“No it isn’t - this is what Austrians mean when they talk about profit in general (it is a different concept to monetary profit). Have you read any Austrians??”
You completely missed my point. I am fully aware of the difference between monetary and psychic profit. If you had read the following sentences (containing a couple of spelling errors, but the argument is still clear), you would have seen that I wasn’t objecting to the concept of psychic profit, but to the way you speak about it in general terms. (A yields higher psychic profit, but B doesn’t.) Do you ever read full posts, or do you just jump randomly between sentences?
“I consider it a step towards barbarism, slavery, and poverty.”
How is it barbaric to treat animals humanely? To voluntarily agree not to harm animals unnecessarily much? How is it slavery?
“If he understood economics, he would know that owning slaves are making him poorer in the long-run. If his time-preference was low enough, he would release his slaves. Historically, slave-owners were deficient in at least one of these two conditions (probably both).”
How can you make value statements regarding other people’s preferences. Saying a person’s time preference isn’t low enough is like saying there is some sort of “correct time preference”, which people should have. His time preference is simply what it is, it is neither right nor wrong. Neither too high or too low. It is simply his preference. And he held slaves because he derived psychic profit from holding slaves. Consider this scenario. Person A has nothing but a gun and a field. He has no money to hire people to plant crops on his fields. However, he does have his gun. So he can force people to work on his field by threatening to shoot them if they don’t. Are you telling me someone who has no moral problems with aggressive violence would still benefit from not forcing people to work for him? How?
“Incorrect, or else all of them would not keep doing the same action over and over unless forced.”
What action are you referring to here?
"Please read Hazlitt, the Foundations of Morality. You are grossly incorrect.
Ultimately your entire argument is derived from arbitrary emotions. You have given no reasons as to why I should submit to the same emotions."
Are you really serious about this? Every value judgement is completely arbitrary. We can always say that A causes B, so if we want B, we can employ A. But we can NEVER say that B is good or preferable to something else, or worth employing A to attain. Without making arbitrary value judgement, you can never evaluate anything. Your definition of civilization - that the wealthier we are the more civilized we are - is just as arbitrary as my use of how peaceful a society is as a measure of how civilized it is. You say that something is good because it produces more wealth for a certain group of your choice. It is not wrong to hold such opinions. Such as using the welfare of the albino population as a measure of how civilized we are. It is not wrong, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that it isn’t a completely arbitrary measure of how good or civilized a society is.
Now I haven’t read the Foundations of Morality, so if you could give me the jist of the argument here, that would be great.
If you hold wealth creation or utilitymaximization as a standard for how civilized any activity is without specifying for whom wealth is to be created, then robbery and theft can clearly be seen as civilized.