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30 Percent a Slave
Let’s suppose you own a slave, and this slave of yours is very bright. (Automatically you might be imagining that we are back in the antebellum South, but that is incorrect. We are in modern times, so there’s not as much plantation work as there once was.) If you’ve got an intelligent, conscientious slave, it wouldn’t make sense to put him to manual labor, or have him just do random tasks for you around your house.
How do you get the most value out of this slave of yours? You could have him trained as a doctor or lawyer, and then rent him out. But what if he’s not really into the thing you’ve spent a bunch of resources to train him in? And how motivated do you think he’ll be to work hard for the employer he’s rented out to? You’ll also still be spending money to provide him with food and shelter, presumably. This is not a recipe for maximizing the value of your slave’s labor.
So instead of deciding for him what type of work he should do, or for whom he should work, you give him a significant amount of latitude in these decisions, and–this is the important part–you let him keep something like 70% of his earnings (obviously you can see where I’m going with this). Basically, you allow him to own property, start a family, choose where he works, and so on. Now, you could keep more than 30%, but as a savvy slavemaster, you are keenly aware of the Laffer Curve, so you don’t want to get too greedy. I guess you could use a progressive system of exploitation, whereby you don’t keep as much when he’s just starting out.
The first model of slavery that I described, where you use the labor yourself or rent it out, and must provide the basics for living, is the classic model–the normal way people would do slavery in the past. I think it is arguable that, in a modern, post-industrial economy, the old way of exploiting slave labor would be inefficient, especially for slaves with higher than average intelligence. The value to you of slaves with higher intelligence would be maximized by allowing them a good bit of autonomy. In this model, you could even bestow on your slave certain basic human rights. For example, when you take your 30% cut, your slave would have the right to complain about it.
So far we have been examining two models of private slavery. After private slavery was largely abolished in the 19th century, the State began to turn its attention to strengthening its grip on its public slaves–so-called citizens. (Abraham Lincoln, for instance, simultaneously ended private slavery and strengthened public slavery by waging an aggressive ideological war against secessionism.) In the 20th century, the Soviets and other communists took the “classic model” approach to public slavery. The second model, where significant autonomy is granted, we might call the “Capitalist” approach. The good news is, this was the variety of public slavery adopted by liberal democracies. The bad news is that we’re inching inexorably to the version that the Soviets favored.
I suspect that most people would take this “public slavery” talk as just a silly analogy. I do not mean it that way. I am dead serious when I imply that democracy is a form of slavery. I mean quite literally that the State owns you. For the definition of slave, Google gives me “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.” Merriam-Webster tells me it is “a person held in servitude as the chattel of another.” For example, tax livestock. Like any other slavemaster, the State will punish you if you disobey it and/or do not provide it with some portion of your labor. I will grant that the two definitions use the words “another,” implying another individual (and thus private slavery). But you would be functionally no less a slave if you were owned by a collection of individuals, as would be the case with a corporation or a state.
The big takeaway here is that slavery, whether private or public, is immoral. And any form that it takes, whether communism or liberal democracy, should be opposed by all people of good conscience. Don’t you good people agree?
Published in Politics
Do I get to choose some other government or no government? I’m pretty sure I don’t. As far as I understand it the best I can hope for is that the mob agrees with me on the narrow question of who the stewards are for the government I am forced to be a subject to.
I would challenge you then to explain what you think government does well, or in which ways you believe it to be indispensable. Assuming it’s as practical as you claim.
You get to choose some other government. You don’t get to choose “no government,” because there ain’t no such thing. Never has been. Never will be. The realm of philosophy is chock full of moot issues and tail-chasing, but none of it is sillier than listening to an anarchist trying to make the case for anarchy. All they ever do is dream up some form of tyranny, which they can call by a name other than government. But it’s still government.
And since we are going to have a government, it is worth remembering that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” (All wise aphorisms wind up being attributed to Churchill, so you can count that quote as being from him, if you like. Lots of folks do.)
Those specific preferred groups tend to be Democrat voters, and Democrat politicians are the ones turning Federal, state, and local governments into Santa Claus.
