6 ms·

It's fine to want to earn more money as long as you don't do this by taking away other people's freedoms. No one has the right to use force on others for their

by dpatru 12y ago

It's fine to want to earn more money as long as you don't do this by taking away other people's freedoms. No one has the right to use force on others for their own ends. No one has the right to take away other people's right to contract in order to maintain an above-market price. So for example: the minimum wage takes away the rights of employers and would-be employees to contract at low wages in order to allow some workers to charge above-market wages. Taxi medallions take away the rights of passengers and drivers to contract for cheap fares in order to allow taxi companies to charge above-market fares. Not only are such laws economically wasteful, but they are immoral in the same sense that slavery is immoral: they take away one's freedom to contract.

Karellen 12y ago
Are you also against big government taking away our freedom to keep the entire proceeds of those contracts, in the form of taxes, which it then redistributes to the poor? You know, so that despite having a job paying $0.50/hr, people can still afford to buy enough food to eat for themselves, and so they can afford to live somewhere heated in the winter? Or are you fully behind an individual's right to die of starvation and/or hypothermia, because if they really cared about living, they'd... uh... ummm... shit - what is it they'd do again? Out of curiosity, are you and 99% of the people you know relatively well off, and not in forseeable danger of running out of food or warmth any time in the next decade or so? Do you, as the saying goes, got yours? I got mine, but I am somewhat concerned about the other people in my community who don't. I don't want to step over their bodies, rather, I'd like to help them get out of the pit they're in - however they got there. Be that being born into poverty, or falling into a career 20 years ago which has since been automated away, or through illness, or just bad bloody luck. So I'll give to charity and food banks, but I'd rather that people could get jobs which pay well enough that they don't need to use 'em. As for the people that got theirs but are content to say "fuck you Jack" to those that don't, they're not the kind of people I want to share my community, or country, with. With thanks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf013ID8lCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf013ID8lCE
- dpatru 12y ago
  > I am somewhat concerned about the other people in my community who don't [have theirs]. If you're concerned about people in your community who are poor, why do you oppose letting them make employment contracts which will make them better off? The minimum wage makes it illegal for them to contract for jobs that they are actually qualified for, i.e., very low-paying jobs. Very low-paying jobs are for employment what remedial courses are for college education. Eliminating remedial courses in college which would mean that people with very low levels of education could not get started with college. The minimum wage, by eliminating low-paying jobs, prevents low-skilled people from getting started with employment. > As for the people that got theirs but are content to say "fuck you Jack" to those that don't, they're not the kind of people I want to share my community, or country, with. Not only are you against allowing people to contract, you also want to deport people who exercise their right to speak. This is not a cheap shot. When you are willing to violate a basic human right like the freedom to contract, you're likely morally blind enough to be willing to violate other human rights. The choice of violating the right to contract and trade or letting someone starve is a false one. In fact, a major cause (though not the only cause) of poverty is restrictions on contracts and trade, mostly by governments. There are examples of this everywhere. The article mentioned taxis. Driving a car safely is a basic skill that many otherwise unskilled people can do. Taxis should be very cheap, plentiful, and temporary job for people who need something to do while they work on doing something more useful. Instead, government restricts the supply of taxis making taxis expensive and relatively scarce. This hurts people who need transportation, it hurts people who would like to provide transportation but cannot, and it hurts people who could be doing something more useful for society but don't because they are earning more than they should as taxi drivers.
  - Karellen 12y ago
    "why do you oppose letting them make employment contracts which will make them better off?" I would argue that those contracts do not make those people better off. People want to work, want to be productive, want to feel like they're not taking charity to feed themselves. So they'll take 3 jobs and try to survive on 5 hours sleep a night to do that, running their health into the ground, because employers will gladly take advantage of people's need to feel productive, while setting them all against each other to drive wages as low as the most desperate person to work will accept. "The minimum wage, by eliminating low-paying jobs, prevents low-skilled people from getting started with employment." Huh? First, minimum-wage jobs generally are "low-paying, low-skilled" jobs. Are you saying that restaurants would prefer to employ a new dish-washer at $7.25/hr if they'd previously