talkpolitics | Rendering Unto Caesar: The Essence of Slavery‏‏

People who have lived their entire lives in a slavish existence have no experience of what it means to live freely. If someone were to tell them that what they call freedom is actually quite unfree, they might respond with strong emotions. Their reaction could be so severe that they kill or injure the individual who delivers the message. They might go so far as to claim religious persecution and have the messenger brought up on charges of crimes against humanity. In a previous time and place, the messenger would be strapped to a pole atop a pile of flaming fuel or tacked to an artificial tree.

If you ask a chattel slave about slavery, he might speak of brutal punishment and loss of friends and family. If you ask a wage slave about slavery, he might speak of meager compensation and cutthroat competition. If you ask a chattel slave owner about slavery, he might speak of the innate inferiority of the laboring race. If you ask a wage slave employer about slavery, he might speak of the fear of labor organizers and the need for out-sourcing. None of this gets to the essence of slavery because it considers only surface phenomena.

Plato described the essence of slavery as an artificial system of deception. The chattel slave is deceived into fearing punishment. The chattel slave owner is deceived into controlling people. The wage slave is deceived into practicing cutthroat competition. The wage slave employer is deceived into sending his work to a more despotic domain. All of them are stuck in an artificial trap of slavish existence. Where Aristotle debits slavishness to human nature, Plato firmly places the blame on social structures that condition people to think and act in a narrow way.

What does this have to do with politics today? There is no slavery here and now. The problems of coerced and forced labor have all been solved by the miracles of modern science. Do you really believe that or do you see some room for improvement? A recent Time magazine article on labor conditions in India do not agree with that assessment. India is a hotbed of American and European outsourcing.

Links: Plato's famous cave analogy. Nilanjana Bhowmick on labor conditions in India.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your posts are nothing but trolling. You make unsubstantiated assertions pulled out of thin air and then when called out on them you backpedal and refuse to provide evidence. And you've been pulling this trick for years. Don't blame people for responding to you the way they do.

These so-called unsubstantiated assertions that people get miffed about are typically unrelated to the topic I post on. They are nits that people attack rather than address the substance of the issue. I provide links to sources that substantiate the gist of the topics upon which I write. On a few occasions these sources have been arbitrarily dismissed by certain members of this community, but the linked sources are generally ignored.

And yet you make those assertions. If you don't want them attacked, don't make them.

One erroneous and unsubstantiated assertion is sufficient to erode the "gist" of it all. Especially when subsequently doubled down by yourself with further refusal for evidence as soon as it turns out you've been making shit up, or in other words, lying through your teeth.

That's a lame and lazy approach to posting, and you should only be blaming yourself for the reaction you're receiving.

One erroneous or unsubstantiated assertion can only erode the main point in the mind of someone who wants to reject the main point without addressing it head-on. Galileo was wrong about the way that the Earth's rotation affects the tides, but that did not discredit the rest of the material in his essay. People make mistakes in arguments all the time. Mature debaters will not claim that a minor slip negates the entire argument.

As for making stuff up or lying through my teeth, that is an accusation with no evidence behind it. I do not make stuff up. If you do not like something I have said, it is probably because the truth make you uneasy, not because I have led people astray.

People make mistakes in arguments all the time

It would be good if they acknowledge those mistakes as well, as opposed to twisting themselves into all sorts of pretzels to avoid facing them.

The evidence is right there. You were asked to provide proof for your assertion that the messenger would be met with accusations of crimes against humanity, and you refused. Several times. So yes, you're making shit up as you go and masquerading it as "argument". And even now you're denying it.

The fight or flight response in the brain is an amazing thing.

Political correctness is rotten to the core.

Providing evidence, the new political correctness!

Speculation on what might happen requires no evidence. Demanding evidence in such a situation is itself a form of evidence.

That is not a mistake. It is quite possible that such an accusation could be made. Jews were accused by Nazis of being a threat to the German race. They were portrayed as vectors of disease and genetic decay. If someone had suggested the possibility of such accusations earlier in the century, they might have been shot down by the argument police for making an unsubstantiated statement.

Yep. Keep pretzeling.

If you do not like something I have said, it is probably because the truth make you uneasy, not because I have led people astray.
And this is what marks you as a fraud, because this is the most bullshit, psychologizing, psychiatric defense cop-out in the world. A lot like how the Soviets argued with people.

Yes, dear.

And people at flatearthsociety.org.

I know them. Those are the bozos who think that neural wave technology is impossible.

Rendering Unto Caesar: The Essence of Slavery‏‏

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