Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
It’s premised upon a non-existent problem.
No, that can’t be right. They told me that everyone who isn’t a leftist wants to throw Granny off the cliff.
For the present.
Didn’t Blackstone have a problem with property taxes as such? Maybe I’m misremembering from that book I read that talked about Blackstone. It’s been about . . . 18 years, I think.
Fewer years ago I did read Cicero complaining about property taxes. Can’t remember much there either.
Although I would have thought my above remarks were clear enough, I think a human being is an organism of the human species.
(Not that I don’t accept more philosophical or theological definitions.)
The only point it proves is that a fetus is a human being from conception–unless there’s something wrong with the above biological definition.
It doesn’t prove anything morally since the proposition that all humans have rights is a separate (and not a scientific) question.
It was an argument that liberal causes will lead to very bad effects. What aspect of a slippery slope argument do you think is missing?
My best guess is an explicit mention of a chain.
The chain is probably a necessary part of the fallacy in some highly specific definitions, but not all definitions of this particular argument pattern. If you like the specific ones, that’s fine with me; I don’t especially, and anyway the less-specific definitions are very closely related.
I know nothing of most of them, not having done a survey. But I don’t believe the definitions in the logic textbooks include such a thing. Sure, it can happen, but it’s a super-specific argument pattern, one but not the only variety of what goes under the name “slippery slope.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t recall seeing a lot of examples of the slippery slope argument you describe. (Dilbert’s boss comes to mind.)
No.
Property tax is rent to the govt for land
Yeah, I think that’s what I read in this book in 2001. My vague memories suggest they mentioned Blackstone in this regard. I’m sure someone on Ricochet studies Blackstone, but I’m not sure who, much less whether she or he is in this thread.
I am a Fair Tax guy. Have been since I was a teen and did not know what to call it.
But I have never been libertarian. I understand the real world too well.
Even if you have a population of perfect people, there really are monsters outside your borders.
I can’t tell if you’re meaning that as an argument for or against them, or neither.
Argument against, I think. If we rent land from the government then property rights are derived from the government. (It’s supposed to be vice versa according to Locke.)
Can you expand on this? I’m trying to understand. Is there any portion of tax collection that you believe is currently immoral that is independent of whether it’s Constitutional?
I mean, I agree. I don’t think this is what people think the government is doing when they assess them. It’s more like they need to collect revenue somehow that is correlated with how likely they are to use local resources, and this is the only way anyone could think of that is somewhat proportional to income, since most people think you’re a monster if you try to charge everyone for what they use.
Right on. The argument is good, but we’re not all convinced of the premise.
Sure. My position generally is that the proper amount of taxation is sufficient to cover some of those basic necessities that people rely upon in terms of public goods.
I might even be amenable to a forced savings plan for retirement if it formed the corpus of an investment which would supply people’s heirs with an inheritance in the event of their deaths. Even a forced savings plan to finance a generic life insurance policy.
That is not what we have. Alas.
Yeah, I’ve heard that. On the other hand, everyone who is a leftist wants to throw everyone off a cliff.
But AOC tells us that she can pay for all of it, whatever she wants no matter how expensive, simply by printing money. If that were true (stop for laughter) then there would be no need for any taxation whatsoever. Why tax anyone, when you can just print all the money you need? I think if you asked AOC about this she would say that she still favors taxing (soaking) the rich, because it is unfair that anyone should have more money than anyone else. Why, that’s income inequality. Oh, the horror!
Beautiful.
It really is, isn’t it? I so hope that some reporter actually asks her that question.
From one of my favorite books, Stranger in a Strange Land:
We need to ask her if 2 wheelbarrows full of worthless currency aren’t equivalent to 50 wheelbarrows full of worthless currency.
She would have no idea what you were talking about, but the answer is no. The difference is the value of 48 wheelbarrows.
I’m not going to quote the whole thing, but I really can’t find anything to disagree with here. This was by far my favorite comment. There is a lot more nuance to this approach to organizing human society than people realize. Thanks for bringing your perspective!