Ecurb wrote: ↑January 6th, 2022, 8:18 pm
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 6th, 2022, 1:03 pm
Yes, someone who claims a "right" to the services of other people or to the products of their labor is advocating slavery. Er, where is the "prevarication"?
Their are multiple problems with your claim, the most obvious being that nobody except you (and, perhaps, 2 or 3 fellow travelers) would call claiming the right to accept medicare constitutes advocating slavery. You are free to make any silly claims you want to make -- but this one constitutes clear prevarication.
Er, where did I make such a claim? I don't recall even mentioning Medicare in this thread, or any other recent thread. Your "rebuttals" would be much more effective if you directed them to statements actually made, rather than strawmen of your own devising.
But I suppose your assumption is that since Medicare involves the services of other people, then if I should claim a right to it, I would would be contradicting myself. Is that it?
Ok. First, one can sometimes have rights to the services of other people, namely, when one has freely entered into some sort of contract or agreement with someone who has also freely entered into it, and has performed one's own obligations under that contract. That person then has a right that the other parties perform
their obligations. I don't mention that exception in most discussions because they are obvious. So let's modify my statement above as follows: "Someone who claims a 'right' to the services of other people or to the products of their labor (
absent some sort of contract or agreement among them) is advocating slavery. Ok? *
Second, my "right" to Medicare is a legal right. The rights referred to in the previous sentence are real --- natural or common --- rights. One can indeed have legal rights to anything some lawgiver decrees. But those are arbitrary, fiat "rights," lacking any moral significance. Medicare (and Social Security, in the US) are odd ducks, however, because the legal "rights" to them depend upon having paid taxes to support those programs over the course of one's working life. Those payments (arguably) establish a
contractual right (as above) to those benefits.
You might try to focus on the substance of the argument --- that no one has any
a priori (real, not fiat) right to the services of other people, or to the products of their labor.
Ok?
The other problem with your claim is that both exaggerates whatever evils the system of taxation you decry produces, and minimizes the evils of actual slavery. Do you really want to claim that accepting medicare is equivalent to advocating a return to chatell slavery? If not, your claim is both prevarication, and poor rhetoric, because instead of persuading anyone it will annoy them by suggesting that slavery was a minor political and ethical problem.
Well, now, I never drew that comparison. You did. And it is vacuous argument, since accepting Medicare (if eligible, as above) does not violate anyone's rights and so has no relationship to slavery. My own statements carry no implications that slavery is a "minor" problem.
Again, I did NOT call taxation "slavery." You repeat the misquote earlier pointed out. I said that taxes, when seized to pay for goods or services of no benefit to the taxpayer, RESEMBLE slavery, in that they confiscate the products of the taxpayer's labor for the benefit of someone other than the taxpayer. They are not exactly slavery, however, in that the taxed person is not forced to work and produce the wealth the government steals. He can quit producing, leaving the government nothing to steal, without punishment.
Lots of things RESEMBLE slavery, including working in the cotton fields owned by some capitalist. However, that's not what you said. You wrote, "The correct name for that claim (the claim that people have a right to the product of others' labor) is 'slavery.'" If you want to change your tune, fine. I agree. Eating with wooden spoons resembles slavery, being a house maid resembles slavery, obeying the commands of your superior officers in the army resembles slavery.
Incorrect. You're confusing two claims here (I should have caught this in the previous post). I said that TAXES, when imposed to benefit someone other than the taxpayer, RESEMBLES slavery, in that that it entails an (
a priori, non-contractual) claim to the products of other's labor. Since I gave the specific point of resemblance between such taxes and slavery, your listing of irrelevant resemblances is gratuitous and pointless.
But the confusion is between that claim about
taxes, and the claim that someone has a
right to the services of other people, or to the products of their labor. Those are two different claims. The latter RIGHTS claim
is a slavery claim, a
prima facie one. Legitimate (real) rights claims may morally be enforced. So if Alfie has a right that Bruno build him a house, he may force Bruno to build that house, without regard to any taxes or any other government actions. But unless Alfie's claimed right derives from some sort of contract between Alfie and Bruno, then he is claiming a power to enslave Bruno,
prima facie.
So what? Again, you are dissembling -- using faulty logic. YOu are trying to suggest that:
P1: Slavery is Evil
P2: Taxing people to pay for certain things resembles slavery
Therefore: Taxing people to pay for certain things is evil.
But the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
You're right. But then, I never made such an argument. However, if you spell out the way in which taxes resemble slavery (as I did), and that common feature between (some) taxes and slavery is evil, and if "certain things" denotes the same set of things in both the premises and conclusion, then that argument would be valid.
* There are a few other ways one may gain a right to the services of other people, e.g., if someone injures you, you gain a right to damages. If you bring a child into the world it has a right to your support until it can support himself/herself.