Religion and Politics

It’s not a distortion to take your reasoning to its ends.

If 1+1=2, then 2+2=4 is not a distortion, but a continuation of the reasoning.

If recognizing wage-slavery as slavery is trivializing a harsher form of slavery, then recognizing a first degree burn as a burn is trivializing third degree burns because it follows the general form: If recognizing lesser-X as a form of X, then major-X is trivialized. If I’m in error, then kindly point out my error.

I’ve conceded that wage-slavery is not as bad as indentured servitude, but it’s still slavery.

And what got the whole thing going was my saying that slavery was a necessary evil, as capitalists would invariably have to argue unless they dogmatically refuse to concede that wage-slavery is a form of slavery, and if they did, it would be totally obvious as to why.

And another thing, Peter Schiff (die-hard capitalist) pointed out: It used to be that people prided themselves for working for themselves and it was a mark of shame to have to work under someone else (because you couldn’t stand on your own, you had to resort to working for someone else). Now a man is measured by WHERE he works or WHO he works for rather than admired for standing on his own (Note: I’m not being sexist in using “man”, but the men worked back then and I have to make a comparison). The shame (loss of dignity = slavery aspect) has been massaged out of our culture, and not only that, but the extent to which one is a slave is now an object of pride.

Conservatives pride themselves on their work ethic and call liberals lazy, but liberals call conservatives stupid because they’re advocating their own servitude and that’s like a cow defending the slaughterhouse… or a black slave defending black slavery. The reasons a slave would defend servitude are: he is too ignorant to see it, too stubborn (ignore-ant) to believe it, or genuinely feel he’s better as a slave than being left to one’s own devices, which is, beyond a doubt, the situation of today: there are just too many people in society for every one of them to be self-sustaining. And therefore, slavery is necessary. Always was and always will be, except in the future, the machines will be our slaves… that is until someone decides that machines have feelings too, and dignity, and we will be back in the same ethical boat we’re in now.

I specifically said that I don’t consider the compulsion to eat, sleep and paint my kid’s room to be slavery.

What don’t you understand about that point of view?

To use your analogy, I don’t think that what you call a burn is a burn at all. Therefore all this stuff that you are saying is not even applicable:

I asked why you do not consider those activities to be slavery and you said "Because it trivializes slavery and the suffering of slaves. "

So you’re saying a burn that is less than third degree is not a burn?

Getting a little color in your cheeks is not a burn. A first degree burn is considered a burn. It seems like he is saying something like the word slavery carries connotations that do not apply to having to eat and the other examples. And yes, if you were in a conversation with someone with third degree burns and you had first degree and you kept making them equivalent,
rough day for both us, each burned,
you would be trivializing their experience.
But if you just got a little color, iow nothing a doctor would call even a first degree burn, it would be even more ridiculous. We use words to deliniate things. It’s floppy, and often we can’t come up with neat categories and even the burn scales have some grey areas.

But if I run at you on the street pointing finger going bang bang and run past you, I didn’t try to kill you, even if it was a bit scary.

Or is your argument that there are ONLY differences in degree and never in kind and it would be irrational to ever say something was not in a category.

Like if you went under a bright incandescent bulb you were burned, because perhaps one cell had its temperature raised to some extent?

I’m just saying that the degree of something doesn’t remove it from the category. Slavery is slavery regardless of the degree of slavery and burns are burns regardless of the degree of burn. Like sky blue is blue, but less blue than navy blue, but it’s still blue.

You’re putting all sorts of things into the category of ‘slavery’ which don’t belong there.

Sure, the degree of something can remove it from a category. This can be within scientific categories and within everyday speech, and some of my examples were examples of this. I included when one is exposed to heat, which is what causes burns, but it is not a burn. The degree of the effects of the heat, if low enough, no longer qualify it, in medicine, as a burn. Further you have the assumption of your conclusion in your argument. Eating is, for you, some degree of slavery, so it is merely a difference in degree, hence it is slavery. Even if no one owns you and could sell you, you still want that to be defined as slavery. Having a need does not make one a slave, except metaphorically, perhaps. A drop of water on the ground is not a lake or an ocean. It’s not even a puddle.

Someone gently caressing my cheek is not slapping me, even if the movement is exactly the same only slowed down immensely.

The sun is not a red giant, though it is a star like red giant stars are.

Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Normal blood pressure is not high blood pressure, which has its connotations of health problem.

A whisper is not a scream.

Tapping you on the shoulder (using the socially accepted degree of force and in the correct, pretty wide range, situations) is not assault.

Legally, medically, scientifically and in everyday speech changes in degree CAN AND DO shift categories.

Sometimes there are grey areas. And yes, differences in degree do not always entail different categories.

But, then, again, it often does. A gale is different in degree from…other windy situations.

A short person is not always a dwarf, due to degree of difference from average height.

Change the frequency of something and it can change category - ultrasound, now a difference color, now its microwave radiation…etc.

Bald. People with the usual amount of hair are not bald, even if they lose some hair, but lose enough, a difference in degree of hair loss, and they are.

And then you need to demonstrate that those things you are calling slavery are merely differences in degree rather than in kind. I don’t think you’ve done that.

You mean I’m putting all the blue colors in the category of blue and then you’re insisting that they don’t belong there as if we should have a category for each color, but that defeats the purpose of having categories because the purpose of categories is to group similar things that are not exactly the same.

Wage-slavery is slavery and you’ve offered no rationale to be the basis for a change of my opinion. All you’ve demonstrated so far is that you do not like the idea because it undermines some notion you previously harbored, but are unable to admit it lest you also undermine your objection.

Actually that doesn’t make literal sense. How can the degree of a category remove it from the category? We could have subcategories, but those don’t remove from the main category.

If it is not a burn, then it is not a burn. If it is a burn, then it is a burn. Seems easy. The degree of a burn cannot mean it is not a burn or there wouldn’t be a degree to it.

If it is not a burn because no damage was done, then it is in the category of near-burn.

Slavery doesn’t mean ownership. Ownership means ownership. Indeed, I own animals but do not subject them to any sort of work. They’re called pets. And I could borrow your car and make it my slave for the evening, but I do not own the car.

To bacteria it is.

But the intent is different.

All stars are in the category of star, regardless of color.

Yes but it’s not for a matter of degrees, but 100% absence of certain qualifications.

But all blood pressure higher than normal is considered high regardless of how high.

But vocalizations above normal are considered screams regardless of intensity.

Actually, I think it is.

But if it’s a gale, then it doesn’t matter the degree of a gale that is it; it’s still a gale.

But if a person is in the category of dwarf, then it’s not a matter of the degree to which.

But all sounds are sounds and all EMF are EMF. This is the distinction between lesser slavery and greater slavery, but they’re both slavery.

Then the problem is on your end because I have done that. Formerly you believed slavery meant ownership, so perhaps now that I’ve corrected that, maybe the rest will fall into place for you. Slavery is essentially the theft of productivity for one’s own gain and whether 100% of productivity is stolen or something less than 100% doesn’t change the categorization. Either we work together as partners or one of us is slave to the other; I can’t think of a third possibility because either we split the fruits of our labors amicably or we do not.

Hello Fixed

I don’t believe that the prosperity of the nation is tied to the election of Trump. If anything it has survived Trump and his mercantilist approach to trade. Not only that but if anonymous is believed then again Trump is merely a figure hear that is tolerated and even resisted. And don’t get me wrong, I disagree with the efforts of those inside the WH to dull Trump’s Presidency because he represents the will of the People (even the will of those who did not vote to allow the vote of others to decide their future). The Nation learned from the mistakes of W. Bush and they were his mistakes and he was allowed to make such mistakes, to exercise the powers granted to the occupant of the President’s Office.

Again I much rather have more people feel angry and hurt to vote than apathetic about who wins or loses.

Hey Omar
The math is pretty simple, trump is the first us prez to tax corps overseas so much that they move their companies back to the US. Trumpy has already made us back close to a trillion in two years. Comes with record employment.

Funny is that he already said he was gonna do this literally 30 years ago when he said he might have to run to eventually save the country which he did. Logic is really elementary. But ok it is still pretty deep. Capitalism is more logical than fair.

Trump is like Napoleon no less, saved US last minute like Nap saved France. Like Nap the international elites hate him and will make sure there is gonna be war and mass death. It’s coming, I can see because eve though trump saved the children of ME from Isis and the US from bankruptcy and thousands of more sweet things he did and zero wrongs, the good people of the world still curse him. The good people deserve to see what they are really doing. A lot of people will go insane in guilt and shame when they see what the fought against and for. It will be pretty spectacular.

If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive balance, and conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative balance

So by your own definition of slavery, eating and sleeping are not slavery since in those activities there is no “theft of productivity for one’s own gain”.

Why don’t you just admit it and jump out of the hole that you dug for yourself.

Then one could move on to discussing if employment is some sort of theft or if it is a trade of labor for compensation.

The math, I’m afraid, is not that simple.
Tariff do not save us money. The tariffs are passed on to the consumer. Your price will be increased, which is one of the reasons that he may have waited to after the tax cuts were passed to shit on the capitalist system. That system was the legacy of America’s domination in the world after WW2. It was our choice. We were not victims of it, we were the beneficiaries of it.
Perhaps you believe that outsourcing is bad. However, in the case of the Boeing 787 development, it was a necessary condition, securing both the cash and the greatest possible number of customers at the price of having to develop China’s manufacturing. Instead of fighting a war which is more likely to spur the application of robotics and automation to ever greater areas of production (built in America…by Watson), the US should have instead continued to do like China and invest on it’s future, creating the infrastructure for electric vehicles for example, thus ensuring that we would lead the world in an emerging technology that could change everything. Instead we get into a trade war. You know how stupid it is to get into a trade war with the EU at the same time that you’re trying to win a trade war with Canada, Mexico, and China? Complaining about foreign manufacturer’s like BMW and Mercedes when in fact they have built fabrics here in the US, thus, like Airbus, could easily escape any effects of the war (as Airbus knows).

In the end, tariffs will increase what we pay. Perhaps they will eat the profits of certain companies, but in the case of Apple for example, the costs of the tariffs will remain less than the costs of shifting operations into the US where everything from rent to labor costs will be much more damaging to profits. This bullshit also flies in the face of our commitment to free markets and small government that stays out of the path of businesses. This is the nationalization of industries. This is fucking communism. We are on the path of guaranteeing the jobs of metal workers, coal miners, auto workers (and whomever else is deemed as essential to winning a toss-up state) for the sake of “national security”. Rather than letting the discomfort of losing one’s job spur change towards emerging industries (and the government should educate people displaced) we’ve prolonged the eventual death of coal and will encourage Detroit to produce another Aztek.

So Trump has taxed the cheap overseas labor to make it equivalent to the expensive american labor and this anti-efficiency is beneficial how? It’s across the board price increase to subsidize an inefficient workforce that the free market had determined was antiquated. Trump is meddling in the free market, and not only that, but in a nonsensical way by a sentimental and nostalgic effort to bring back the past.

Trump said in 2016 that the unemployment numbers were a lie and the real number was closer to 42%:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI2UztDjQhQ[/youtube]

Now suddenly those same numbers are believable simply because he’s in charge, but the participation rate is still at historic lows. The fact remains that the unemployment number doesn’t count folks who are unemployed for a certain length of time.

The civilian labor force is 161,776,000 and the population is 328,365,000 leaving 166,589,000 people not working. Subtract out students, seniors, disabled, housewives, etc and we’re still left with a sizable portion of the population who could be working.

Yes, tariffs are a tax on the poor and middle class to go along with the tax cuts for the rich. Also, let’s not forget that Trump scotus pick (Gorsuch) resulted in sales tax for online purchases, which is another tax on the poor. This is absolutely not sustainable. The only purpose of taxation is redistribution from the rich to the poor, but Trump has it backwards.

Well you can’t be slave to yourself, but you could look at it as being slave to the activity because the activity of eating and sleeping is stealing productivity from our goals. I typically only eat once a day for that very reason.

I’m not in a hole.

You cannot trade what you are not conscious of. Since you have no way of knowing what profit your labor is transferring to an employer, there is no way you could agree to it. And since employment is required to survive, the whole notion of “voluntary” is lost anyway.

Let us not forget this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=194156&start=25#p2708620

Or to use the technical
39:17
term economists like: he has to rip the
39:20
workers off, he has to steal from them
39:25
part of what their labor added.

That’s a bold, passionate, and emphatic statement from a professor of economics with an alma mater of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Surely he’s not confused.

An activity is stealing??

Sounds rather absurd.

You know how much your time is worth to you. You have a sense of “good trade” and “bad trade”.

This is an appeal to authority.

I could eat or I could talk to you, so if I eat, then it’s stealing time from you. Or we could say that if I talk to you, then it’s stealing time from eating.

But you don’t know how much you’re giving away in the trade. If people find out how much they are giving away, then they go on strike (I’ve had that happen to me when the guys figured out how much I was making in comparison). If they would strike if they found out how much they are giving away, then that means they would not agree to the terms if they knew what the terms are. They will agree to work for $10/hr if they don’t know how much money per hour the employer is making off of them, but if they find out the employer is making $100/hr and only paying them $10, they probably wouldn’t agree.

Yes I know, but it’s to counter your appeal to the ridiculous. If a pedigreed professor of economics can make a claim, then surely it’s not ridiculous.