| > Like checking to see if the word 'authoritarian' applies to employers Have you never heard someone calling their boss "authoritarian"? I used it as a description of an unfree, undemocratic, top-down system that's used in our economic sphere under capitalism, if you don't like that one, pick something else that describes that. The specific word used is not what's important here. > Capitalism is synonymous with a free market economy in most contexts that these terms are used.
> No, capitalism is synomous with free markets, and concentration of wealth is totally orthogonal to a free market economy. No, it's not. That's just historical revisionism. It's a system based on exclusive ownership of property etc. Societies have traded stuff throughout history without Capitalism and its institution of private-property rights etc. > People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves is not 'non-consensual' in any legal or social sense Well, it is already illegal for children and legality is still not a guide for morality. It's definitely in a social sense, which I have already explained. Also, I've already explained - you even quoted it - that it's not "forced by nature" like some natural law. It's man made. Proven by the fact that societies through history didn't have capitalist wage labour and did just fine wrt food. > This propaganda is intended to depict human liberty as unnatural, and socialist repression as the natural order of things. > It's extreme deception motivated by a delusional utopianist fantasy. > to enforce the incoherent moral principles of socialist ideology. > Objective reality deems socialism a crude ideological narrative. > like socialism, that rationalize tyranny, > As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society More of your non-emotional objectiveness I see. > You have provided no evidence that someone offering a job Well, of course it's not the the act itself of offering a job, it's supporting and perpetuating the system - Capitalism - that sets up those conditions in the first place. Why do you have such a hard time of keeping this on a systemic level? > You're accusing employers of being oppressors based on the flimsiest of logic I'm discussing this as a systemic issue, not an individual. That should be obvious by now. And some employers certainly are oppressors, but the edge is towards the capitalist-class, not the local shopkeeper or whatever. |
That is a figurative use of the term, and this kind of hyperbolic and even misleading use of language in informal dialogue is common. That doesn't mean you can describe anything top-down as authoritarian in formal terms. In any serious discussion, such a definition would be completely rejected as overly broad.
>>The specific word used is not what's important here.
Given the specific word use makes a particular claim, that is the basis for your other claims, it's extremely important.
Authoritarian means non-consensual. Free market interactions are by definition consensual, as deemed by a jury of citizens.
>>No, it's not. That's just historical revisionism.
No, this is just your projection. You're engaging in historical revisionism. The standard use of the term 'capitalism' is synomous with free markets.
>>Well, it is already illegal for children and legality is still not a guide for morality.
Courts deem children to not have the ability to provide consent, which is unlike adults, so your example shows nothing. As for "legality is still not a guide for morality", in this case, the law is moral, since it says only consensual contracts are valid, with random samplings of citizens, formed as juries, making the determination.
>>It's definitely in a social sense, which I have already explained.
No, the social sense of "non-consensual" is someone threatening someone else with violence to deprive them of other options. It is not "people being required to work in order to acquire resources to feed themselves".
>>Also, I've already explained - you even quoted it - that it's not "forced by nature" like some natural law. It's man made. Proven by the fact that societies through history didn't have capitalist wage labour and did just fine wrt food.
That's a totally absurd claim: there were no societies that didn't have free markets / capitalism / work-for-wages and did "just fine wrt food".
>>More of your non-emotional objectiveness I see.
That you see no need to get emotional about socialist tyranny shows the lack of conscience behind your crude ideologically motivated position.
>>Well, of course it's not the the act itself of offering a job, it's supporting and perpetuating the system - Capitalism - that sets up those conditions in the first place.
I've already addressed this fallacious argument. I'll post it again:
As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society, with your reference to "systematic conditions" that you imply could allow one to not have to work to eat, oh yes, Bastiat addressed that too:
"He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd.
The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. The Tyrant is still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government. We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it "I should like to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could you not facilitate the thing for me? By this means shall I gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace."
>>I'm discussing this as a systemic issue, not an individual.
You were earlier implying any one employing someone is an oppressor. That you don't take responsibility for this shows a general recklessness toward politics.