Karl Marx had it figured out. The state will wither away.
Maybe you’re right that it’s silly to make a case for anarchy, but I’m not hearing anybody here even trying to make a positive case for government. All I hear is surrender to its “inevitable” existence. To be so paralyzed by fatalism is a real tragedy. If you believe in what government does, please make the case. If you think government is a “necessary evil,” which functions do you consider “necessary”? I could as easily dismiss your conception of an ideal government as a pipedream, but I guess not if you withhold your case for it.
The Colonies did take positive steps toward self-government by seceding from England, so it is possible to head in that direction. Western civilization was also able to effectively abolish (private) slavery. A lot of people probably dismissed that as improbable, but it doesn’t happen if some critical mass of people aren’t making the case that it is immoral.
They pick up my trash weekly. And it costs very little.
Well? I suspect you and I would have difficulty agreeing on the standard. In human history when groups reach a certain size, structures, institutions and norms arise. Some are communal creations, most are hierarchies imposed by the strong over the weak. AKA, “slavery”.
You’re not asking for a positive case for government. You’re asking for a case for flawless government. You define any intrusion on your personal autonomy as “slavery” and, since “slavery” is a bad thing, ipso facto any form of government that intrudes on your autonomy is bad. And since government intrudes by definition… Q.E.D., right? But you make no effort to describe an alternative that wouldn’t intrude on your personal autonomy. Quite sensibly, because there is none.
You keep demanding to know what government does that is “necessary.” I would refer you to Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, but just to simplify I’ll start with national defense. The government prevents the barbarians from overrunning the country, sacking your village, raping your women, and pillaging your possessions. Now your typical line here is to tell me how some private or voluntary organization could do the same thing, and my response is to laugh and point out that you have just described your new government. One which would turn into a brutal tyranny in a matter of moments. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”
I suspect you’re being flippant, but for the sake of argument, let’s suppose this is in earnest.
The most obvious thing is that of course a private company could provide that service. You also seem to suggest that the government is charging you less than what you would pay under the free market. That means the actual cost is hidden from you, probably made up for by property or sales taxes.
And if the government is subsidizing your trash collection price, you have an incentive to produce more trash. This is a great example of how government is worse for the environment.
Government is just what people do. It naturally arises, in some form or another, from the fact that people interact with one another. Asking someone to make a positive case for “government,” (as opposed to a particular kind of government), is like asking them to make a positive case for “geometry” or “mathematics” or “transportation.” It just doesn’t strike me as a serious question.
You can always go off into the wilderness to live off the land and be free. What’s stopping you? I guess you can argue that even living up in the middle of nowhere Alaska you are under the governments jurisdiction, because technically they claim sovereignty over that land. But for all practical reasons they would never know you are there or really devote any resources to controlling you. You have the option to be as free as any man has ever been. You just can’t live in civilization. But hasn’t that always been the way?
A bear will make you move, whether you like it or not. Government by grizzly bear. One of the worst forms, if you ask me.
They enforce my property rights far better than I could myself. I’m not particularly physically adept. I doubt I could win a fight with any one of particular training. But I don’t have to fight for myself against people who would wrong me. The government will do all the physical coercion I would have to be able to exert on my behalf to defend me from bad faith actors who would take my stuff because they are stronger and more aggressive than me.
I don’t have to be strong or physically imposing to either deter or punish criminality against me. Society through the government does that on my behalf. All I have to do is be in the right.
If you think yourself physically strong and capable you might say the government constrains me from doing as I please. But will you always be that way? What happens to the mighty when they lose their strength? Who protects them then? The modern liberal government is there to ensure parity between people regardless of personal strength in disputes, by being stronger than anyone else. It then judges disputes based on reason and facts. Which are objective and outside the sway of the nature of the two people having the dispute.
Obviously there are always discrepancies between theory and practice, so I won’t claim our system works perfectly. But I think the ideal of it is right. Government are established to provide objective and indisputable arbitration between private parties, as well as organize collective action when necessary for the survival of the group.
This is a pretty good debate about first principles; it’s one of those things so fundamental that we don’t usually spend much time thinking about it.
