Are we slaves to money?

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I think you are distorting thomas81's claim. He didn't claim that society can't be free unless everyone is allowed to do whatever the hell they want, including sitting in the basement playing video games all their life. That's your apparent interpretation. All he did was attack ruveyn's insistence that "you are still free to not work and starve" dismantles the concept of indirect coercion.

It's also helpful to acknowledge that the statement you so strongly objected to was a response to ruveyn's typical hard-core attack on positive liberty. Thomas81 could have tried to make his statement in a more nuanced way but what can you expect when the person he's addressing is ruveyn? Ruveyn's typical semi-flame-baiting style doesn't exactly inspire a patient or thoughtful response.


What the hell have I lied about?

I beg your pardon sir! I am the very model of logic and reason. Just because I insist on calling things by their Right Names and not wrapping my conclusions in soft furry paper is not a warrant to saying that I flame bait. My view are defensible by both fact and logic.

You are annoyed that I do not share one of your major premises, to wit, that we have positive obligations to others in a general or a priori way. I dissent. The only a priori duties we have to others is not to abuse their lives, persons or properties. My axiom is do as thou wilt, if it be not harmful or wrong. I suspect you do not approve of hard core libertarians.

The only people we are duty bound to help, nurture and protect are the children we bring into the world and then only before they are able to do for themselves.

ruveyn

You are a very confused person. You mistake your opinions for facts.

Some distortion of the interpretation occurred, and I was not aware of this until now. The context of ruveyn's comment was actually lost, resulting in thomas81's comment to be interpreted in a more extreme manner, which can be noted by the nature of my response and in all following responses.(Where I end up agreeing with you, but not agreeing with the interpretation of thomas81's comment)

It doesn't help that I probably lumped in thomas81 with people like the Venus project who actually DO argue for abolishing work. So, that's probably the source of conflict.


I don't tend to engage ruveyn very often for that reason, and often I ignore him, regardless of what he says. I don't think ruveyn explains the level of thoughtfulness too much either.

I usually will put in some effort in most things I say to make sure my response is thoughtful and nuanced though. It does annoy people occasionally.


Everything. Marshall, this last response of yours is the only one that shows any signs of being productive and sensible.

To be fair, I apologize for my misinterpretation and failure to recognize that I had made a misinterpretation. I'm upset/annoyed because it took too long to determine the source of the error. If you become aware of anything that can resolve problems like this quicker, then please keep that in mind. Note: I think your willingness to attribute motivational problems too quickly to the cause of arguments may have slowed down the process. I will also admit that while my arguments based upon the misinterpretation were correct, the misinterpretation itself was not correct.

Urgghh.

"I don't really understand where the hell you're coming from to proclaim that I'm the stubborn one when ..."

Simple, really. It became readily apparent that this "conversation" had degenerated into talking past one another, misinterpretation, cross-accusations of "quibbling", and motivation questioning a long time ago. Marshall probably "started it" (to use the parlance of elementary school kids) with an emotionally/morally charged and uncharitable or misinterpretation-based analysis of one of your statements (though I'm not going to solidly stand by that, given that I'm not going to read several pages of back & forth to get the exact context).

Marshall should probably end the conversation too, so I'm not going to absolve anyone from fault. Though it's somewhat clear that you continued writing angry posts after Marshall decided to tone back his more polemical jabs a bit, but Marshall later reasserted his polemical style so maybe he's "more at fault". I don't f*cking care.

You should care.


....

Okay. He might actually argue for things like abolishing work but I didn't really interpret his back-and-forth with ruveyn in that context. In any case it's pretty pointless for either of us to keep arguing when the root of the disagreement is over semantics and definitional framing of an issue rather than anything of real intellectual substance. Arguing over a preferred definition of freedom is as pointless as arguing over a preferred definition of theft. It's all linguistic framing which doesn't necessarily have any bearing on reality.


It's funny because ruveyn is thoughtful when discussing non-political topics but when he goes on PPR he mostly just comes to repeatedly bludgeon people over the head with his opinions.


Sorry for being an ass earlier in the thread. I was in a bad mood at the time and some of your responses to the far lefties here reminded me of the way another poster I had a bit of a personality clash with frequently talked down his nose at lefties without really backing up his criticisms with anything more than intellectual arrogance. I now realize it probably wasn't your intent to sound that way and thomas81 is one of the more extreme lefties on here that I don't always agree with so perhaps his rhetoric is as irritating to you as the rhetoric of the more extreme libertarians is to me. I'll admit to some bias there as I tend to be more sympathetic to complaints of the far left even if I don't necessarily agree with all their ideas or their proposed "solutions" to the world's ills.

Am I? There are laws requiring parents/guardians to care for a support their young charges.

There are no laws (in the U.S.) requiring us to dive in a save drowning persons.

Two facts which support my assertion.

We have no legal duty to help needy persons. We can ignore the starving and the injured. There are no laws in the U.S. punishing "depraved indifference".

I am aware of the social protocols that would socially censure people who are indifferent to the needy in an emergency. But such social protocols do not constitute legal duties, the kind that can be enforced with guns, chains and dungeons.

ruveyn

Eh.... some linguistic framings are better than others.

So, some linguistic framings are linguistic sleight of hand and distort more than enlighten, and others allow for a more sensible conversation based upon shared understanding. Is that latter point somewhat fair? I mean, it seems to me that when Christian apologists say "Have you lied? Well, because you have, you're a liar" this is actually sleight of hand, and it deserves to be called out.

But.... I don't really want to continue that discussion at the moment.


I've heard that as well.


You're talking about TM, right? I tend to see a lot of things he's said as really just being arbitrary elitism. He also used the "Well, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" argument more than any rational person could ever justify. Kind of like a classist apologetic. I've disliked things he's said as well.

Yeah... biases will exist. I'm probably a bit harder on the extremists of the left. It's not that I think a person is bad if they are on the left and have an extreme opinion, only that extremists are often crazy. I'd like to try to maintain good relations and mutual respect with anybody on this forum who shows genuine intelligence in their posts.(And I'm sure that theists will accuse many of my reactions to various apologists to be unfair, but I have acted how I have for good reasons.)

It's just water under the bridge, Marshall, as often I genuinely respect the intelligence of your comments. I'm sorry if I got too frustrated though, I just wasn't aware of where the problem was coming from, and I do put some degree of concern on intellectual fairness. Nobody fully succeeds, but I don't want to be the mindless apologist for a particular perspective.

I don't understand how/why this thread went from being about slaves to money to a full on religious/religion debate but I'll give my 0.02.

I personally consider money as a tool. Money/currency is a means to an end. Without money, you cannot really do much of anything. There is always bartering which is simply trading a skill or trade for something of equal value. People generally not slaves to Money, but to their obligations.

Consider this though, what are the alternatives? People who spend more they make are in my opinion making a wrong decision. I do not hate/discredit "rich" people. They worked for their success and I plan to do the same.

People can sometimes become a slave to their obligations not to money.


Best Regards,

Jake

Money is like fuel because it keeps our country running if you know what I mean. Without money, people be more lazy and no one be working or doing as good of a job or be trying to get fired if everyone had to work and everything was free. We all be poor and starve because no one would be delivering stuff to stores or food and there be a lack of doctors and all and no one be teaching. I just can't imagine life without money.

Nōn