His words were a defence of freedom of speech and thought. The quote was a reason he gave for refusing to hold his tongue. By censoring yourself you are unable to discourse about virtue and approach the greatest good of man.

The gestapo checking your vaccine papers while you eat. France has fallen.

Such is the paradox. They apply racism to fight racism. Hence the term in the US “positive discrimination”. It’s good racism, the kind of racism that benefits the racialized groups we prefer, whether they are victims of racism or not.

Which inquiry?

Nope.

I’m also not shooting or doing backflips over human beings. I don’t know where we’re going with that.

Many things determine wage— job requirements, pay standards in your industry, the size of the company, geographic location, supply and demand—but this is the first time I’ve hear income tax was a determining factor. It’s an interesting argument but I’ll just have to disagree.

They apply it.

I just don’t see how that works. If the income tax is the product of a tax rate times the taxable income, it is impossible for an employer to know what I will be paying in income tax in order to factor it into my hourly wage.

If I miss a day, have less income to tax, and therefor have less tax to pay, should the hourly wage change to reflect that?

If I miss a day, and therefor have less income, should my wage go down as well?

Do you hold that an employer includes what I will inevitably owe in income taxes into the wage? I don’t see how that can work.

I don’t agree that the “agreed upon wage” includes some implicit condition that I pay a percentage of it in taxes. If I refuse to pay taxes I don’t owe the employer a percentage of my wage. The exchange of tax between me and the government has nothing to do with the employer.

The government sees what I make in income, it takes a percentage of that income. That’s the exchange.

I certainly ignore the concept of “the Other” and of race, but only because I think they collectivist crutches for people incapable of individuation, who cannot see past their skulls for the things outside of them. Your value for people does not seem to extend beyond your conceptions and categories to real being. I do not ignore, nor cannot ignore, how these ideas are used to justify the nonsense that is the consequence of this thinking.

Just to be clear, I’m not an abolish the government kind of guy. People are too dependent on it, that to abolish it would be cruel. I’m not even into civil disobedience. I much rather make fun of it and let it go it’s own direction. I just think that taxation is immoral and unjust and maybe, even piecemeal, it can become just.

Bear with my layman’s understanding, but in your scenario I would expect the full pay. Income tax and deductions come from my gross income, my full earnings according to the agreed-upon wage multiplied by the sum of hours I work. By “fruits of my labor”, at least as it pertains to this kind of employment, I mean my gross income. If the tax system was abolished I would expect my employer to pay me everything I earned, including the money the government commonly deducts from this exchange.

I say that the gross income is mine because it was traded to me, exchanged, given to me, gifted, for my work.

I’m aware of how the income tax system works. It applies to most forms of income, not just what employers pay in wages. But the question of whose income, properties, sales, estates, inheritances, benefits, money they are taxing is explicitly stated by governments themselves.

Force and confiscation aren’t legitimate forms of acquiring property for me, so reiterating that the state claims a right, therefor it has the right, to the fruits of my labor isn’t good enough for me.

Yeah, I've actually had this exact conversation with @NOS4A2 before. we reached...https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509272...then Nos walked away unable to defend his position.

I walked away because you’re boring and difficult to read. That’s not something to be proud of.

You've still not provided any grounds on which the money is the property of the tax-payer. I'll ask again, on what grounds is the pre-tax wage your property?

I already did. It was the agreed-upon wage for the labor I provide. On what grounds is it the state’s property?

The “appropriate proportion” is defined by the state, and is added to the cost at the expense of the consumer, in other words, people like myself. It’s not like the employer is giving the state their own money back. It’s taken from the tax-payer at every point.

So once more, on what grounds is it the state’s property?

Build your own road and use that.

I would have to go through the state to do it.

No one uses all roads, though. Not only that but it cannot be shown that one’s taxes go to any specific road, or if they go to Raytheon missiles, or some other “service”.

Are you saying your employer is unaware of the taxation system?

No, of course he is aware. Whose property is my wage?

Obviously if you don't like the system you need to present the alternative.

There is no alternative to present. The monopoly is total.

So your grounds for ownership is that it was given to you? Is everything given to you automatically yours? I'd hate to lend you a lawnmower.

