I thought taxes paid for roads.

You’ve always been creepy. If you quit stealing my wealth I’ll quit using your roads.

Stay off the state's roads then. Do they have roads up there in the Arctic circle where you are?

Does it upset you when I criticize the state?

You are a thief.

The exploitation of labor is when you steal the fruits of someone else’s labor for your own benefit, like a thief, like a state.

Would you steal someone’s wealth if there was no law or state prohibiting you from doing so?

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but working together for common goals seems to me to involve a little more work and community than letting an institution skim from your income. In this arrangement the only folk meeting their potential is the state, and I fear it is at the expense of everyone else’s potential. Nor is there any justice in expropriating someone’s wealth and giving it to others. So the hut on the hill is yours.

No thanks. I seek no membership in a social system that runs on exploitation. If you want to be altruistic you ought to stop delegating someone else to do it for you.

Voting confers power. It can only go so far as to give a person or party the right to control and regulate and make decisions on your behalf. It serves no other function. Giving someone the right to control and regulate and make decisions on your behalf is not an act of altruism.

The act of voting itself can be no more altruistic than making a similar mark on any other piece of paper

Taxation is not altruistic because taking money from someone is an act of theft. Paying taxes isn’t an act of charity because, since you’ve conferred the power to the government to dispense with your wealth as it pleases, you could not know whether it goes towards an altruistic act, or towards purchasing missiles, bombing innocents, or wrongfully imprisoning an innocent man.

The whole altruism angle is humbug.

When you give an institution the power to realize needs you give them the power to determine what the needs are. If you give the government the power to do something for you, you give it the corresponding power to do something to you. I suspect it wouldn’t be long until the government determines you need a decade of hard labor.

Our technology has advanced exponentially while the species has hardly evolved. This seems to me a fundamental problem.

My only point was it’s not unrealistic to seek better conditions, as humans have been doing since time immemorial. So in fact it’s not unrealistic to seek better employment.

You already know what I think about your ethical argument for antinatalism. Just like putting someone in a situation that experiences hardship is wrong, so is it wrong to deny someone the experience of love or joy or beauty. If you want to take credit for the former you will also take it for the latter.

That is to say and here is where @NOS4A2 is unrealistic. If businesses are exploitive, unfair, and miserable, it can be hard to simply pack up and go somewhere else.

Sure, it’s hard to pack up and leave. No one said it was easy. But the unrealistic part is believing one can or should be insulated from such hardship.

The United States employs Marxist doctrines and is a communist party? What?

Yes, it turns out you can do pretty well economically if you employ slave labor, suppress free trade, steal innovations from freer countries, and exploit your citizenry.

Communist parties do. I might wonder which communist state, current or otherwise, you’d prefer to live in, but I suspect I know the answer.

We’ve also had to fundamentally alter our lives, go into lockdowns, all for the expressed purposes of avoiding overwhelming the hospitals. So we were double-crossed: forced to alter our lives in order to protect them from their own failure to provide the healthcare they promised us. Maybe this failure will lead some sort of change.

It’s easy enough that if the choice were between “wage slavery”, “exploitation”, and starting a business, I’d start a business. Unfortunately it involves work and sacrifice, which frightens a vast segment of society.

Marx was a good writer, but a hypocrite of the highest order. Wherever his doctrines have been employed there has been nothing but moral and systematic failure on a grand scale. So I don’t think he’s relevant.

That seems like a fair analysis. I used to feel that way, too. But I’ve come to find the theory of exploitation risks limiting one’s options, and worse, oneself. If everyone is out to exploit you, how could you morally work or trade with them? If you believe you’re a slave, how does one not think and act like a slave? It’s no surprise to me, at least, that Marx was a foul-smelling deadbeat, getting by on the labor and wealth of others.

So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will?

It makes sense to me. I would have to hold them accountable for any action they perform by the simple fact that it is them and only them that perform it.

I never said we see a flower without light. In fact, I clearly said light hits the eyes directly.

You asked me if ankles were a part of perception. I answered accordingly.

It's direct contact with the lightwave, not the flower.

The light wave is something in the environment. If we wanted to, we could touch the flower to our eyeball, though I don't think it's necessary.

What about your ankles, are they part of the perception?

You can perceive with your ankle, I believe. If I tap my ankle with a finger I can feel it.

honestly to me these types of replies only seem to reinforce my socialist views:

The reason is because to me it reveals just how merciless and unsustainable the capitalist system really is. As you said, Mr Monopoly can rake in millions, but maybe stocks will go down, the economy crashes, and Mr Monopoly Jr ends up committing suicide because he’ll leave his kids with nothing. Marx and tons of other left wing theorists have pointed out that this constant cycle of booms and busts is unsustainable for everyone, including the bourgeoise. Hell, contemporary vulgar socialism tends to demonize the bourgeoise as much as they can, but even Marx pointed out how they’re alienated from the world and estranged from labour just as much as a worker is but in differing ways. A core tenant of socialism is that everyone would get what they need and deserve a comfortable life that isn’t constantly threatened by capitalism’s inherent contradictions.

If you look at a list of states that self-identify as socialist you’ll find an utterly abysmal track record when it comes to sustainability and mercy.

I appreciate the breakdown of the metaphor. I just do not see how it accurately describes any of the conditions, relations, or systems we’re talking about. I say this because I am unable to find an oppressive or coercive element that cannot be avoided here. And if we are supposed to be slaves to our own needs, I find it difficult to maintain that each of us are both the master and slave to ourselves.

