During the period of slavery in North America, the "savages" shipped over from Africa were conveniently considered to be less than human and therefore were sold as comodities in public auctions, rented as laborers, inherited as parts of estates, etc. Government certainly didn't prevent the onset of slavery in North America, but what does this say about the moral principles of free trade in actual practice?
Grant: gethky:If free trade per se is amoral, then is free trade in slaves immoral?That is a good question. Obviously the appropriation of slaves is immoral. But what about the trader who simply buys and sells them? The trader could free the slaves he buys. But then he would quickly run out of money, and not be able to buy any more. In short, he'd leave the business. The slaves he did not end up buying would stay slaves.
gethky:If free trade per se is amoral, then is free trade in slaves immoral?
The trader could free the slaves he buys. But then he would quickly run out of money, and not be able to buy any more. In short, he'd leave the business. The slaves he did not end up buying would stay slaves.
My apologies if I failed to make this as clear as I could have.
You claim:
Grant:The trader is not an enabler of slavery.
If I say that I own my neighbour, it changes nothing. I can't actually control my neighbour in any way because everyone around me refuses to recognise my supposed ownership over him. If everyone, or at least a very powerful organisation calling itself "government," recognises me as the actual and just owner of my neighbour, then and only then can I pose any contol over my neighbour.
Nathyn:If I'm a slave-by-contract, I'm going to do my job, but I'm still going to think, "This is b******t!"
Nathyn:To respond: I disagree. I could dig up some photos of child slaves in India or elsewhere, today. You have absolutely no idea of telling whether they're slaves-by-contract or not.
Nathyn:That's what makes slavery so barbaric, not because it violates some silly, abstract theory of "self-ownership."
Nathyn:I.E., if I promise to have sex with you, signing a contract, and I don't deliver, what are you going to take? It's totally arbitrary, if you believe in subjective value.
Nathyn:Even if I owe you $10, if I don't pay up, you can't just seize $10. You should have some right to seize more than that, because your time-preference dictated that when you lent me money, you wanted it back at a certain time for a certain interest rate. If you have to wait even longer, who's to say your time-preference, at that point, doesn't dictate a gazillion rate of interest increase?
As for the exact just amount, that could be decided by the market through privately-hired arbitors. Any arbitor who decreed that you owe me a quadrillion dollars simply since you didn't pay me my $10 for, say, a decade would surely lose credibility and customers. Further, you would have the right to appeal that decision. Good question.
Nathyn:If Rothbard, through his sophistry, happens to come to the conclusion that a holocaust is justified for his own liberty's sake, his entire argument falls apart because his basic assumptions about the value of humanity contradict that of just about everyone.
Just wow.
I don't know what to say. I'm dumbfounded how you could possibly make such a statement.
A) Rothbard would not and could not "come to the conclusion that a holocaust is justified for his own liberty's sake."
B) If Rothbard did come up with such a conclusion, it would be in total and complete contradiction with any and all other conclusions he ever came up with, and in complete defiance of his understanding of human nature.
C) If someone comes up with a "conclusion that a holocaust is justified for his own liberty's sake," the person is wrong because of the innate self-ownership that Spooner, Rothbard, Long, and others have championed.
D) Value? Value is subjective, and not a basis of ethics which, by its very nature, must be objective, as it regards the treatment of entities external to the self based on the innate nature of those entites. (Morality, conversely, is subjective, as it deals with the conduct of the self as subject.)
E) Humans have certain inalienable rights, such as self-ownership, because it is in the objective nature of humanity that humans possess this equal right. Subsequently, any argument "that a holocaust is justified for his own liberty's sake" is obviously invalid.
Nathyn:If "human life" isn't important to you, if you're not a Humanist but look at other human beings as insects to be limitlessly bought, sold, and used for our own freedom's sake, then we have no grounds to discuss ethics at all.
Nathyn:Rothbard seems to not make any assumption of humanity's value at all, but takes simply his own life to be valuable and tries to convince the world to capitulate to his idea of freedom, for his own sake.
Nathyn:Had you been born a sickly child in Sparta and tossed away or a neglected child in an American ghetto, Rothbard sees nothing wrong with this.
Nathyn:If you see nothing wrong with it either, simply because you and Rothbard, by chance alone, were not born in Sparta or an American ghetto, then we have no way of discussing what's "right" at all. But you certainly have no claim to be an individualist, unless by "individualist," you mean psychotically narcissistic, which Rothbard seems to be.
Nathyn:Murray fancifully saw himself as something of a libertarian Lenin. While his dogmatic invective and propensity to conspire may sometimes have seemed reminiscent of the founder of Bolshevism, Rothbard was too playful, too volatile, and too much smitten by the allure of pure ideas to build or to lead a vanguard party. His political life became an erratic succession of alliances, each one enthusiastically pursued for a few years, then angrily abandoned, with his erstwhile confederates anathematized, though unlike Rand he would sometimes team up with them again later, old differences forgiven if not forgotten.
Murray fancifully saw himself as something of a libertarian Lenin. While his dogmatic invective and propensity to conspire may sometimes have seemed reminiscent of the founder of Bolshevism, Rothbard was too playful, too volatile, and too much smitten by the allure of pure ideas to build or to lead a vanguard party. His political life became an erratic succession of alliances, each one enthusiastically pursued for a few years, then angrily abandoned, with his erstwhile confederates anathematized, though unlike Rand he would sometimes team up with them again later, old differences forgiven if not forgotten.
His political life became an erratic succession of alliances, each one enthusiastically pursued for a few years, then angrily abandoned, with his erstwhile confederates anathematized, though unlike Rand he would sometimes team up with them again later, old differences forgiven if not forgotten.
gethky:2. Keepng or selling slaves does indeed involve coercion and is therefore immoral, but not necessarily criminal sans government.
gethky:4. I'd venture a guess that most parents would claim ownership of their young children.
https://www.mises.org/story/2291
This is an instructive article on the matter, and one that bolsters Alex's points.
allixpeeke: Nathyn: Yan Grenier:You are probably childishly refering to the fact that people can physically write on a piece of paper that they are selling away their body and volition, thus completely walking around and avoiding the fact that writing words on a sheet of paper does not change the laws of reality.This is a strictly metaphysical objection! What you're saying is, "You can't sell your self or your body," but you can sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body.Nathyn, No, no, no. At the risk of sounding angry or aggravated, allow me to say that Yan Grenier is not saying that you can "sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body"; rather, he/she is saying you CANNOT "sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body."
Nathyn: Yan Grenier:You are probably childishly refering to the fact that people can physically write on a piece of paper that they are selling away their body and volition, thus completely walking around and avoiding the fact that writing words on a sheet of paper does not change the laws of reality.This is a strictly metaphysical objection! What you're saying is, "You can't sell your self or your body," but you can sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body.
Yan Grenier:You are probably childishly refering to the fact that people can physically write on a piece of paper that they are selling away their body and volition, thus completely walking around and avoiding the fact that writing words on a sheet of paper does not change the laws of reality.
What you're saying is, "You can't sell your self or your body," but you can sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body.
No, no, no. At the risk of sounding angry or aggravated, allow me to say that Yan Grenier is not saying that you can "sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body"; rather, he/she is saying you CANNOT "sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body."
That is correct, Allixpeeke. That will be a he by the way, although I won't hold you accountable (lol). My name can lead to confusion :) . I'll update my profile.
(I don’t know your philosophy here but I found this a curious place.)
Let’s say I am a very wealthy capitalist. And I find a new way to undercut labor cost in our future world market. I ran the numbers and found that I could create my widget with a new labor methodology.
I create a genetic engineering program and grow children in artificial wombs. I take the child after they are born and I educate and train them for very specific roles. I give them the most basic needs necessary to complete the labor I need done. They are never taken outside, know nothing of the outside world and are educated to respect my staff, my rules and myself. Those that cause trouble are allowed to leave. Those that remain continue to receive the benefits of my system.
Overtime I weed out those that desire to leave. I continue to use this genetic program to adapt and make this work force more efficient. They receive a fairly boring existence but they make widgets that benefit the entire free market cutting prices dramatically.
They can leave anytime they want if they really want to. But they can never return if they choose to leave. Neither my staff nor I ever tell them that they can leave.
---
I have a question. Do children even have the capacity for free will to make a rational choice of value in a free market? If a child is willing to sign a contract at the age of 12 who can stop them and should that contract be upheld? Or does the contract end as soon as someone says, “Stop” even if the obligations in the contract have not been met?
Obviously the greatest fault I see here is that there is a belief that a free market will operate without coercion. And if serious coercion does occur who will step in? Or is it up to the party that was coerced to deal with the problem? And who will step in if the local people get together who are sick of my slave shop and remove me from the community? That is a government of people who made a choice, why should they be allowed to interfere in the free market? Would you stand up and fight those people from interfering in my free trade or simply see it as proper justice?
To assume that current humans would operate a market without any coercion is dangerously foolish. Like most philosophy, especially regarding that of liberty, it only works when both parties agree and uphold the philosophical social contract. And when it comes to profits and power many people will use coercion to achieve their goals. In fact if there is profit to be made while trampling a contract, the contract will not be upheld but dumped for more lucrative profits. At the same time the other party will want to uphold the contract but the other party won't.
It seems guaranteed there will be a lot of people out there using coercion to achieve their goals in a free for all market. If the coercive business is predominately successful they will undermine the non-coercive business and in time eliminate them from existence. Then the free market would likely be changed into a regulated market and then back into some form of oligarchy. That seems to be the way of those who attain power from wealth through out our history.
allixpeeke: gethky:2. Keepng or selling slaves does indeed involve coercion and is therefore immoral, but not necessarily criminal sans government.If something is a violation of natural law, then it's naturally criminal, government or sans government. Slavery is the theft of one's body from the rightful owner of said body (i.e. the self), and is therefore a violation of the natural law of self-ownership. It is therefore criminal, by its very nature. gethky:4. I'd venture a guess that most parents would claim ownership of their young children.They would be wrong to do so. Children, by their nature as human beings, are equal to their parents, and are therefore free to secede from their parents' household any time they wish. Any establishment of rules made by the parent are to be made under the assumption that it's "their way or the highway," not under the assumption that children are not inherently sovereign and free individuals possessing all the same, equal rights as other humans.
2. A criminal act is defined in law. There was such a thing as unwritten common law way-back-when, but nowadays all laws are written (with the probable exception of the so-called "income tax law"). Coercion is understood to be theoretically illegitimate in a theoretical libertarian markekplace. Actual coercion is prevalent in the present-day marketplace because government control is ubiquitous. Your discussion of "a natural law" in such abstract terms as "slavery is the theft of one's body from the rightful owner (i.e., the self)" & "self-ownership" & "criminal by its very nature" may be interesting albeit not very enlightening.
4. Ownership is an interesting concept. Whether or not claims to ownership are valid is beyond my purview. I can only guess as to who claims owership to what.