any shape or form. Having to work is not slavery. Slavery implies you are forced into a choice by a third party, which you are not. You have many choices and working is one of them, I talked about this several times already if you went back and read my posts. If you are trying to interfere with someone choice to work, you are forcefully trying to rule them. Which is a form of coercion.
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This is nonsense and you know it. Some of us have choices in what job we do. A tiny minority have the option not to work. The vast majority have no choice but to work on whatever terms are available, or starve.
 
Blagsta said:
This is nonsense and you know it. Some of us have choices in what job we do. A tiny minority have the option not to work. The vast majority have no choice but to work on whatever terms are available, or starve.
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To be fair to 7000, the welfare state did (at least until recently) give people the option of not working without actually starving to death.

That's why they're abolishing it.

But under the pure market conditions that 7000 appears to favor, such as pertained in the UK until 1945 and which still pertain throughout most of the world, no such choice exists. And that is precisely why, in the ancient world, the condition of a wage-worker was held to be infinitely lower than that of a slave.
 
phildwyer said:
But under the pure market conditions that 7000 appears to favor, such as pertained in the UK until 1945 and which still pertain throughout most of the world, no such choice exists.
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Well, the market conditions I'm advocating aren't present in the world today. I'd say the closest place to it is maybe Hong Kong, and even then it still has a way to go.
 
7000Miles said:
Ugh.

Someone who chooses to work has not been coerced in any shape or form. Having to work is not slavery. Slavery implies you are forced into a choice by a third party, which you are not. You have many choices and working is one of them, I talked about this several times already if you went back and read my posts. If you are trying to interfere with someone choice to work, you are forcefully trying to rule them. Which is a form of coercion.
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where is this amazing land wherein I can have food and shelter without state provision or the sale of labour?
 
Here's an unemployed gas technician enjoying the bounties of Hong Kong's free market paradise:

db562701948b6bb8a1331ba182f8fb10.jpg


In a country with no pension scheme and with around 20 per cent of the population living below the poverty level, the housing shortage hits the elderly hardest: one in every three old people in Hong Kong now lives in poverty. And the disparity in living standards among the population has worsened significantly over the past decade.
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http://www.theglobalmail.org/featur...offins-hong-kongs-rotten-property-ladder/626/
 
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