What is the connection?

Alienation isn’t the feeling of estrangement, but an act of hostility that causes someone to feel estranged. So an unalienated worker is someone who doesn’t face such hostilities.

They are crimes according to some species of legalism, but they wouldn’t be if people refused to do what they were ordered. So despite the legal theories the fact remains: whether people obey or disobey an order is not determined by the words.

Good. Repubs are equally as evil, in my mind.

I appreciate free speech too much to punish someone for speaking.

Bullets can tear through a person’s body. Shooting someone is justifiably a criminal act. Words possess no such force, have zero connection to another’s actions, and thus speaking cannot be justified as criminal act. I think your view is magical thinking.

Anyways, have a good one. Be free.

For what?

Slavery was once legally sound. Philosophically, it’s magical thinking. Speaking cause little more than the movement of air. Speech is an act but words are not actors.

Then it’s their stupidity that led them to do it, not the words of someone else.

Do you go out and kill cops if a politician says such things?

Because words do not cause any such crimes

Nope

People should not be prosecuted, jailed or impeached for the sounds that come out of their mouths. But, as that era has proven, the bar has already been set.

The COVID pandemic proved who the fascists were, and it wasn’t Trump. Now they have all the power they need.

I have zero faith in the American justice system, but some hoaxers are finally being put through it.

Michael Sussmann: Clinton lawyer 'lied to manipulate FBI over Trump'

Unfortunately the useful idiots that fell for it and promulgated it every chance they could will never learn from their stupidity. Tales like this and others reminds me that Anti-Trumpism and it’s supporters have shaped the world to what it is today—war, inflation, division on a mass scale.

Nagel’s most important insight is that humans aren’t bats.

The belief that everything must be “bridled” by an elected group of bureaucrats is ideology in the strictest sense, a superstition far deeper and obsequious than any political ideology that arises from it.

Not too different. The National Socialists, Italian Fascists, and New Deal liberals developed surprisingly similar systems to inspire and control their citizens. A good book on this subject is Three New Deals by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

Looks like Xtrix came back for a read. A glutton for punishment, I guess.

I’m not sure if this is lost in translation or not, but you’re equivocating between two senses of “history”. You might know something of history in the grand sense because you’d read a history book, but you know very little about the history of any given acquisition and transfer. In order to find out whether you are entitled to the object of any transfer—that it was not stolen for example—you’d need to examine what actually happened in the course of the acquisition and transfer of that object. If you know anything about history, you know one cannot know the history of his bike by taking a history class.

If this idea is so simple why is it so hard to grasp?

Not interested in continuing until you present an argument or rebuttal of substance. Take care.

A minute later....

:grin: — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good riddance.

The Public Good. Is that the same as the State?

All of that is irrelevant to our exchange of eggs.

Without the possibility to prove it, it is arbitrary and therefor a procedural proposal and procedure has little, if anything, to do with justice, which is why Nozick is not taken seriously by philosophers in Europe. Kind of like a footnote to Rawls if he's discussed at all. It's purely cultural that Nozick is considered an important thinker in the US due to its outsized individualism and Nozick is just an excuse to shore up anti-social laws.

Come to think of it, I fully support everything you propose to be implemented as quickly as possible in the US and watch it crash and burn as a result.

The fact you cannot prove that all transactions throughout history are just does not entail you cannot prove that some transactions are just. Some can be proved, some cannot. Therefor it’s not arbitrary and not procedural. But I'm disappointed that all we are doing is quibbling about the word "historical". It's so trivial as to be irrelevant.

It's a simple matter; if someone stole a bike and you receive it as a gift, that's not a just exchange. You are not entitled to it and ought to return it to the person it was stolen from. If the bike wasn't stolen and the exchange was voluntary, that's a just exchange. So why is state distribution of wealth just or unjust?

Europe has given us the collectivist and social politics of Communism, Socialism, and Fascism, which have spread worldwide, ruining every country infected by their ideas.

Doesn’t make it not so, either. It is impossible to prove and thus nonsensical to believe every transfer of a possession is unjust. Not all of us are giving each other stolen art, colonial plunder, and blood diamonds.



I’m not transferring you stolen land or highways. The hens laid the eggs just days ago.

I appreciate your opinion.

I don’t think it’s too difficult to ponder. If my chicken lays eggs and I give you a dozen that sounds to me like a just exchange.

It’s either unjust or it is not. The cognitive dissonance must be painful.

If you think such transactions are unjust, how can you be indifferent when the state does it?

Historical. The question of whether a distribution is just depends upon how it came about, so one has to examine the history of the transfer and acquisition of any “holding”.

