Thank you for your input, but I’m not interested in what you’re trying to bring to the table. If you want to, put on your Rothbard cop and argue a position about the ethical or unethical nature of C engaging in such a transaction. If not, then I think you’re done.
My question again to all readers:
If it is immoral/unethical for B to coerce A into producing cotton, is it immoral/unethical for C to purchase the cotton from B if B coerced A into producing the cotton? (C knows that B coerced A into producing the cotton.)
I didn’t even see your edit. Or realize that when hasem used it is was your quote and not part of a response from him.
Having said that, your bold question is a specific situation where C will encourage B to coerce A into further production. Purchasing things with the knowledge of the coercion is the equivalent of working for B yourself.
I’m also going to continue to point out that subjectivism (more specifically, relativism, and more poignantly, nihilism) broadly applied to anything but property rights, will yield the rejection of “‘natural law’ and reason” as Rothbard describes it.
So, the abstractions of philosophy are meritless in inquiry if subjectivism is applied broadly. Everyone is basically a philosopher of life/action/ethics/epistemology if this is the case. There must be limits to the use of subjectivism. Especially for libertarian social/political theory/philosophy.
My point is that libertarians apply ‘subjectivism’ to anything and everything. You call it a fact.
My signature, to always “challenge the premise”, has served me well. We can see you start with a red herring. If your point is about libertarians applying subjectivism to “everything”, then that has nothing to do with my response to your response to my original statement. I was saying morals are, as a matter of objective fact, subjective concepts. I do not claim to be a “subjectivist” or to propose “subjectivism” as the response to anything/everything. If you want to challenge what I actually have to say in context, fine, but I only even used the term “subjectivism” once, in a response to you in a limited context because you brought the word up.
[Subjectivism] is a cop out because it fails to ever reveal anything deeper about culture.
I don’t even know that I present subjectivism as an answer, here, or ever. I think we can get consistent answers, however, which actually reveal valuable truth, if we start with reality. Morals are subjective, so we shouldn’t pretend anything else just to have a fun debate. We shouldn’t be lazy for fun just because actually going through the hard work of solving problems given reality seems frustrating. The equation in my mind goes: “Morality is subjective, and we do have to exist in reality which means this that and the other thing, therefore…”
They do exist…Denying them is antisocial and almost childish.
BRILLIANT! Acknowledge reality > figure things out from there. They DO exist. So where do we go from there. The answer is probably for another thread. My response in this thread, that morals are subjective and therefore the premise is absurd, has relevance.
They are moral-less and have the potential for infinite selfishness
I don’t see what’s wrong with being infinitely selfish. The more you can perfect your own life, the more resources you will have to help others, and also the less imperfect (and the less potential for evil) you will be.
You read these boards. You aren’t the only uber clever kid using it as a way to elevate your intellects ego. "Your whole premise is flawed…subjectivism…:smirk - it’s not that clever.
Nonsense. I say “everything” as “ethics” (the OP) is a subset of “everything.” It is not a red herring, but a generalization that i later equated with the use of the concept on these boards overall (an example of my point, not a red herring).
What context? Your first post was all of three setences
Except owning property, huh? Your premise is flawed, not mine.
Then I am done conversing with you…
…implies “subjective perception” as the base justification for (any old) human action. Jesus…
The “reality” that property rights is the only legitimate perspective of ethics or morality so as to justify the broad application of subjectivism?
No one is saying that that is not a true statment.
But, in society, people abide by morals other than their own from time to time. “Why?” would be an illegitimate or irrelevant question with ‘subjective morality and ethics’ applied everywhere. Ultimately it leads one to think that social ethics ( a term for when abide by morals other than their own from time to time) is relativistic. Which means that people’s worth or value of property rights will vary from person to person (whether this is in their interest or not) and also implies that ethics and morals precede property rights in people’s action sequence (decision making process).
I am wondering if NAP can be justified in light of this.
So, I will copy the relevant paragraphs from my posts and put them in another thread.
I think my response is pertinent to this one as well.
But, society does. Why? Jealousy? Religion? Perceptoin? Historical evolution (ha)?
Debateable.
I notice you go with a “potential scale” here. For the evil that people could be.
…but do not include a “potential scale” here. You see, people can potentially be evil if they have a lot of things as well. You acknowledge above that people have a “potential” to be ‘imperfect and evil’.
