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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   21611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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I've linked this elsewhere today as well, but you'll probably enjoy Nozick's The tale of a slave if you haven't seen it before.

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.

2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.

3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.

4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.

5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him threesevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.

6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.

Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.

7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.

8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)

9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome

The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?

At 5 we mostly cross from slavery: notably, someone can do nothing whatsoever or whatever they want.

Main sticking point would be

He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.

depending on how it works in practise (there is a substantial difference between ban (1) on selling stuff heavily radioactive food / poisonous milk for small children / fentanyl / cigarettes from (2) need to obtain permission before pregnancy or ban on mountain climbing)

I see what author tried to achieve, but no it does not prove that taxes are morally equivalent to slavery. And no, not equivalent to robbery or theft either.

Well, I certainly get the points that libertarians try to make that living under a state is only a difference in degree and not kind from being a slave. I'm not a card carrying one myself, just sympathetic and believing that the government should restrict the activities of its people to the bare minimum necessary. Maybe that makes me a minarchist, but categories were made for man and it's not always a cozy fit.

The average person is politically impotent, they wouldn't even notice if procedural democracy was replaced by a dictator and the media just kept on acting like nothing had changed. I am at peace with that, even if I wish otherwise, and it can't be otherwise until everyone owns a Von Neumann replicator that provides all the products of technological civilization, and is a Sovereign Citizen in the same way that states are sovereign. And even then they'll have to deal with the Uranian Home Owner's Association, which is just about as much a PITA as it sounds.

Hmm, I'll work that one into my novel.

The average person is politically impotent, they wouldn't even notice if procedural democracy was replaced by a dictator and the media just kept on acting like nothing had changed.

I don't think this applies to just the average person. Do you really think that even high IQ individuals would notice if votes and polling were both altered to reflect the wishes of the hidden dictator? We could very plausibly be living in a world like that right now.

Expand a word's definition enough and you end up with a useless word and a smug feeling.

At 5 we cross from slavery as I expect a reasonable person to understand it to subjecthood (as in "subject of the Crown", perhaps).

Right. At 4, the slave is still beaten for not picking cotton, and has to live on the master's plantation. At 5, the slave can move to LA and pay for a fourth of an apartment by working as a plumber, buy a laptop, get a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and start posting a lot on Tumblr, and maybe even quit their job as a plumber if they get enough fanart commissions. This really is a substantial difference, and is much of what people would object to about slavery. (I'd rather be able to decide my occupation and place of residence but be beaten sometimes than the opposite). The best arguments for voting, liberal democracy, etc are that it preserves the substantive rights and abilities that people gain between 2 and 5.

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