Humans Are Livestock

If you’re much of a sport I want a rematch on the debate with less limitations and constraints. No significant disadvantages next round.

I accept your rematch, though not on the same topic and not for a few weeks. Maybe towards the end of April?

And definitely with different constraints.

Thanks all,

Yes on the sarcasm note - I think we all knew where Hahaha was coming from there. Now as to judge a debate though impartially I cannot assume to know what Hahaha meant. That being, I can’t provide his reason without him telling the reason - to be impartial I must look at the topic from somewhat of a clean of a slate as possible in order to judge ones responses as effective and reasonable instead of assuming to know why certain responses went the way they did. So I was looking for reason to back up every claim, not to assume to know the reason. I find it interesting that you did find the sarcasm threatening, which probably anyone would in a debate… but I as an “impartial” judge I wanted his sarcasm backed up with clear concise reason, not just left at sarcasm, for the sake of debate.

So I did my best to judge based on reason, a little bit on form of course, but primarily who made the most effective argument. I found that Hahaha asked questions, leaving it open for you - and you in turn did ignore his requests for proof. However - I felt that it was a slipperly slope to “prove” things to someone who disagrees in a debate in so much as you already provided reason of sorts to back up those claims - but to elaborate further would lead to possibly more demands for proof ad infinitum. So in a short debate like this - was looking for Hahaha to back up his opening statement more, but found as much questioning your statements instead of backing up his own, and found that you backed up your statements reasonably well, better so than Hahaha backed up his statements.

I did think probably had an advantage as I was already aware that Carleas had already engaged quite a few debates here already and I have read some of them. Hahahaha I suspect will be able to conduct further debates in a much stronger manner now that he got his first one under his belt.

I don’t know - however your final response left it open for Carleas instead of using it to back your claims. You shouldn’t ask questions in your final response of a debate - you should seal your case. Had you done that, perhaps it could’ve been different - and elaborate more on reasons why you are for the metaphor.

Ultimately I think it was possible to win the debate but the shortness was limiting you as well. You needed longer than 300 word responses to make your case I think.

I was proposing a rematch on the same topic as I view our debate incomplete.

Unless you want to keep your win by default.

Man, you’re basically telling me I did a shit job of judgment. Which you are saying you lost merely because of the format - if that were true and I did a good job of judging, then there would have been no reason to say anything and Carleas won when the format was set up. I don’t think that was true - I provided reasons I thought as to why Carleas won not because of the format.

I felt I did an excellent job explaining the inequities of human hierarchy in elaboration of metaphors that I use.

Carleas went on some political propaganda spiel on how everybody is free and has an abundance of options. This is the kind of idealistic bullshit people of authority or privilege like espousing sanitizing reality in order to cover up and pull over a veil so nobody focuses on what really is going on in the world underneath the seems.

At any rate the next debate I enter in I’ll make sure isn’t so constricting.

I’m certainly shocked by your judgement. Didn’t see that coming.

Keep in mind that my judgment is not based on what I think about the metaphor. I put that aside. I think that the metaphor has some viability. I know we do agree on many things - it may be why you asked for me to judge, but as judge I’m going to leave my bias at the door as much as possible.

Humans are cogs in machines… Just another brick in the wall.

This makes sense. A solid point can be driven home by sarcasm that the point has made obvious, but it can’t substitute for a point. Sarcasm is icing, but it needs cake.

Again, I think the point could have been fleshed out more in a longer forma. As I read his sarcasm, it was a way of saying a lot with a few words. But I agree that the point could have been made more explicitly.

Well, we should at least refine the topic so that we aren’t repeating ourselves. If “humans are livestock” is the metaphor, what’s the explicit claim? I’d say that my more nuanced position is that in the modern developed world, most humans are substantially free. Do you disagree with that? And, I should clarify, not ‘free’ in the sense of “free will”, but ‘free’ in the sense of “not enslaved”: they have real choices (as much as a human can have choices), they have substantial influence over the path of their lives (again, as much as that’s metaphysically possible).

My claim is that a huge amount of the human population lives in perpetual slavery in a kind of captivity so that a relatively small portion of the population can live in idle leisure. I associate this with wage slavery and then of course there is the long term unemployed underclass as well. I argue that modern civilization even in the west is nothing more than neofeudalism controlled by a bureaucratic corporatocracy and international oligarchy.

Your understanding of freedom and choices is nothing more to me than institutional propaganda instilled in you.

It is clear to me that you say these things from a position of lower and privilege as a lawyer where I highly suspect you don’t know much about the world outside of your gated community. That sounds mean but I am really not trying to be stating such where instead I am being honest in my opinion of you as a person.