Rawls’ theory of justice is what Nozick called an “end-state” theory of justice. Such a theory proposes that redistribution must lead to a just state, in Rawls’ case, that distribution should be arraigned in a way that we achieve the Difference Principle.

Nozick contrasts this with his own “entitlement” theory which is a “historical” theory of justice. Distribution is only just if the transfer and acquisition of the goods were just. Further, all historical transfers of any certain “holdings” must be just, from its initial acquisition until its most recent.

In my mind, one advances just outcomes, the other just behavior. It’s no surprise that I’m with Nozick on this one. I fear end-state theories of justice because unjust behavior can (and has) been used in an attempt to reach a the desired state, which may or may not be achievable.

Anyways, Nozick’s chapter on Distributive Justice is a great companion to Rawls and makes for great debate.

Only if you see them as a means-to-an-end. But as an end-in-themselves they are priceless. How can one put a price on something that is original?

Here in the UK it’s the employer that pays their employees’ income tax and national insurance (and student loan repayments if required). We only ever see the post-tax amount.

The business is forced to deduct taxes from the gross wage and sends it to the government on the employee's behalf, leaving the employee with what is left over. The state sure has streamlined the process, haven't they?

Why would there be legal implications if the tax is voluntary?

Yes. The argument you gave was that your reward was agreed on by some other party, therefore you deserve it, if you provide no further factors, then whatever reward is agreed on is deserved. So the prisoner deserves to escape because that's what was agreed on.

If the transfer and acquisition of the exchange was voluntary and consensual, it would be a just exchange, sure.

Are you saying that taxation is a secret where you live?

No, taxation is not a secret. When you accept a job, do you agree to the gross or net wage?

I literally gave you the example in the fucking quote you're replying to, if would be hard to get more disingenuous. If you board a train you agree to pay the price of whatever journey you took. If you have a bar tab you agree to pay the cost of however many drinks you accumulate by the time the tab is due.

At no point in either arrangement did you shake anyone's hand or bow or sign anything. Remaining on a train definitely constitutes an agreement to pay for the excess journey.

You gave me a false analogy. You’re using an example of voluntary exchanges as analogies for compulsory taxation, services I agree to pay for and willingly seek out as analogies for services I do not. Utter trash.

You've not linked agreeing with deserving. If a prison guard agrees to help a prisoner escape, do they thereby deserve to escape?

I thought we were talking about why I am entitled to the gross wage, now it’s offers to escape from prison.

I didn't say it was his business. Your claim was that he consented. He did not. The amount was negotiated under an expectation. — Isaac

It could be possible you and your employer agree to net pay where you live, which might explain my confusion—but then your agreed-upon wage would be subject to shifts in taxation, going down should your taxes go up and vice versa, thereby violating the wage you both agreed upon. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Of course it does. That's exactly what you're violating. If I give you my bike on the condition you don't sell it, and you sell it, you're violating my consent.

One minute it's an "implicit understanding", the next its a "condition". I won't assume bad faith but I don't think I can keep arguing on such shifting sands.

When you board a train, or stay on a train past your station, you are agreeing to buy a ticket, you're using a service.

By remaining in the country, you're agreeing to the terms under which your use of that country is offered. You had 18 years to decide. If you don't agree to those terms, stop using the service. It's theft to use a service and not pay for it.

I have not agreed to any terms, figuratively or literally, implicitly or explicitly. I’ve never shook anyone's hand or bowed or signed anything. "Remaining" isn't a gesture of agreement in any language. But it’s no surprise you’d keep using the language of agreement and contract even if I have never agreed to any of the above. It’s intuitive, even if in your case it doesn’t reflect reality.

Yet you've given nothing in support of the assertion that you gross pay is either fair or equitable. The only argument you've offered so far is the entirely tautologous one that your gross pay is your gross pay.

It is fair and equitable because it was willingly given to me in trade for something of equal value. I deserve payment because that is what we agreed to, and the employer deserves my work for the same reason.

Hey, we actually agree on this. What is it about this self-imposition? Can you elaborate your thoughts on the fact that we don't just "do", but we have to continually buy into doing?

I wouldn't describe it as an imposition, myself, because no one is imposing this activity on me. I just think it is a burden and its fine to be pessimistic about it. It's tough. It's not easy. In such a life optimism leads to disappointment, pessimism to pleasant surprises.

I think you’re right. The technological growth of human history and “progress” could be the evolving effects of our attempts to mitigate this burden.

Apology accepted.

Oh dear, are we speaking in questions again?