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>Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense. If I rescue you fro

>Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense. If I rescue you from a burning building contingent upon you signing over 90% of your wealth and future earnings first did we engage in a voluntary transaction? I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively unchecked power and profit is protected. ""The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever." Emphasis mine.

patricius 9y ago
> I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively unchecked power and profit is protected. I was saying that you cannot talk about degrees of voluntary. If there are degrees of voluntary, then you end up in a situation where you can argue that any choice is both voluntary and involuntary. Stick a gun in my back and force me to choose to give up my wallet or my life. Is this a voluntary transaction, since, in the end, I make the choice? I would say it is absolutely involuntary. Of course, stating that there are degrees of “voluntary” is a typical ploy by socialists to justify having the state loot their citizens.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  I liked the part where you dodged the hypothetical question about your house being on fire and then declared the idea of there being shades of gray a socialist plot.

patricius 9y ago

> I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively unchecked power and profit is protected. I was saying that you cannot talk about degrees of voluntary. If there are degrees of voluntary, then you end up in a situation where you can argue that any choice is both voluntary and involuntary. Stick a gun in my back and force me to choose to give up my wallet or my life. Is this a voluntary transaction, since, in the end, I make the choice? I would say it is absolutely involuntary. Of course, stating that there are degrees of “voluntary” is a typical ploy by socialists to justify having the state loot their citizens.

crdoconnor 9y ago
I liked the part where you dodged the hypothetical question about your house being on fire and then declared the idea of there being shades of gray a socialist plot.