MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Slavery’

« Previous Entries

Some Students Want Me Fired for a Thought Experiment

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2022

Civilization’s progress depends on the freedom to express eccentric and provocative ideas.

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/some-students-want-me-fired-for-a?r=iw8dv&utm_medium=android

By Walter E. Block

A large group of students want me fired from my faculty position. The main charge they make against me is that I believe slavery is wrong for the wrong reasons—“because it goes against Libertarianism, not because it is morally wrong.”

In truth, I repudiate slavery on both grounds. I even favor reparations, but not from all whites to all blacks. Many whites came to the U.S. long after 1865 and owe nothing to anyone. Many blacks, too, are, or are descended from, recent arrivals, and are thus entitled to no compensation. Slavery should have been declared a crime, ex post facto. The guilty should have been imprisoned and their property given to their victims, the new ex-slaves. “Forty acres and a mule” is a rough approximation of the compensation that was due. Nowadays if a great-grandchild of slaves can demonstrate this connection, he should be able to obtain acreage from the great-grandchildren of slave holders who improperly held onto their plantations.

It’s true I have argued “there is nothing inherently wrong with slavery”—an eccentric and provocative view. To understand it, consider a thought experiment: Suppose my son has a dread disease. Its cure costs $10 million, which I don’t have. You do, so we make a deal: You give me the funds. I come to your farm to harvest crops or to your home to give you economics lessons. If you don’t like the way I perform these duties, you may physically assault or kill me.

Is this a legitimate contract in the free society? I say yes. We both benefit from it, at least in theory, as in all voluntary transactions. Hence there is nothing inherently wrong with slavery; it is illicit if it is imposed by one person over another, but not if both parties agree. (I have similarly argued in these pages that socialism is unobjectionable if it is voluntary.)

The petition authors are not the first to misrepresent my views. 

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Some Students Want Me Fired for a Thought Experiment

Posted by M. C. on October 26, 2022

Civilization’s progress depends on the freedom to express eccentric and provocative ideas.

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/some-students-want-me-fired-for-a
Walter Block

A large group of students want me fired from my faculty position. The main charge they make against me is that I believe slavery is wrong for the wrong reasons—“because it goes against Libertarianism, not because it is morally wrong.”

In truth, I repudiate slavery on both grounds. I even favor reparations, but not from all whites to all blacks. Many whites came to the U.S. long after 1865 and owe nothing to anyone. Many blacks, too, are, or are descended from, recent arrivals, and are thus entitled to no compensation. Slavery should have been declared a crime, ex post facto. The guilty should have been imprisoned and their property given to their victims, the new ex-slaves. “Forty acres and a mule” is a rough approximation of the compensation that was due. Nowadays if a great-grandchild of slaves can demonstrate this connection, he should be able to obtain acreage from the great-grandchildren of slave holders who improperly held onto their plantations.

It’s true I have argued “there is nothing inherently wrong with slavery”—an eccentric and provocative view. To understand it, consider a thought experiment: Suppose my son has a dread disease. Its cure costs $10 million, which I don’t have. You do, so we make a deal: You give me the funds. I come to your farm to harvest crops or to your home to give you economics lessons. If you don’t like the way I perform these duties, you may physically assault or kill me.

Is this a legitimate contract in the free society? I say yes. We both benefit from it, at least in theory, as in all voluntary transactions. Hence there is nothing inherently wrong with slavery; it is illicit if it is imposed by one person over another, but not if both parties agree. (I have similarly argued in these pages that socialism is unobjectionable if it is voluntary.)

The petition authors are not the first to misrepresent my views. In 2014 a reporter from the New York Times interviewed me. I tried to explain the gigantic chasm between voluntary and coercive slavery and patiently expounded that the latter should certainly not be legal. The paper published a story that implied I, a staunch libertarian, favored actual slavery as practiced in the U.S. until 1865. I sued for libel. The lower court threw out my case, but the appellate court ruled in my favor. I settled with the newspaper on mutually agreeable terms, and it ran a correction more than six months after the story’s publication.

Hardly anyone, even among libertarian intellectuals, agrees with my case for permitting voluntary slavery. I can well understand why it would repel people, including the students who signed the petition. But the defense of academic freedom, and specifically of the freedom to think about and express eccentric and provocative ideas, is crucially important for progress in philosophy and science. If scholars are forbidden to probe the implications of basic principles wherever it leads them, so much the worse for the future prospects of civilization.

