: Do you really want to suggest that they were no worse off spending their lives cutting cotton and being flogged to death than they were in their home villages?Slavery is not measured by the comfort of the cage, but by the either / or principle.
: As a member of society, you benefit from the work that you do for society asa whole. If you think forced labor is slavery, then how do you explain that slavery is illegal under human rights law today, while forced labor (with certain limitations) is legal?
Its a a contradiction. I also challenge the first assumption. If I work to make a home for a stranger how am I benefitting? Unless I wanted to do it whats in it for me, as they say. That is the thing people will think.
: if peopel choose not to commit the behavior, they won't be punished.
What kind of argument is that? Imagine a curfew law, which if broken results in death. what do you say to the man caught out at 10:01PM? "if you weren't out here you wouldnt get shot"?
: No, because teh net effect is to reduce everyone to nearly the same level, not to broaden social differentiation.
Interesting that you said reduce, appropriately.
: I have always wanted a socialist to have the honesty to admit that they simply want other fingers on the triggers, but that the principle of results by force will be extended.
: Good point. But it doesn't render your own argument any stronger, in fact it weakens it. If you concede that property laws are based on the threat of implied force, then you can no longer criticize the force implicit in state socialism.
Exceot that the force required in the first is self defence "defending *my* life and *my* property as reaction to invader whilst the latter is invasion. Both require force, observe the above difference though.
: It is both 'at the same time', in the sense that it appears to change its nature omn teh basis of which experiment you choose to do; which is clearly a logical impossibility. Science has learned to live with minor contradiction.
What it is is not fully understood - hence the contradiction is maintained until its been resolved - rather than accepted as an actual contradiction.
: Well, like you just said, parents have no right to abandon tehir child, so let's reason analogously...
And a poor person in Ghana is not Mr Jones' son.
: No, because no one will fall below teh level of teh grape pickers. We're going to narrow teh range of inequality, not reverse it.
Thats the standard? As long as its not worse than the worst its ok what we do to peoples lives? I can count the votes for that one!
: By that logic no one is ever fere, because we all have obligations...
The difference being between chosen by you and imposed by others on pain of forceful punishment.
: I think correlations can be drawn between poverty and inequality.
If the measure is relative (relaitvely poor compared to relaitvely rich) then ofcourse it will appear as inequality. If by objective standards then a very equal people can be all impoverished.
: But is it so unlikely that a socialist state could have a good medical industry? What about Cuba or Scandinavia?
The latter is simply a very modified / perverted form of free market anyway - so a govt can use tax to buy medicine at the expense of goodness knows what. Cuba is likely the same - with the tech and knowledge largely borne of mixed market nations.
: GM made a calculated decision to accept a few deaths, they decided it was better that peopel should die than that tehy should lose money. I can't think of anything more atrocious.
What about a decision not to include side impact bars in order to make a car affordable to its market? - im hunting for a principle here.
: The increase in suffering for teh 'rest of teh world', in raising the standard of living of ONE country, woudl be marginal.
But because you consider it acceptable you must accept any permutation of the same principle - so the rest of the world can suffer for the sake of 30 countries or 100 countries, by the same logic - there is no end to the suffering imposed upon nations bound over to 'help' because there is no principle to deal with it - its all whim.
: Even if they do lose a bit of freedom, the gain for teh destitute mroe than counterbalances it.
By what standard? The destitute? The one who lost freedom? Yours? what?
: YEs, I don't much approve of teh Baader Meinhof gang either, but bear in mind that there are differences bewteen semi-judicial assassinations, which punish specific peopel for specofoc crimes committed, and the kind of random, fear-spawning targeting of civilians
Both are terrorism, just one has better aim.
None.