I know that personally, I find property taxes offensive. Our place has been paid for for some time, yet every year I’m duty bound to give the county several thousand dollars simply because I own my home. If property ownership was tied to the franchise it might make sense but since it’s not, I’m a slave to the county. Actually, since 3/4 of the money goes to the school district, I’m a slave of the school district. But I’m on the school board, so at least I get a vote. Damn, I’m a slave to myself.
In cities where the government does not collect garbage or contract garbage collection, one may observe suburban streets where there is always someone with garbage cans at the curb. Perhaps people get a better price and it is apparently free market competition, but it does not seem that the environment is better for it.
I can kind of see where the misunderstanding is, I think. So personal autonomy is not the issue so much as nonaggression. Giving up some personal autonomy voluntarily is perfectly valid. For example, I might give up smoking or tanning beds to get a better health insurance rate. The nonaggression principle is just an application of the Golden Rule.
I think you oversell just how much of a threat barbarians are. Some might even call it fear-mongering. I have serious skepticism concerning how the U.S. government’s involvement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan significantly increases American’s overall security.
A private security organization wouldn’t do the same things. For example, it wouldn’t squander your premiums in some M.E. hellhole. Clearly, such an organization would have some system to give assurances to its customers that it’s not just going to start ruling over them. Would you buy security services from a company that violently eliminated its competition? You’ll also have some organizations, like the health sharing ministry I’m a part of, where members volunteer to be available for their own defense. Security firms would also have agreements to work together, like reinsurance, in the rare event of some large scale attack by a foreign state.
People have written entire books on practical ways you would structure the incentives for private security firms so that they wouldn’t immediately become your rulers. How can you so boldly declare that there is no possible alternative to an immediate reversion to having a State monopoly? It seems more likely to me that there are many possible alternatives. I prefer the certain moral clarity of the evils of the state to your uncertain, vague prognostications of doom if we don’t have one.
I don’t understand how the State is analogous to geometry, mathematics, and transportation. It is not immoral in itself to engage in any of those three pursuits (and I’d add commerce). None of them violate people’s bodily integrity or property rights, as happens with the State.
You are changing the terms here. I wasn’t talking about “the State.” I was talking about “government” as an activity people engage in because it is a natural consequence of human nature – like transportation.
This is a fair point. We should distinguish between the State and government. You can voluntarily agree to be governed by covenants in your subdivision, or by the terms of various contracts. It’s voluntary for you, and you’re not imposing it on others. Perfectly valid.
Oh. They would give “assurances.” Cool, then. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, until it occurs to them that it would be much cheaper, better for their business, to meddle a little with the internal affairs of said M.E. hellhole, rather than just wait for some religious leader or strongman to attack their customers. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc…
Hmmmph. I pay a private company to do that.
When driving up north to the Arctic on the Dempster Highway in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 1987, there were periodic radio ads in between the country music, urging squatters to get legal. It seems there was an amnesty program. I was surprised it was still an issue at that late date.
We still have trial by combat. But now we call it Congressional Hearings.
There is an old saying, “Morality is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
I wholeheartedly disagree. The State is the foremost violator of your property rights. People already do a whole host of things, thanks to the State’s incompetence, to protect their own property rights, such as moving into gated communities or hiring security firms.
In purely economic terms, the occasional burglary is probably much, much cheaper than what the State is extracting from you now. Also factor in that burglars get around using public roads.
Invasions by a foreign state are rare these days, but they haven’t always been. Before the rise of large states with standing armies, nobles and kings constantly invaded each other’s territories with private armies. Don’t get me wrong, large states with standing armies certainly carry problems as well. I have a big problem with conscription, too. But these things don’t necessarily cause war, and they often prevent it. Wars have been fought with private armies from the get-go. In the absence of government-provided national defense, I wonder how rare these wars would be.
If your security firm owns a nuke, that may be enough of a deterrent…
Yes. It is a necessary evil, because people are no damn good.
You have to have some sort of government, period, I’ll take one in which I have a say, thank you.
A security firm with an army that uses it to enforce its will, is a government. What is it with libertarians dreaming up governments but calling them a different name and claiming they are not governments?