No, I’m not borrowing it. It was given to me on the assumption that I get to keep it. If it’s not my property, whose property is it?

Moral integrity?

Not only should my money be stolen for the construction of roads, but I should refrain from using them? That sounds like a double loss.

That's not what I asked. On what grounds is it your property?

It was given to me. Is it someone else’s property?

Then don't use the roads. You've no argument so long as you're using them.

Why would I not use something that I’ve already helped to fund?

Great, then we'll start again. On what grounds is the pre-tax wage your property?

A wage is payed to me for my labor. Do you think it should be payed to someone else?

Then you've seriously misunderstood the arrangement. Do you get chucked off a lot of fairground rides too? The roads aren't free, they're there for you to use on the assumption that you (or others in your community on your behalf) pay for them. If you don't agree to this, don't use them.

I am well aware that roads aren’t free, and I use them because I pay taxes. What I don’t agree to is the coercive and involuntary arrangement.

Absolutely. No one should be vaccinated, ever! After all, they're not sick. Right?

That’s not what I said.

I don’t remember the argument but sure I’ll try to defend it.

Wow. So you've never used a road? Do tell us how.

I use roads all the time.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11514/mask-vaccination-and-the-delta-variant/p1

With the corona virus making a comeback with the Delta variant and the struggle with misinformation.

Should we mandate mask wearing to the same degree as at least wearing a seat belt? And be fine if caught not wearing one. As well as make the corona vaccine mandatory for everyone?

Or should the public have the right to choose to wear a mask and vaccinate or not. Regardless of the risk of public safety?

Which should come first safety or freedom of choice?

At what point should we wait till we decide that safety takes precedence over freedom of choice?
12 hours ago

People without the virus won’t spread the virus. So why would we force them to wear masks? Why would we force them to do anything? Because we are ignorant and scared, two frames of mind that should never set policy.

I think that sounds a bit exaggerated. Yes, taxes do seem excessive but the state provides services in return. Without those services you would have to pay private companies to police your neighborhood, to collect refuse, to repair roads, etc., and I'm not sure that would come out much cheaper.

I did not request those services. So why should I have to pay for them?

Like you, Fitzhugh lamented wage labor, capitalist exploitation, and was fervently illiberal. It’s neat how the tandem desire for control can make slave masters and socialists comfy bedfellows. So I think you are more inclined to fit in well with him than me.

It’s true; I am operating on the assumption that a slave is chattel, is forced to work at the discretion of his master, is not allowed to leave, is involuntary, and so on. Maybe you don’t define “slave” in such a way, but I do, and given that these conditions are absent in wage labor, the conditions of slavery are not the same as the conditions of wage labor. This admittedly common sense view of slavery, not as penetrating as your own no doubt, suffices for me to distinguish slavery from wage labor, and why I refuse to consider wage labor as wage slavery. As far as pejoratives go, it’s a weak and boring one.

I don’t think it can be argued that slavery was voluntary or consensual, or that slaves should be blamed for their conditions, so we’ll just leave that one aside.

It’s true that leaving a job can lead to financial hardship, but then again it can prove beneficial. It would be interesting to see some statistics on it, but from personal experience, I know of no one who has quit a job and faced homelessness or stigma or humiliation. Certainly some do, but I’ve quit plenty of jobs and am the better for it. Have you ever quit a job before? Have you ever had a job before?

As for the theory of exploitation, for me the criticism of the theory remains the same as when Böhm-Bawerk made them over a century ago: surplus value is not equal to profits and wages are often paid in advance of revenue. That and the collapse of the labor theory of value renders the theory pretty useless.

But I don’t think you really care much about the exploitation of labor, anyways, especially when it comes to the government taking it. Your so-called “say in what the state does with taxes” is false. I wager you have not followed a single dollar of your taxes to any final destination. If you cannot know where it goes, you cannot have a say in where it goes. All you’ve done is hinged your servile hopes on the promises of politicians and bureaucrats, pretending that selecting from a rogues gallery of state careerists amounts to having a say in government.

