Freedom is Slavery: How can one man build a bridge, a skyscraper, or anything large on their own? The simple answer is that one alone cannot build these things without help. Thus the individual is powerless, and individual freedom weakens the individual by making it impossible to do anything grand. Therefore, to do anything grand, a person must join up with others and suppress their personal freedoms. Otherwise, they achieve nothing, and destroy any attempt to achieve anything by doing so. The only true freedom a person has is the freedom to submit to a larger group and to influence that group by helping it. Therefore, freedom is slavery.
Is this your personal opinion or just a discussion?
Freedom to associate is slavery?
If someone forces you to work alone for the rest of your life without contact with other people, is that freedom?
EDIT: Someone else already has the name “Inquisitor” on here.
Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other.
This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical liberal literature, I have not come across a single theorist or writer who holds anything like this position.
The only possible exception is the fanatical Max Stirner, a mid-19th-century German individualist who, however, has had minimal influence upon libertarianism in his time and since. Moreover, Stirner’s explicit “Might Makes Right” philosophy and his repudiation of all moral principles including individual rights as “spooks in the head,” scarcely qualifies him as a libertarian in any sense. Apart from Stirner, however, there is no body of opinion even remotely resembling this common indictment.
Libertarians are methodological and political individualists, to be sure. They believe that only individuals think, value, act, and choose. They believe that each individual has the right to own his own body, free of coercive interference. But no individualist denies that people are influencing each other all the time in their goals, values, pursuits and occupations.
As F.A. Hayek pointed out in his notable article, “The Non-Sequitur of the ‘Dependence Effect,’” John Kenneth Galbraith’s assault upon free-market economics in his best-selling The Affluent Society rested on this proposition: economics assumes that every individual arrives at his scale of values totally on his own, without being subject to influence by anyone else. On the contrary, as Hayek replied, everyone knows that most people do not originate their own values, but are influenced to adopt them by other people.[1]
No individualist or libertarian denies that people influence each other all the time, and surely there is nothing wrong with this inevitable process. What libertarians are opposed to is not voluntary persuasion, but the coercive imposition of values by the use of force and police power. Libertarians are in no way opposed to the voluntary cooperation and collaboration between individuals: only to the compulsory pseudo-“cooperation” imposed by the state.
Yeaaaah, so ah, back to the drawing board.
Just wondering why you chose your name.. Linquitior , is this an attempt to look like the Inquisitor?
What about being helped by it? Check out the law of association (i.e. Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage…Mises calls it the law of association) as the basis of the division of labor and, thus, civilization itself. People cooperate because they benefit from it—their real income increases through specialization and trade. I don’t see much slavery in that.
The whole post is illogical.
The individual is not powerless and the freedom to chose to work together, or the freedom not to work together to build society is what is different for example then what the Egyptians did building society with slave labor.
You seem to be defining “freedom” as something akin to “ability”. That is not how libertarians define “freedom”. Why should we use your definition and not our own?
How do you define “grand”?
If one person cannot build anything large on his own, how can it be said that he built it on his own after “[submitting] to a larger group and influencing that group by helping it”? Either way, he cannot build anything large or do anything “grand” on his own. How has he gained your notion of “freedom” by “[joining] up with others and suppressing [his] personal freedoms”?
How can one man build a bridge, a skyscraper, or anything [too complex for one person] on their own? The simple answer is that one alone cannot build these things without help.
***Ok, so we can say a priori, that a man cannot build something that is beyond his capability to do so alone [edit: by himself].
Thus the individual is [unable or “powerless” to create things beyond his lone ability], and individual freedom [isolationism] weakens the individual['s ability to participate in the creation of complex things] by making it impossible to do anything [beyond his own personal scope].
***Conflating definitions, in an attempt to associate “individual freedom” with powerlessness and weakness.
Therefore, to do anything [beyond his own personal scope], a person must join up with others and suppress their personal freedoms [anti-social tendencies, if any?]
Otherwise, [individualist isolationists or “hermits”] achieve nothing [that they can’t do alone], and destroy any attempt [for himself] to achieve anything [beyond his scope] by doing so [and in some possible cases if he is the marginal unit necessary for a group to fulfill production, the entire project may be forfeit if there are no possible replacements and no voluntary cooperative agreements can be made. of course his refusal to participate may be because he percieves the project as unnecessary, or even harmful. the only option is for the group to pursue said project at this point, is enslavement.****]
The only true freedom [One choice] a person has is the freedom to submit to [cooperate with] a larger group and to influence that group by [cooperating with it] [or not].
There… I think I fixed it.
No you did not fix it, you simply substituted my words with ones you prefered to change the message from mine to what you want it to be.
I love how Linquisitor cherry picks the posts he replies to. Well done, sir. Well done.
This is a
I answer posts tht are cogent and ignore the ones that are not because an answer would not matter.
Excuse me, but how was my post not cogent?
Since you ignored Conza88’s quote, I deem you a troll.
Anyone who makes such threads such as “Freedom is slavery” is pretty much a troll by default.
Freedom: (noun) the state of being free or at liberty rather than inconfinement or under physical restraint: He won his freedom after a retrial.
(noun) :the state or condition of being a slave; a civil relationship whereby one person has absolute power over another and controls his life, liberty, and fortune.
It contradicts. You might as well say mushrooms are citrus fruit.
What are you talking about?
Existentialism: For when you want to sound intelligent with minimal effort 
cogent:
(1) convincing or believable by virtue of forcible, clear, or incisive presentation; telling.
(2) to the point; relevant; pertinent.
In which sense do you use “cogent” to describe the responses to your post?
If (1), then why post? I mean, you already have your mind made up, right? And you’re unwilling to defend your position vs. alternative views. A ridiculous waste of everyone’s time, except your own, which clearly you don’t value too highly except to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.
If (2), then you don’t know what “cogent” means.
I did not write either of those things. You wrote those things and said I wrote it and then ant me to answer pretending that it is what I wrote.
It is not relevant because you were merely stating that you do not understand what was written or the meanings of certain words. No problem, go find someone to help you understand the words then post something.