Enjoy and spread the joy…

I think it is often overlooked how deeply the Cyberspace is rooted in the real world and how greatly it is influenced by (political) decisions made there. It is often at these Cyberspace/physical world borders where the actual fight for liberty is fought. Achieving a desirable fiction in Cyberspace often requires a detour through the physical world to make it a reality. For example, the end of the Bitcoin drama will most likely be determined by actors in the physical world and not by programmers in Cyberspace.

Let us not forget: Liberty in Cyberspace, as in the real world, requires eternal vigilance. And acting in the physical world.

Of course, this is all non-sense. The basic assumption behind the poorly chosen metaphor is arrogant to say the least. It implies that the employee has a poor sense of value, it is a poor (condescending) judgment passed on the employee, not the employer! They (the employees) are simply too dumb to know better. They are so dumb, that we (the person calling it wage-slavery) would prefer to tell them what they are worth since they can’t make a good opinion on their own. It does not value the employees enough as rational humans to respect their choices.

Another related point: the idea that someone should earn rights to the means of production which they employ, denies them the fundamental bargaining power of free employment! In other words, by accepting no right to the means of production, an employee is making a value judgment on that right. Perhaps they don’t want it in the first place? Should it be forced on them? Perhaps it comes with liabilities that they do not wish to take on? For sure, one liability would be the reduced wages which would accompany it in the first place!!! Surely we should allow them to choose greater compensation instead of owning the means of production? Not to mention that if they work for a publicly traded company, they can own the means of production also if they choose to. The fact the many people do not invest in their employer’s company when given the opportunity to, proves that some people surely do not want to invest in it. Again, how arrogant to assume that they do want to invest in it! No, this not about standing up for employees, this is about denying them the right to choose, the right to preferences.

This is false. You can chose to leave the country. By staying, you agree to the laws which include laws that pay for roads, bridges, military, etc. So it is *false* to say you have no other option: you have the option to live in another country.

To stay in the country and get the roads, bridges, monitoring of waterborn and other poisons,etc, and want to get all of that, and pay nothing, that’s where the real “parasite” label belongs. Not for folks who paid taxes last year but this year are broke and *deserve* to get welfare (since that’s what they paid taxes for last year, in part: as a safeguard in case they were ever unemployed). So don’t be a parasite who demands all the services of government while expecting not to pay a cent for it. If you think you can do it better, go to another country or a deserted island.

Second, what you claim the argument is, namely “Yeah, but if you loose your job, you will die of hunger. Since you do not own property and means of production you cannot start your own business. And without work you will starve. So, loosing your job means that you die, which is the same as being forced to work under the threat of being killed.” is only small part of the criticism. Fundamentally, it’s about the extremely totalitarian and anti-democratic nature of wage slavery.

In the 1840s young women, called “Factory girls” back then working in the mills in Lowell Mass. Noam Chomsky quotes form the labor press in those days:

“When you sell your product, you retain your person. But when you sell your labour, you sell yourself, losing the rights of free men and becoming vassals of mammoth establishments of a monied aristocracy that threatens annihilation to anyone who questions their right to enslave and oppress.

“THOSE WHO WORK IN THE MILLS OUGHT TO OWN THEM, not have the status of machines ruled by private despots who are entrenching monarchic principles on democratic soil as they drive downwards freedom and rights, civilization, health, morals and intellectuality in the new commercial feudalism.” (emphasis added)

This is American workers talking about their experiences in the 1840s”. And that one of the early leaders of the AFL, about a century ago, expressed the standard view when he described the mission of the labour movement as “to overcome the sins of the market and to defend democracy by extending it to control over industry by working people.” That is, you extend democracy from being merely in the political arena (it’s very limited and emaciated there, but that’s another story), to be also in the industrial/workplace arena — to extend democracy there too.

If you think about it, what we have in the workplaces, with bosses giving orders to employees, if you translated that into the political arena, what would it be the equivalent of? Of some kind of despotism, certainly not of political democracy…

Now the silly counter-argument is,”but it’s not fair to expect you to get full democratic voice when it was not you the workers, but the owners,who paid for the factor”..To see what the reply is to this silly criticism, ask yourself what your reply would be if someone said, “it’s not fair to eliminate slavery, after all, the slave-owner paid for the slave! so it’s not fair to have the slave owner pay for the slave and then take away this slave!” the obvious reply is, we advocate a system in which slavery doesn’t exist, and in that system no slave-owner would be paying for the slave,either (a third question is how do you transition away…in which case it’s ok to discuss possible compensation of the former slave owners, and also free the slaves..but that’s a question of how-to-transition, not giving any defense to slavery). Now the system one advocates is one in which private property is allowed for personal items, that you personally use, but that does not allow private ownership of mountains or the air we breathe or the ocean or our DNA (things that are still mostly not allowed but they are even trying to change this..) and ALSO doesn’t allow it for a factory..ownership and control would be by workers and communities in which they are located.

More at http://economicdemocracy.org/lowell.html

or for that matter, http://economicdemocracy.org/nc-enlightenment.html

2) The “state” is incapable of “consisting of people”. The Nation may consist of people. The Provisional Government may consist of people. But the “state” by definition Is a corporation. By definition, a Legal Fiction.

3) There is nothing to get rid of. Treat Your Nation as it should be treated, Kick the Provisional Government out of Your life, and quit dreaming of some ethereal “state”.

4) “The ancients had their idols. We have states.” Frederich Nietzsche