John Stuart Mill put it best in “On Liberty”: “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. . . . Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. . . . He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.”

Even my harshest critics will readily acknowledge that I defend the principles of private property rights, liberty and laissez-faire capitalism in earnest and to my utmost ability.

Although the students who signed the petition—none of whom, I believe, have ever taken one of my classes—want me fired, I bear them no ill will. They are young people, just starting out. My door is always open. I invite any and all of the signatories of the petition, some 650 of them so far, to engage in a dialogue with me about these issues. More than 4,500 people have signed a counterpetition saying I deserve a raise. I am very grateful to them.

First published in the Wall Street Journal.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Digitizing Your Identity Is the Fast-Track to Slavery: How Can You Defend Your Freedom?

Posted by M. C. on September 2, 2022

Moreover, according to the WEF: ‘Consumers also told us they would trust banks and financial services firms the most to create and maintain an identity system

Trust Banks? Sure, I thought that every time I saw Alec Baldwin in a Capital One ad or when I read about Wells Fargo illegal searching safety deposit boxes (NEVER GET ONE OF THOSE from any bank) or when a bank refuses cash for a payment.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/digitizing-your-identity-fast-track-slavery-how-can-you-defend-your-freedom/5791784

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Throughout your lifetime, you or someone you trusted has unwittingly given up many aspects of your biometric and other personal data so that your digital identity can be created. Over time, this digital identity is being progressively defined and is replacing your actual physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual identity. What you are allowed to do, and not do, will increasingly depend on your technological identity rather than your moral character, intellectual and/or physical abilities, your emotional suitability, religious beliefs and the many other attributes that define your unique personality.

Starting with your birth certificate, which identifies your name, birth date and birth location, as well as parenting, an endless series of details about your personal life has been accumulated and stored, sometimes with your knowledge and consent. Far more often it has been done without either.

Do you remember having your photo taken for a student and/or employee identity card, your vehicle license and/or a passport? Do you remember being finger and/or palm-printed, submitting to an iris scan, agreeing to a recording of your voice, offering data for ‘two-factor’ authentication, and requesting an ancestry search by submitting a sample of your DNA? Most often you had no choice: It was ‘legally required’. Other times, you were probably offered something in return, such as admission to an educational institution, ‘secure’ access to an account or information you wanted. But whatever other price you paid, you also paid an ‘identity cost’.

Moreover, none of that information has ceased to exist and there is a lot more interest in it now than there was when you, or someone, innocently agreed to tender it all those years ago. And it is being added to all of the time with information you have surrendered or that has been obtained about you, up until this morning. In addition, it will be added to by information gathered about you tomorrow.

Your bank account(s), academic and employment records, health records (including vaccination record), legal record (including traffic violations), internet search history, and any other information compiled by or submitted to a government authority, corporation or other entity has been recorded, compiled and systematically stored in data banks of which you have never even heard. And they are being used to generate your ‘social credit score’ which, depending on the country in which you live, is already or will be soon, used to determine what you can, and cannot, do.

In addition, facial recognition technology is vastly expanding the capacity of the surveillance state, and those corporations and entities that work with it, to identify and track you. And it is doing this already in the most obvious places such as on the street and in shopping centres. See, for example, ‘Microsoft partners with banks to introduce facial recognition: More invasive technology’.

Sometimes, an apparently desirable application is used as a trojan horse to have it introduced even more widely. See ‘Australian clubs call for facial recognition tech to watch drinkers and gamblers: More privacy invasion’.

Beyond that, of course, existing technologies already enable many aspects of your unique identity to be imitated precisely. Think you voice is unique? Not once they clone it so they can present some technological imitation as your voice. See ‘Voice Cloning for Content Creators’.

And you are no doubt well aware of simple ways that photos of you can be replicated. Or altered by ‘photoshopping’, to put you in an entirely different context or location.

Does this matter?

This has all been done, fundamentally, so that one day soon now you can be locked in the technological prison that is being created around you. This technological prison, being promoted under the guise of ‘smart cities’, is being built around you as cities are converted to ‘smart’ by installing 5G and the other technologies necessary for comprehensive surveillance and control. But the Saudis are building a ‘smart city’ in the desert too. You can watch their promotional video here: Neom.