U man bro.,

But there is a real distinction between current conditions and actual slavery. I understand you are making a metaphorical comparison between working for a living and being a slave, but in non-metaphorical terms, you must agree that they are different things. People who work for a living do have a choice, about how much they work, where they work, who they work for and doing what, and how they spend the money they make. Those choices actually exist. Again, not speaking metaphorically: most people aren’t slaves. Slaves are slaves.

Let’s grant this. To the same extent, I could allege that you don’t know or associate with the very rich, and assume that having a lot of money and doing very little work go hand in hand. You make no distinction between ‘rich’ and ‘idle rich’, and so you assume that everyone wealthy is a parasite on the backs of the working poor.

What these (equally false) claims about us as people demonstrate is that we won’t get very far if we rely solely on personal anecdotes to inform our world views. Instead, we should e.g. compare what studies show about modern life to what historical accounts tell us about medieval feudal life; look at hours worked by income to see if wealthier people are actually living lives of mostly leisure; look at the rate of unemployment, median income, hours worked per day, etc. to see who we’re talking about when we say “most people”, and how much choice most people actually have.

Looking at something beyond our own experiences is essential, since it’s fair to take as an assumption that neither of us is omniscient with respect to living conditions experienced by all members of society.

I wonder how you would differentiate between chattel slavery or serfdom versus segments of today’s working underclass. Go on Carleas, elaborate what those differences are.

People that work for a living have a choice? What choices are those? Elaborate.

They have choice where they work and how much? Elaborate.

People have a choice in how they spend money? Elaborate.

Yes, the very wealthy are parasites on the working class. You think that you know things? What do you know about food insecurity, starvation, penury, or poverty? My guess is very little if nothing at all.

There is very little difference between European manorial feudalism versus today’s corporate feudalism. The corporation is the new manor.

Beyond people’s own experiences? You’re one to talk on that.

sigh (I sighed to show I’m cool and above you!)

If you need slaves to succeed… Ala the republic from Plato. … Then you are a slave of needing slaves to succeed!!

Thus, we are all slaves!

You’re arguing against yourself hahaha!!

For carleas side, once you learn something, it becomes self recursive and thus you transcend it, then you have freedom of choice in the context of the aforementioned slavery that we all suffer from…,

You guys really had a lame debate …

That’s just barely starting the topic…

Taking just the US, which isn’t representative (e.g. there are lots more actual slaves outside the US than in the US, both in absolute terms and as a percent of population) but it’s what I can find info on this morning and what you seem to be talking about: Here is an article looking at discretionary income in the US, i.e. the income after spending on necessities like food and shelter. The article finds that “the average household has about $1,729 left over after paying the bills each month.” That is people in the US have, on average, nearly two grand to do whatever they want with each month.

But that’s the average, which is skewed by the very high end of the earnings distribution. So instead look at the second bar chart in the article, which shows discretionary income by income decile. There, we still find that in the wealthiest half of the population, people make over $1000 per month after necessities, and that 70% of the population have over $500 in discretionary spending a month.

The very real difference between slavery and ‘wage slavery’ is the wages. People who aren’t slaves get paid, they generally have money left over after they’ve met their needs, and they can choose to do with that money whatever they like. This leaves aside the ability to change jobs, to change locations, or to decide to work less because one decides that time is worth more than discretionary income, all of which make life a whole lot different for wage slaves than for actual chattel slaves.

[Edited twice several times, because it’s that kind of morning]

I would say this is somewhat misleading because children cause discretionary income to actually be debt in most situations…

They don’t say so explicitly, but I think this accounts for dependent care, because while discussing the plot of discretionary income by age, they mention that, “Digging a little deeper, you can see that spending increases in almost every category as you age, up until around age 55, and then it starts to fall. The only category with a continual upward trend is healthcare spending. Both of these make sense, as household expenses likely fall as children move out of the house, and healthcare expenses increase as one gets older.”

i.e., the expenses that are being offset before calculating discretionary income include the costs of child-rearing.

Also, it looks like less than half of households actually have children, so distribution of those households across income decile is particularly important.

But, I agree, it would be better if it were explicit and discussed this point.

That’s interesting carleas, but I’d note to this study assumes VERY little debt or doesn’t seem to describe debt at all… As you well know, it stops at ZERO!

Aside from dependants, it doesn’t delve into debt at all, most people are living with something like 10,000 in credit debt!

So dependants is one issue, but it didn’t touch debt…

Hell! Donald trump has been in debt most his life !