Yeah, one wasn’t a pity party for celebrities and had a little more balls to it.

Never forget: it was ok to take over Capitol Hill when Hillary-supporters did it.

You don’t know right from wrong? You can study laws until the cows come home, but if you do not know right from wrong, just from unjust, you could not know whether the laws are right or wrong or just and unjust. You’re simply abiding by dictate, not reason or any sense of justice. The idea that law dictates right or wrong, Justice or injustice, is not only absolutist, but an appeal to authority.

I’m not speaking about the state, though it is certainly one arbiter of justice. Anyone can be just and any amount of people can determine whether an act is just or not. To leave all that to the state is not too bright, for the reasons you mention.

Do you suppose that a man who murders an innocent person deserves the same treatment as the man who kills the murderer?

The principle is justice. With his actions he has proven he isn’t deserving of human life and dignity.

I suppose if a crime shows such a disregard for human life and dignity the perpetrator deserves nothing less than to be put down.

I mean specifically to protect the innocent from violence, to counter one act of violence with another. But I also believe violent reciprocation is often warranted. Sometimes it just isn’t right that someone should get away with certain acts without a comeuppance.

Violence is ethical if it is used to counter unjust violence. I would even say it is ethical when used in the service of justice, for instance, with the death penalty. So an ethical violence would have to be a just violence.

Yes, it’s a state-managed collectivist economy through-and-through, and the current seizure is only evidence of how far it is willing to go. But forcing businesses to limit capacity, to enforce mandates, to close early, to adopt shifting policies, to collect subsidies, to outlaw dancing, gathering, walking to the bathroom without a mask etc. is unprecedented, especially in countries that haven’t quite swallowed the socialist pill yet.

The fact that a slave could choose to escape his masters doesn't make him any more free. Perhaps we have different conceptions of freedom.

I much rather stay and convince you to stop stealing my wealth. It’s in both of our interests.

No agreement here. I register my vehicle, get a license, drive on their roads because I have no other option. :down:

Around here the government has seized the economy, effectively denying many people to conduct businesses, and in some cases to leave their homes, to enter businesses, to gather with others.

Unfortunately, these aren’t market forces at work here, but legislation that favors those who can afford to adapt to capricious government policy, those who who can afford to work from home, those who work on the internet, and so on.

None of this would have been possible without a vast segment of corporate interest, as large telecommunication companies, social media companies, multinational technology companies, media companies, have already provided the infrastructure required to pull it all off. We have effectively been forced to use their products and services, if not to survive, than to retain some sanity during isolation. Our loss, in fact, is their gain.

I would not be stealing if I use them because the roads are available to use by anyone, including those that don’t pay their taxes and foreigners. I would not be stealing anything because I have not taken anything that is not mine.

It sounds about right, to me. Combine this with the fact that no other force, being, or object can be shown to cause or direct a person’s decisions but the person himself.

No. Even in areas where I think the state is legitimate, I have never once thought to myself “the government sure did a good job.”

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.