Despite the positive spin endlessly put on these projects by governments and corporations – see ‘Smart cities: The cities of the future’ – the fundamental outcome is that you will require a digital ID to do those particular things that the elite has decided you will be allowed to do. And you won’t be able to do anything else. This is usually called ‘slavery’ except that, in this new technological world, virtually all of the slaves will be transhuman with no independent will of their own.

How has this happened?

In a report published by the World Economic Forum in 2016, the authors wrote ‘Consistent with the World Economic Forum’s mission of applying a multi‐stakeholder approach to address issues of global impact, the creation of this report involved extensive outreach and dialogue with the financial services community, innovation community, technology community, academia and the public sector…. The mandate of this project was to explore digital identity and understand the role that Financial Institutions should play in building a global standard for digital identity. Identity is a critical topic in Financial Services today. Current identity systems are limiting Fintech innovation (as) well as secure and efficient service delivery in Financial Services and society more broadly. Digital identity is widely recognized as the next step in identity systems. However, while many efforts are underway to solve parts of the identity challenge and create true digital identity, there is a need for a concerted and coordinated effort to build a truly transformational digital identity system.’

See ‘A Blueprint for Digital Identity: The Role of Financial Institutions in Building Digital Identity’.

Screenshot from WEF

By 2018, another report by the World Economic Forum was proclaiming ‘Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital. This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us.’

See ‘Identity in a Digital World: A new chapter in the social contract’.

But one primary motivation for their interest in digital identity was reported in a World Economic Forum article in August 2022. Citing research conducted by the consultancy Cebr – see ‘The digital trust index’ – the World Economic Forum noted that ‘our global digital economy can unleash trillions of dollars of opportunities. But if we don’t know for certain who we are interacting with online, we cannot have trust. Digital identity must therefore be the foundational element to our digital economy….’ Moreover, according to the WEF: ‘Consumers also told us they would trust banks and financial services firms the most to create and maintain an identity system.’

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

July 4 Is The Anti-Abe Lincoln Holiday, A Perfect Time For Purebloods To Stand Tall

Posted by M. C. on July 2, 2022

By Allan Stevo

If you thought the case fatality rate of 1-in-1000 from Covaids was bad, you should have seen what the case fatality rate of having Abraham Lincoln as a President was like. 

About 3% of Americans died in the 4-year period from 1861 to 1865. 

They weren’t just any Americans who died. It was often the most capable members of society — young and male. 

They died because 1.) Washington DC could not play nice, 2.) Washington DC was very arrogant, 3.) Washington DC refused to allow states to dissolve a dissolvable compact. 

Sound familiar ? 

Abraham Lincoln Was The Antithesis of July 4

Monday, July 4, some bozo will inevitably put on an Abraham Lincoln costume. 

In fact, approximately 10,000 bozos will do that across the country. 

In a bozo’s head, it is all one patriotic brou-ha-ha: Constitution, July 4, the Air Force, and hot dogs. And who can blame him because that is what the schools teach, but truthfully, Abraham Lincoln was not George Washington 2.0; he was King George 2.0. 

Lincoln was holding the central government intact, rather than letting the thing devolve into its appropriate component parts. He was a centralizer, not a decentralizer. He held people captive by force rather than letting them make choices through their state governments. He was more of the spirit of 1787, rather than the spirit of 1776 — a lot more about the controlling and centralizing spirit of the US Constitution than the freeing and decentralizing spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which is commemorated on July 4th. 

But What About Fighting Slavery — That Is Freedom

And was slavery the central issue that motivated the war? No. That might make for a pretty romantic story, though. Surely that topic played a role for some, but fifteen percent of American fighting age men did not perish in the first half of the 1860s for the purpose of squabbling over slavery. There were lots of prickly issues — taxes among them, which makes for a lot less sexy of a story. Unfair legislation was a big issue — boring. Agricultural versus mercantile interest was a repeated theme — YAWN-fest!!! 

Some even considered it to be a Second American Revolution, more local autonomy from a far-off, out-of-touch, practically foreign, and corrupt central government.