The slider goes both ways, not only in the favor of good and light.
In the real world, essentially, you are asking if much of globalized trade is ethical.
I’ve heard people say that by buying the slave produced products you may help the slave owner to improve working conditions et al. I have heard others argue that you encourage the exploitation of others (as you are only an indirect participant and not coercing people yourself).
Often, people say that those who work in sweatshops are slaves. I say sweatshop workers are not slaves because they voluntarily choose to be in the sweatshops. A slave is somebody who is involuntarily put to work.
I define slave as someone who is put to work by someone else involuntarily.
So, a person kept locked in someone else’s basement wouldn’t qualify as “a slave,” but only “a prisoner.”
According to your definition, then, a slave is just a subset of the set of people called “prisoners.”
The prisoner only becomes a specific type of prisoner called “slave” when the prisoner is also forced to work (you didn’t specify that the work need be productive).
I wasn’t wanting to talk about economic consequences. I was wanting to get to the ethics of the situation. If we accept something like the NAP, then no one has the right to coerce somebody else into producing something for them (slavery).
It wasn’t for me about the economics either. That was rather a real life context where political institutions including slavery and it’s results come into effect. And yes, it was about the politcal and moral consequences of that.
But what about when somebody else has a slave who produces goods and then wants to sell you the goods their slave coercibly produced? That’s what I’m getting at. Is right to engage in trade where the goods were produced by slave labor?
I think that is a valid question. The first question would be to ask: Is it ethical to purchase chocolate made in a slave labor setting? Of course one would also see where to draw exactly the line, since that produce of slave labor may be several trades away from you as well.
Perhaps you missed my post here, but the Rothbard article I link to is about a topic that is fairly analogous to what you are asking. Have you had a chance to read it yet?
Also, note that a man who is forced to work but allowed to keep 100% of his product also qualifies as “slave,” according to your definition.
With respect to this question, for me, there isn’t any meaningful difference between forcing a man to work and then robbing him of his product, and allowing a man to work and then robbing him of his product.
Both methods of acquiring wealth employ “the political means”: “the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others for the benefit of the dominating class”; both are immoral/unethical.
Forcing a man to work and letting him keep his product is also immoral/unethical.
Your question addresses one of four possible combinations, namely:
Allowed to work/allowed to keep his product. (freedom)
Forced to work/allowed to keep his product. (slavery 1)
Forced to work/forced to surrender his product. (slavery 2)
Allowed to work/forced to surrender his product. (slavery 3, also called “taxation”)
So, I reiterate my earlier request. Could you please show:
How and why the two categories of slavery (i.e. slavery 2 and slavery 3) created by this point are meaningfully different, and more specifically,
Why the question is only asked with respect to one category (i.e. slavery 2), and not the other(s).
The thing I’m trying to get you to think about here is that the name you give to any non-freedom category is irrelevant with respect to your question. What is relevant is that it’s a non-freedom category. Why should engaging in trade of goods produced from one non-freedom category be any more or less “moral” than engaging in trade of goods produced from another non-freedom category?
Here’s another thing to think about, in light of Malachi’s answer, above; consider this hypothetical situation:
A new prison program is introduced. Prisoners are forced to work. Part of the profits from their forced labor are used to both reduce the taxpayer burden of imprisoning them, and also to reimburse their victims.
Malachi is outraged by this, since he feels it’s immoral to buy stolen goods, so he organizes a massive, nation-wide boycott of prisoner-produced products. The boycott is astoundingly successful, and not a single prisoner-produced product is purchased. As a result, the program is dropped, victims are not reimbursed, and innocent taxpayers must return to paying for imprisoning criminals.
Yes, because the incarceration itself is immoral, anything to increase the burden of incarceration on those who enable and support it is a good thing. Although political actions to help the prisoners themselves take precedence over this, and if the boycott affected the prisoners quality of life, it would still be the government’s fault but I would feel bad.
Malachi is more than capable of responding, but I will respond anyway:
No, it is not equivalent.
Incarceration is typically contrary to actual justice. If A murders B, instead of forcing A to compensate the family of B, we make B’s family pay to house, cloth, and feed A for X number of years.
And yet, Malachi prefers the latter to the former. Also, what, besides “incarceration,” would you call “forcing A to compensate the family of B”? It’s slavery by SirTenenbaum’s definition, and slavery is a subset of imprisonment (incarceration).