been... catching rats bare-handed for $2/hr? Also, how do you account for the fact that low-skilled people manage to find low-paying jobs in countries that have better minimum wages than the US? "Not only are you against allowing people to contract, you also want to deport people who exercise their right to speak. This is not a cheap shot." Um, yes, it is. "When you are willing to violate a basic human right like the freedom to contract, you're likely morally blind enough to be willing to violate other human rights." Such as, the freedom to contract yourself into slavery? Or the freedom to contact buying food and/or medicine from a supplier who has not been subjected to any FDA checks because they assure you that you can trust them that they don't need any of that gub'mint interferin'? The US already puts limits on the kinds of contacts that people can enter into, especially with large corporations, because they realise that there is a great imbalance at work. Corporations have a lot of incentive to fuck people over if they can get away with it, and a highly concentrated amount of expertise, time, and effort to put into doing their best to make that happen. While individuals are often inexpert in many fields, and do not have the time - even if they have relevant expertise - to push back against every corporation they deal with day-to-day, and the effort they expend doing so is disproportionate to the amount of benefit they personally will receive. Individuals' efforts are diffuse compared to those of a company, even more so when compared to the efforts of many companies trying to accomplish a goal together, like drive wages down. The US also even has limits on speech, where speech can cause an immediate and direct threat to the safety of others. I would argue that it is not moral blindness to limit the rights of some, where the exercise of those rights affects the wellbeing of others. Yes, limiting rights is dangerous, but I would argue that that simply means that it needs to be done carefully, in persuit of a specific goal, and only as much as appears to be necessary to achieve that goal - with the acknowledgement that it not be done at all if the goal appears unattainable; not that is must not be done ever. No-one's rights are absolute, they always start get fuzzy when the exercise thereof starts to interfere with the wellbeing of others. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. "Instead, government restricts the supply of taxis making taxis expensive and relatively scarce." Yeah, I'm totally with you on the taxis thing.
dredmorbius 12y ago
You should really read your Karl Marx: A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Oh, I'm sorry, I got that totally wrong. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2HCH0008 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H... http://redd.it/2311mb http://redd.it/2311mb
onetwofiveten 12y ago
Slavery is immoral because it takes away freedom of movement (and is thus a form of imprisonment), not freedom to create contracts. There are no fundamentally fixed moral rights relating to trade because there is no universal objective notion of property. Property is an entirely social concept and can only exist through social contract. You only "own" an object to the extent that everyone else agrees you do. Most people want there to be regulation of business, even if some of it is corrupt and inefficient. Most people want governments to collect taxes and control shared resources, even if this is inefficient and wasteful. These things are seen as a necessary evil. If it's what the public want, then it's not immoral, because the entire notion of property (and by extension trade) only exists as a social contract. To go into detail for your taxi example, the roads were built as part of a social contract where people pay taxes under the expectation that the government will execute some form of transport policy. Tax payers would have anticipated some form of taxi regulation to occur over future roads. For most people this is desirable because they want to be protected as consumers. If you take away taxi regulation, then you are not honouring the implicit contract that allowed for the creation of the roads. You may personally disagree with this widespread desire for regulation. It is also reasonable to say that corrupt and inefficient regulation is immoral. However I think it is quite dangerous to argue that regulation itself is fundamentally immoral. The history of the industrial revolution shows what kinds of contracts ordinary people will willingly subject themselves to if they feel they have to.
- dpatru 12y ago
  > Slavery is immoral because it takes away freedom of movement . . . Here's a counter-example: the difference between a freeman farmer and a slave farmer is not that they don't have freedome of movement, but that the freeman has the right to sell the harvest to whom he wants while the slave does not. It sounds like the definition of slavery as lack of freedom of movement was dreamed up by some law professor in order to avoid having to characterize the income tax as a form of slavery.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Reminds me of the definition of pornography: you know it when you see it. Or Plato's man: an upright biped without feathers. Somebody plucked a chicken and said "Plato's man!". So he added "with broad nails". Any time you try to create a minimal taxonomy you get into games like this. No malicious intent by theoretical law professors need be imagined.