You can imagine how even the most well-intentioned school teachers, historians, authors, and film-makers, trying to convince future generations to care about the Civil War from the victorious Union perspective, might make it about slavery to simplify the issue and make it more appealing. Within twenty years, that was taking place. 

It was hard to convince someone born in 1866 why he should give two hoots about some old dead guy with a squeaky voice named Abe Lincoln, or why he should care about a war he never had a thing to do with. 

The World War Two Narrative Contains Similar Lies 

World War Two, we are told, was about saving the Jews. In reality, there might have been more decision-makers in Washington DC in the 1940s than in Berlin who were happy to see the Jews go bye-bye. 

Literally. 

Literally. 

Do you get that? 

Being Jewish was not pop culturally cool in 1940 the way it is in 2022. 

That part of the story somehow got appended way later. And truthfully, it is an easy to dramatize part of the story. The salvation of the Jewish people was not at the top of the casus belli for Americans in the 1940s. 

Two Fun Source Texts For Your Fourth of July Enjoyment 

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Slavery

Posted by M. C. on June 29, 2022

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/slavery

Definition of slavery

noun

the condition of being enslaved, held, or owned as human chattel or property; bondage.

a practice or institution that treats or recognizes some human beings as the legal property of others.

The average taxPAYER has 1~3 months of hard earned wages confiscated by the master before even having a chance to touch it.

Sounds rather like slavery.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

On Slavery @ 9:30 to 11:00

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2022

~You can’t say slavery is wrong unless you also believe in individual sovereignty and individual intrinsic value~. Marxist/progressive rants on slavery can’t make sense other than to score political points.

This episode was recorded on April 4, 2022. I discussed gratitude, faith, and suffering in this conversation at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. How can we be sure that pain is a solid guiding principle as we navigate the world? What is the underlying structure of pain, and what does it point at? We also touched on a myriad of topics around those central themes, such as sin and the symbol of the snake, giving advice, resurrection, the relationship between faith and suffering, evil, the effect we have on others, and sunsets.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Problem With Tearing Down Statues…

Posted by M. C. on May 3, 2022

In this episode, Douglas Murray and I discuss the current assault on the West, slavery, gratitude, racist mathematics, whiteness, (non-Western) accomplishments, and individual sovereignty. Douglas Murray is the associate editor of The Spectator and the bestselling author of seven books, including The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam; The Madness of Crowds, and The War on the West.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Watch “Facts About SLAVERY They Don’t Teach You at School” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on February 8, 2022

This is an excerpt from ‘Intellectuals and Race’ — https://amzn.to/3rknNP4

https://youtu.be/3_3wyRaCD34

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Slightly Up From Slavery – Doug Casey’s International Man

Posted by M. C. on November 26, 2021

The US government will prove no more able to deal with a rapidly evolving economy than was the Soviet government. More and more Americans will see the government as meaningless and irrelevant, as serving no useful purpose.

https://internationalman.com/articles/slightly-up-from-slavery/

by Doug Casey

slavery

To eliminate misunderstanding as to what taxes are, it is helpful to define the word “theft.” One good definition is “the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another.” The definition does not go on to say, “unless you’re the government.”

There is no difference, in principle, between the State taking property and a street gang doing so, except that the State’s theft is “legal” and its agents are immune from prosecution. Many people do not accept that analogy, because the government is widely viewed as being of, for, and by the people, even though it’s also acknowledged as acting badly from time to time.

Suppose a mugger demanded your wallet, perhaps because he needed money to buy a new car and threatened you with violence if you weren’t forthcoming. Everyone would call that a criminal act. Suppose, however, the mugger said he wanted the money to buy himself food. Would it still be theft? Suppose now that he said he wanted your wallet to feed another hungry person, not himself. Would it still be theft?

Now let’s suppose that this mugger convinces most of his friends that it’s okay for him to relieve you of your wallet. Would it still be theft? What if he convinces a majority of citizens? Principles stand on their own. Even if a criminal act is committed for a good purpose, or with the complicity of bystanders, (even if those people call themselves the government), it is still an act of criminal aggression.

It is important to establish an ethical viewpoint on the matter, even if it doesn’t change your reaction to the mugger’s (or the State’s) demands. Just as it’s usually unwise to resist a mugger, it’s usually unwise to resist the government, which has a lot of force on its side.