Though it’s true that there are exploitative employers, the relationship isn’t inherently exploitative. In my own experience, whenever I’ve had to employ someone it was because I needed help with my work load, not because I intended to unfairly take advantage of someone for my own gain. The relationships were beneficial to all parties involved, as far as I’m concerned.

The only oppressive, coercive, and exploitative element in the relationship is the state. This relationship is far closer in character to chattel slavery than wage labor. They exploit mine and my employee’s labor by taking from our income. If we do not give them what they demand they subject us to force and coercion.

I’m simply referencing how the perceiver is in direct contact with the environment. Light hits the eyes directly; sound waves hit the ears directly; we touch and taste things directly. It’s all direct contact. Without it we wouldn’t perceive anything.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that if you sever nerves or otherwise mess with the biology of the perceiver he will perceive things differently. To me, the act of perception is performed as much by the taste receptors and nerves as it is by the brain.

We perceive as much of the environment that is available to our periphery, including the flower. This environment is in direct contact with the perceiver. We can touch the flower, we can taste it, even passing the flower through our digestion system. You cannot get much more direct than that.

And once you start measuring the eyeball and neural networks, you’re measuring the perceiver, not any sort of space between perceiver and perceived.

So there is no image, no medium upon which it appears, and no little perceiver to look at it. None of that exists when we physically examine the biology. Upon further examination we find that the biology is in direct contact with its environment, the perceiver in direct contact with perceived, no gap between them.

I don’t think the concept of wage slavery adequately describes the relationship. The employer has never forced me to work against my will; I have never been bound to conditions without my consent; i am payed for my services; If I don’t like the conditions I can leave. There just isn’t enough slavery involved there to call it that.

What image? If someone is to proclaim that an image exists between the perceiver and that which is perceived he should be able to produce this image, or at least describe the medium it is appears upon. But he cannot.

So why should we insert this image into our discourse it those who assert it is there are unable to produce it or even point to it?

You're right; there is not much one can say to the man who loves his employment that can convince him he should hate it. I think this is true of all relationships.

Employees are happy or not with the relationship to varying degrees, sometimes loving it sometimes hating it, but there can be nothing wrong with the arrangement so long as it is one of voluntary contract and both parties hold up their end of the bargain. This is why I cringe whenever critics declare that one party to this contract deserves public scorn while the other deserves public protection.

The principle of voluntary cooperation, wherever found, but especially in trade, is morally sound. The involuntary and coercive cooperation produced by the regulatory and legal institutions are not.

We do not need to evoke images to describe the difference between how the dog sees and how the human sees, is what I meant.

The way the dog sees the bird is different. Since the biology of a dog is different than ours, it interacts with the world differently than we do. We do not need to insert some image between that which sees and that which is seen.

Nor is it my invention, that you can't have absolute freedom in a society in pretty much anything without that freedom starting to interfere with the freedom of others. It's not that complex to understand that if we just gave everyone total freedom of speech with no restrictions, then some could and would use that freedom to remove other peoples freedom of speech. The simplest way would be just to yell over them. Or starting to spread harmful lies about those they want to silence. Or maybe they would simply join and make a total shitstorm of every conversation the people they want to silence are having. The options are endless.

We should be careful not to ascribe the word “freedom” to activities that seek to prohibit or interfere with freedom. For example, yelling over people, heckling them, defacing their writing, or otherwise attempting to impede someone’s speech with your own is censorship, not free speech. The principle of free speech demands that you do not engage in such activity, even if it manifests as some form of expression. When your intention is to impede or suppress someone’s activity with your own you are engaging in the opposite of freedom.

The solution has already been put into effect: the liberation of women. The birthrates are already falling worldwide, so any proposed solution is probably stupid, arbitrary and totalitarian.

I never said you can perceive visually through your entire body.

No I cannot.

If beliefs were arbitrary we might believe things that were probably false, like the world is made out of cheese. But they’re not arbitrary; we believe things for certain reasons.

Right, it’s the etymological fallacy. A genius, then, is literally a tutelary spirit. Far from wisdom, it’s poor thinking.

Blindsight is essentially when a person doesn't perceive anything in front of their eyes due to brain damage, yet better than chance they can "guess" what is there somehow. Surely all of our knowledge isn't gained strickly from perceptions from our senses? Perhaps we can gain knowledge from things we can't even perceive is there?

One perceives through other organs besides the eyes. He perceives through his entire body.

By their own admission, there was a shadow campaign to alter state election laws and systems, securing hundreds of millions in public and private dark money to do so. They got social media companies to suppress “misinformation”, such as Hunter Biden’s escapades, which turned out to be true. They coordinated with the same activist groups who for that whole year destroyed many cities through the country. They convinced millions to vote by mail for the first time. All of this was intended to preserve election integrity from Trump’s withering criticism, which they absurdly labeled an “assault on democracy”. Instead of protecting the election, though, they worked behind the scenes to fundamentally alter it.

Given all this, I see no problem in crying foul and contesting the election, which Trump and his campaign did.

I cannot tell if that’s the CNN or the cocaine speaking. At this point they’re one and the same.

The only thing abnormal about it was the preconceived notions, led as they were by the silliest of media blunders ever perpetrated. The surprising thing is even distant foreigners who pride themselves on being above American tribalism were so easily duped by the Clinton propaganda machine. I’m still trying to figure out how such a person may benefit from being the unwitting participant in Clintonian propaganda, but I can never reach any conclusion.