by dpatru 12y ago

Karellen 12y ago

Are you also against big government taking away our freedom to keep the entire proceeds of those contracts, in the form of taxes, which it then redistributes to the poor? You know, so that despite having a job paying $0.50/hr, people can still afford to buy enough food to eat for themselves, and so they can afford to live somewhere heated in the winter? Or are you fully behind an individual's right to die of starvation and/or hypothermia, because if they really cared about living, they'd... uh... ummm... shit - what is it they'd do again? Out of curiosity, are you and 99% of the people you know relatively well off, and not in forseeable danger of running out of food or warmth any time in the next decade or so? Do you, as the saying goes, got yours? I got mine, but I am somewhat concerned about the other people in my community who don't. I don't want to step over their bodies, rather, I'd like to help them get out of the pit they're in - however they got there. Be that being born into poverty, or falling into a career 20 years ago which has since been automated away, or through illness, or just bad bloody luck. So I'll give to charity and food banks, but I'd rather that people could get jobs which pay well enough that they don't need to use 'em. As for the people that got theirs but are content to say "fuck you Jack" to those that don't, they're not the kind of people I want to share my community, or country, with. With thanks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf013ID8lCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf013ID8lCE

dpatru 12y ago
> I am somewhat concerned about the other people in my community who don't [have theirs]. If you're concerned about people in your community who are poor, why do you oppose letting them make employment contracts which will make them better off? The minimum wage makes it illegal for them to contract for jobs that they are actually qualified for, i.e., very low-paying jobs. Very low-paying jobs are for employment what remedial courses are for college education. Eliminating remedial courses in college which would mean that people with very low levels of education could not get started with college. The minimum wage, by eliminating low-paying jobs, prevents low-skilled people from getting started with employment. > As for the people that got theirs but are content to say "fuck you Jack" to those that don't, they're not the kind of people I want to share my community, or country, with. Not only are you against allowing people to contract, you also want to deport people who exercise their right to speak. This is not a cheap shot. When you are willing to violate a basic human right like the freedom to contract, you're likely morally blind enough to be willing to violate other human rights. The choice of violating the right to contract and trade or letting someone starve is a false one. In fact, a major cause (though not the only cause) of poverty is restrictions on contracts and trade, mostly by governments. There are examples of this everywhere. The article mentioned taxis. Driving a car safely is a basic skill that many otherwise unskilled people can do. Taxis should be very cheap, plentiful, and temporary job for people who need something to do while they work on doing something more useful. Instead, government restricts the supply of taxis making taxis expensive and relatively scarce. This hurts people who need transportation, it hurts people who would like to provide transportation but cannot, and it hurts people who could be doing something more useful for society but don't because they are earning more than they should as taxi drivers.
- Karellen 12y ago
  "why do you oppose letting them make employment contracts which will make them better off?" I would argue that those contracts do not make those people better off. People want to work, want to be productive, want to feel like they're not taking charity to feed themselves. So they'll take 3 jobs and try to survive on 5 hours sleep a night to do that, running their health into the ground, because employers will gladly take advantage of people's need to feel productive, while setting them all against each other to drive wages as low as the most desperate person to work will accept. "The minimum wage, by eliminating low-paying jobs, prevents low-skilled people from getting started with employment." Huh? First, minimum-wage jobs generally are "low-paying, low-skilled" jobs. Are you saying that restaurants would prefer to employ a new dish-washer at $7.25/hr if they'd previously been... catching rats bare-handed for $2/hr? Also, how do you account for the fact that low-skilled people manage to find low-paying jobs in countries that have better minimum wages than the US? "Not only are you against allowing people to contract, you also want to deport people who exercise their right to speak. This is not a cheap shot." Um, yes, it is. "When you are willing to violate a basic human right like the freedom to contract, you're likely morally blind enough to be willing to violate other human rights." Such as, the freedom to contract yourself into slavery? Or the freedom to contact buying food and/or medicine from a supplier who has not been subjected to any FDA checks because they assure you that you can trust them that they don't need any of that gub'mint interferin'? The US already puts limits on the kinds of contacts that people can enter into, especially with large corporations, because they realise that there is a great imbalance at work. Corporations have a lot of incentive to fuck people over if they can get away with it, and a highly concentrated amount of expertise, time, and effort to put into doing their best to make that happen. While individuals are often inexpert in many fields, and do not have the time - even if they have relevant expertise - to push back against every corporation they deal with day-to-day, and the effort they expend doing so is disproportionate to the amount of benefit they personally will receive. Individuals' efforts are diffuse compared to those of a company, even more so when compared to the efforts of many companies trying to accomplish a goal together, like drive wages down. The US also even has limits on speech, where speech can cause an immediate and direct threat to the safety of others. I would argue that it is not moral blindness to limit the rights of some, where the exercise of those rights affects the wellbeing of others. Yes, limiting rights is dangerous, but I would argue that that simply means that it needs to be done carefully, in persuit of a specific goal, and only as much as appears to be necessary to achieve that goal - with the acknowledgement that it not be done at all if the goal appears unattainable; not that is must not be done ever. No-one's rights are absolute, they always start get fuzzy when the exercise thereof starts to interfere with the wellbeing of others. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. "Instead, government restricts the supply of taxis making taxis expensive and relatively scarce." Yeah, I'm totally with you on the taxis thing.

dredmorbius 12y ago

You should really read your Karl Marx: A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Oh, I'm sorry, I got that totally wrong. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2HCH0008 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H... http://redd.it/2311mb http://redd.it/2311mb

onetwofiveten 12y ago

Slavery is immoral because it takes away freedom of movement (and is thus a form of imprisonment), not freedom to create contracts. There are no fundamentally fixed moral rights relating to trade because there is no universal objective notion of property. Property is an entirely social concept and can only exist through social contract. You only "own" an object to the extent that everyone else agrees you do. Most people want there to be regulation of business, even if some of it is corrupt and inefficient. Most people want governments to collect taxes and control shared resources, even if this is inefficient and wasteful. These things are seen as a necessary evil. If it's what the public want, then it's not immoral, because the entire notion of property (and by extension trade) only exists as a social contract. To go into detail for your taxi example, the roads were built as part of a social contract where people pay taxes under the expectation that the government will execute some form of transport policy. Tax payers would have anticipated some form of taxi regulation to occur over future roads. For most people this is desirable because they want to be protected as consumers. If you take away taxi regulation, then you are not honouring the implicit contract that allowed for the creation of the roads. You may personally disagree with this widespread desire for regulation. It is also reasonable to say that corrupt and inefficient regulation is immoral. However I think it is quite dangerous to argue that regulation itself is fundamentally immoral. The history of the industrial revolution shows what kinds of contracts ordinary people will willingly subject themselves to if they feel they have to.

dpatru 12y ago
> Slavery is immoral because it takes away freedom of movement . . . Here's a counter-example: the difference between a freeman farmer and a slave farmer is not that they don't have freedome of movement, but that the freeman has the right to sell the harvest to whom he wants while the slave does not. It sounds like the definition of slavery as lack of freedom of movement was dreamed up by some law professor in order to avoid having to characterize the income tax as a form of slavery.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Reminds me of the definition of pornography: you know it when you see it. Or Plato's man: an upright biped without feathers. Somebody plucked a chicken and said "Plato's man!". So he added "with broad nails". Any time you try to create a minimal taxonomy you get into games like this. No malicious intent by theoretical law professors need be imagined.