That’s not to say it’s easy to swim against the tide. Every year at tax time promoters of big government haul out an assortment of nostrums to sedate the lambs as they are shorn. One of the worst is “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization,” a statement of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is a splendid example of how, if a lie is big enough and is repeated often enough, it can come to be accepted.

Actually, the truth is almost exactly the opposite. As Mark Skousen, economist and author, has pointed out: “Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state is a complete failure of civilization, while a totally voluntary society is its ultimate success.”

Taxes are destroyers of civilization and society. They impoverish the average man. They support welfare programs that anchor the lower classes at the bottom of society. They underwrite a gigantic bureaucracy that serves only to raise costs and quash incentive. They pay for public works programs (once called “pork barrel projects,” but now rechristened “infrastructure investment”) that are usually ten times more costly than their privately financed counterparts, whether needed or not. They maintain programs that cause huge distortions in the economy (such as deposit insurance for banks). And they foster a climate of fear and dishonesty. The list of evils goes on. But the simple truth is that anything needed or wanted by society would be provided by profit-seeking entrepreneurs, if only the tax collector would retire.

Protesting against taxes because they’re a costly or inefficient way of providing services, however, is in good measure futile. It’s like saying that the mugger shouldn’t rob you because there might be a better way for him to get what he wants.

How serious is the tax problem in the long run? I believe it will become less, not more serious, despite the government’s increasingly high tax rates and draconian enforcement measures. The major long-term trend of society is toward decentralization and smaller-scale organizations. The US government will prove no more able to deal with a rapidly evolving economy than was the Soviet government. More and more Americans will see the government as meaningless and irrelevant, as serving no useful purpose.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare…

How will you protect yourself in the event of an economic crisis?

New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released a guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download the PDF now.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Equality in Slavery

Posted by M. C. on August 10, 2021

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/august/09/equality-in-slavery/

Written by Ron Paul Monday August 9, 2021
undefined

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved last month a National Defense Authorization Act that includes a requirement that women register with Selective Service on their 18th birthday. If the bill becomes law with this provision included and a military draft is reinstated, women will be forced to join the military, and America will have equality in slavery.

Proponents of drafting women argue that since women can now serve in combat it makes sense to make the draft “gender neutral.”

Some conservatives have made moral arguments against drafting women, saying that women should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to serve in the military. It is certainly true that it is immoral to force women into military service, but that is because it is wrong to force anyone into military service.

Forcing young people, regardless of their sex, to fight, kill, and even die in war is the worst violation of individual liberty a government can commit. Those who support the military draft implicitly reject the Declaration of Independence. How can someone support forced military service and still claim to believe all individuals are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

While commonly thought of as a “left-wing” position, opposition to the draft has historically united Americans across the political spectrum. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater both opposed the draft while running for president. Russell Kirk, the scholar who helped popularize the term “conservative,” opposed conscription.

Some progressives oppose a military draft but support other forms of mandatory national service. These progressives fail to understand that forcing someone to serve the welfare state is just as immoral as forcing someone to serve the warfare state.

Some conservatives join progressives in supporting mandatory national service. These conservatives claim that mandatory national service provides young people a way to “pay back” the debt they owe society. But these are moral obligations owed to families, churches, and communities, not legal obligations owed to, and properly enforceable by, the government.

Libertarians are consistent opponents of all forms of mandatory service. This is because libertarians apply the prohibitions against violence, theft, and fraud to governments as well as private citizens. So, if it is wrong for your neighbors to force your children to mow the neighbors’ lawn, it is wrong for government to force your children to serve in the military or perform any other type of “national service.”

The nonaggression principle is why libertarians oppose taxation, nationalized healthcare and education, and military crusades in the name of “democracy” or “human rights.” It is also why libertarians oppose laws telling people how to raise their children, limiting access to “extremist” websites, telling business owners who can and cannot use what bathrooms on their property, or prohibiting someone from gambling online, smoking marijuana, or drinking raw milk.

Some libertarians urge their liberty movement compatriots to not talk about the nonaggression principle. These “pragmatists” think the focus should be on making the “practical” case for liberty. But those who embrace liberty because it “works” better than statism will make “exceptions” if they think an authoritarian idea like mandatory national service is a more practical way of achieving their political, economic, or social goals. Only those committed to the moral case for liberty can be counted on to defend all liberty at all times.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries