RE: FWD [forteana] Health Care: USA, Iraq & Canada

From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 19:08:12 MDT

  • Next message: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: "Re: Thinking the unthinkable: taboos and transhumanism"

    Robbie wrote:

    >
    > h) We need to enforce free-marketeer values FROM THE TOP DOWN and
    > BOTTOM UP.
    >
    > (I know, sounds vague and slogan-y. Here's the what I mean:)

    <snip>

    ### I wasn't really able to understand your proposal here.
    > -------------------

    >
    > 3) Rafal's question is a valid one, "Should he be prevented from
    > making an arbitrary exchange with consenting persons?" The answer is
    > yes - if you are exchanging human lives (perhaps any of the value
    > which results from human lives), you should be prevented from making
    > ARBITRARY exchanges of that kind. You should be prevented by those
    > morally responsible for that person's being - themselves, their
    > friends and family, etc.

    ### You seem to be using a taboo to reject a class of tradeoffs. You might
    want to read Tetlock's article we discussed in the "Taboos" thread recently.
    In effect you are arrogating to yourself the right to judge others, and to
    bend their will to your ideas of what is good for them.

    Not nice, IMO.

    ------------------------------------

    >
    > 4) Dialectical Ad Hominem for Rafal: On Nike's slavery commitments,
    > 20 seconds on google will get you all the information you need.
    > You've been informed, the responsibility is now yours. (first
    > reference: http://www.geocities.com/cslnews/ ). It did, after all,
    > make it to the supreme court. WHY do you think that major US
    > corporations ship their labor oversees if not to take advantage of
    > cheaper labor? Do you think that labor doesn't become inhumanely
    > cheap so as to be morally equivalent with slavery?

    ### Well, yes, this exactly what I deny - slavery is slavery, cheap labor is
    cheap labor. Nike is not a slave driver.

    ------------------------------

    >
    > Slavery is vague word like other words "fraud" or "peace" or "bald",
    > etc. The point is simply to recognize the underlying phenomena to
    > which it refers (people who work for less than $.01/day and can't go
    > work someplace better or who are psychologically and/or politically
    > dominated by their workplace so significantly that they can't leave.)
    > You can call THAT phenomena BAD or GOOD, that is our choice. You
    > appear to be calling it GOOD. I call it BAD. As for word choice,
    > "Slavery" is the closest single-word that I could think of that
    > simultaneously described the situation (lack of financial freedom
    > coupled with political/psychological domination transcending
    > generations), if you have a better word, I'm happy to use YOUR WORD
    > for THAT.
    >
    > BUT if you think that obfuscating this issue into an issue about the
    > meaning of words is going to CONVINCE THIS AUDIENCE, I sincerely hope
    > you're fooling yourself.

    ### The following characteristics are true of slavery as defined by the
    dictionary: All slaves are owned. All slaves are possessions. All slaves are
    property. All slaves serve. All service by a slave is servitude. Or, as
    described by Encarta, the definitive characteristics of slaves are as
    follows:
    Their labor or services are obtained through force;Their physical beings are
    regarded as the property of another person, their owner; and They are
    entirely subject to their owner's will.

    All other uses of the word in this context are empty rhetoric. You might not
    make much headway with this approach, at least not on this list. This is not
    alt.politics.socialism.

    Also, I would like to point out to you that, as is obvious to anybody who
    read my posts, I do not consider the condition of having to labor for 1 cent
    a day to be, as you wrote "GOOD". I stated (and you jeeringly commented on
    it) "Poverty is wrong". Please do not try to demonize me be ascribing to me
    a hatred and contempt for humanity.

    The adequate words to describe the plight of those who are paid little by
    global companies for their labor in e.g. Burma, are "poverty",
    "disenfranchisement", "state oppression", and "oligarchy". More global
    investment is the best cure for these ailments.

    Rafal



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