Religion and Politics

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.

You can say anything that you like. Doesn’t mean I or someone else thinks that it’s a reasonable thing to say.

What appeal to the ridiculous? I questioned whether employment is theft.

I didn’t know that it was all settled and carved in stone.

Hmm… let’s try this:

I don’t know how else to address that.

The implication that I’m in a hole says the idea must be ridiculous. You seem to act as if there is no merit whatsoever to the claim.

It is settled in academia as far as I can tell. I don’t see how Krugman and Stiglitz can be so revered if they preached bs. A round earth should be set in stone too, but people have their own opinions. The problem, though, with those going their own way regarding the economy is that they vote.

1+1=2 does not accurately represent your position.

Your hole is : Your insistence that eating and sleeping is slavery.

Keep digging.

Obviously one can say this, you just did. So let’s assume you are taking a stronger stand, but worded in a way that does not quite openly take that stand. You are saying that it is an accurate description of what is happening. You are using a word stealing, from the verb steal, and attributing it to an activity, rather than a person or what we think of as an agent. The agent, who makes the choice, is actually you, in this situation. No property was taken from you by an agent, someone unlawfully taking your property. So you are stretching the meaning, or, really using an active metaphor. It might be a useful metaphor, in some context. But in flat exchanges between people trying to understand a phenomenon, I don’t think it’s useful.

IOW it might be useful to highlight a feeling. It might feel like you are stealing time with someone because of your basic needs and your choice to satisfy them. Or it might feel like non-sentient abstracted processes are stealing from you.

Fine. Poetic use of language to get at ONE nuance of an experience. Or perhaps a few facets of an experience.

But as a general description it fails. It does not match my experience. It does not match my understanding of what happens when I MAKE A CHOICE. As I experience it. If you want to bring in determinism and view it in the 3rd person, it still does not fit, since it is still not stealing.

And in a deterministic universe there is only one outcome and you cannot say that the outcome which did not happen stole something, since that non-realized outcome did not and does not exist.

I don’t think it is useful or accurate to maintain these as good descriptions of these phenomena.

If you are playing devil’s advocate, rather than say, refusing to give up a position and being willing to argue whatever rather than admitting it was a dead end, OK that might be useful. A noble lie of some sort, but a temporary one.

Yes it does, but you refuse to see it. Your dogmatism is starting to become flattery since I must be correct in order to be eliciting this much bullheaded pushback. If I were incorrect, you would simply point out my error, “Here’s how you’re wrong ____________” but apparently you can’t and have resorted to clinging to dogma due to unpalatability of facts and your inability to draw a definitive line on a slippery slope of degrees of category.

I’m not insisting, but you push me into a corner by saying “Well if employment is slavery then what about eating a sleeping?” So from a certain point of view, you can be slave to an activity such as eating, sleeping, posting on ILP, but you cannot be a slave to yourself. That’s clearly stated, is non-contradictory, and I’m not in a hole in spite of you baiting me and wishing I were.