I’m well aware of the concept of wage slavery. I just don’t believe it is accurate at all, especially when used to describe employment in general. Voluntarily working for a wage does not rise to the level of slavery, chattel or otherwise. What’s more, I have never subscribed to the theory of exploitation or the labor theory of value, so I am unable to agree with your description of employment in that respect. There is no valid reason beyond pure greed that an employee should own the company he works for by virtue of him working there alone.

The state, on the other hand, subsists entirely on exploitation in a way that is morally equivalent to forced labor: through taxation. I have to pay homage to the state with each purchase in the form of sales tax. If I don’t pay it I don’t eat. By taxing my income, my property, they confiscate the fruits of my labor. As far as exploitive practices and greed is concerned, the robber baron pales in comparison to the state.

Okay good, you agree that such demarcations allow or facilitate abuse rather than cause it. If you’re actually interested in solving a problem it’s usually best to deal with the cause of it.

Do you apply these pseudoscientific taxonomies to human beings?

I believe that “race” is a pseudoscientific taxonomy, and that whole swaths of people should not be demarcated within those abstract boundaries. I believe that such a fake demarcation has allowed racists to run roughshod on entire groups of people, and I simply refuse to adopt it in my thinking.

All I fail to apprehend is the classification of human beings into pseudoscientific taxonomies, which are as ridiculous as the day they were born. One needn’t use these taxonomies to recognize that people apply entire stereotypes to them, draw false conclusions from them, and abuse others because of them.

Ignoring an advantage ≠ ignoring racism.

My own conclusion remains the same. The criticism of color-blindness remains unproven and unprovoked. The idea that one will ignore racism by refusing to include racial taxonomies into his thinking is false on its face, because racializing people, viewing them as a member of this or that racial group and deriving assumptions thereby, is the problem to begin with. In short, one cannot banish racism by evoking it.

I’m just a layman and am relaying my own, admittedly limited knowledge, as conferred to me by everyone from public health officials, journalists and politicians. From here forward I’ll be sure to include pharmaceutical companies.

I only said that they never mentioned how quickly the virus can circulate among the vaccinated, specifically as it pertains to vaccine certificates, which are rolling out across the globe. In fact, such a scenario was only recently modelled and released just yesterday.

Abstract
Vaccines are thought to be the best available solution for controlling the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. However, the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains may come too rapidly for current vaccine developments to alleviate the health, economic and social consequences of the pandemic. To quantify and characterize the risk of such a scenario, we created a SIR-derived model with initial stochastic dynamics of the vaccine-resistant strain to study the probability of its emergence and establishment. Using parameters realistically resembling SARS-CoV-2 transmission, we model a wave-like pattern of the pandemic and consider the impact of the rate of vaccination and the strength of non-pharmaceutical intervention measures on the probability of emergence of a resistant strain. As expected, we found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain. Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions happened at a time when most individuals of the population have already been vaccinated the probability of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased. Consequently, we show that a period of transmission reduction close to the end of the vaccination campaign can substantially reduce the probability of resistant strain establishment. Our results suggest that policymakers and individuals should consider maintaining non-pharmaceutical interventions and transmission-reducing behaviours throughout the entire vaccination period.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95025-3

So much for vaccine certificates.

Isn't that why we have governments in the first place? Containing us?

The belief that we could control a virus by controlling human beings is only the most recent mistake of man’s hubris.

Why do I always read your words with a snivelling, high-pitched tone?

I haven’t heard anywhere that the virus can spread easily among the vaccinated, and your nasally diatribe failed to inform me of the contrary. One quote of some expert will suffice.

Oh dear, the business owner cracking the whip on the backs of their voluntary slaves. Such entitled nonsense. There is much to be said about employment, but I’ve had too many jobs to believe in a concept like wage slavery, and I would never expect ownership of a company I did not create. That’s just me.

The cost of registering an LLC or corporation was about $100 in the state I’m from, the last time I checked. So it’s a lie to imply only the rich can start a company and incorporate. Starting a business takes plenty of time and dedication, lots of risk, maybe some borrowing, sure, but one needn’t be a trust-fund baby to do so.

Never mind that governments, too, employ vast amounts of people. There are millions of American slaves grinding for wages in your precious state machinery right now, all so people like you can beg them to pick up the slack wherever you refuse to. Where’s the foam at your mouth now?