[SolarCross]

"Class" maybe, for those with a fetish for categorising, pretty much anything can be split up into classes so indeed why not earning ability? However "system" implies some design which I don't see as being relevant to commerce. Academia yes, that is a class system, the military yes that is a class system, because both are class systems by design. Commerce however is too big, too variable, too massively multi-polar, too anarchistic to be a class system by design... the world of commerce has more in common with an eco-"system" than the stuffy and rigid artificial constructs of academia or the military. Ironically enough if you were to get all of human economic activity booted under one global totalitarian communist thing then the world of commerce would then acquire an actual class system where before it had not, is that not so?

Class is relevant to capitalism even though you may not see its relevance.

While the market is an organic system that is too complex to be considered a class system, society is not the market or commerce. And society is not so complex as to have no class system. People who own businesses that employ a lot of other people are almost certainly not going to be the same class as the people who are employed by this individual.

It isn't very relevant. Why does it even matter? Why do we all have to be in the same class? I don't get the importance of this to you. I do think I get why you single out commerce for criticism but wilfully ignore the far more rigid class systems of academics, military types and it may also be said priests but I think I will save that for another time.

Well alright you acknowledge the market has no class system, that is progress of a sort, but then say society does.. Well you can argue that, class systems are intellectual constructs for describing things sometimes imaginary things and descriptions are really malleable so yeah you can take an imaginary thing cut up its imaginary elements and place them in little separate boxes in your mind and say see there is a class system. You can do that. I can do that too. I can divide up society into famous people and unfamous people, or happy people and sad people, music lovers and the tone deaf, ugly people and pretty people, fit people and slobs, bright people and stupid people, sane people and socialists, people I like and people i don't like... on and on.. we can play these games.. so what? Oh dear I created in my mind a class of ugly people and a class of beautiful people and that is just so unfair!!! We need to take action, and give all the ugly people cosmetic surgery and mangle the faces of the pretty people until everyone is the same. But really why bother?

You can classify the shop keeper in one class and the store assistant he pays to help him in another.. you can do that.. but would they do that? I don't think they do or even if they do they don't see anything wrong in the arrangement or that it is somehow set in stone or the consequence of some dark conspiracy. Why don't we inject a little reality into our abstract classifying?

Mr Patel arrived in the UK some twenty years ago as a fresh faced young man with a wad of cash that his whole extended family back in Pakistan saved up and entrusted to him to start a business in the UK. Twenty years on he owns and runs a convenience store and he is doing all right. He has married and had children and they helped him out with his shop but now his wife is not so interested and wants to take things easy at home and his children are almost grown up and leaving the nest to pursue their own enterprises and whatever else. He decides to hire someone to help out. In the end a young lad from the neighbourhood gets the job. The young lad is a native English as it happens, he doesn't really know what he wants to do but he does know that he wants paying work.

How do we classify them? Foreigner and native? Young and mature? Capitalist and worker? Brown and white? Jazz fan and bangra fan? Family man and single? Focused and unfocused? Does it matter? Does it matter to them? If it doesn't matter to them why does it matter to you? Why should they conform to your dictates? Are you pointing a gun at them or just pointlessly blathering on the internetz?

You seem to have ignored my point that the opportuniy to become a neurosurgeom requires someone willing to pay for medical school. A manual labourer will almost certainly not be able to pay for his child to become one.

Thus, to get these opportunities for well paying jobs, it almost certainly requires well to do parents.

That depends on the market rate for manual labour, though generally that isn't as much compared with more skilled work, okay probably not enough for med school. Does the child even want to go to med school? Does he have the ability to make that expense worth it? Assuming he had both the ability and the desire then that might be something to fret over. What should he do? He could try for a loan, he could try for a gift like a scholarship or bursary, he could just pick an easier career path that didn't require such enormously time consuming and expensive training, something like commerce.. I don't know why but seriously my heart is not bleeding for this. Remind me again why I should care?

You brought up inheritance with an implication that there is something wrong with it. You did that.. So yeah that is your feelings motivating you to do that.

I brought up inheritance as a way for the upper classes to maintain their economic leverage. You brought up my supposed feelings. I would rather you stopped incorrectly guessing my feelings and addressed my point.

Is that why you believe parents make gifts to their children? To maintain their economic leverage whatever that is? Has it not ever occurred to you that parents are biologically and quite properly pre-disposed to helping their children? You know out of love for them? So we must abolish love? Meh I'll pass thanks, I'd much rather Bill Gates' ungrateful brats have their easy money than live in your nasty little world where parents have to hate their children and dump them on a bunch of crapped out crazy socialist bureaucrats to mentally mutilate. Your feelings are on topic, because it is only because of your feelings that this very good, natural and necessary tendency for parents to help their children is being painted by you as something dark and conspiratorial. I am just as aware that people help their children (in general there are always exceptions, I guess to avoid hypocrisy you don't help yours) but it doesn't annoy me, I am glad that people do that, I do that for my son and fuck you for saying I shouldn't!

No it is just something people do, have always done and always will do and really they should do. You will have more luck curing people of a liking for alcohol as you will of stopping people helping their children, it is practically biological.

Bill Gates' children may well be born millionaires or even billionaires but in all probability they will finish their life poorer than they started it. Same goes for the children of other top earners like the author J. K. Rowling. Her grandchildren will probably also be poorer than their parents. The estate left behind by super earners like Bill Gates or J. K. Rowling may be so epically huge that it takes many generations of bungling and fecklessness to completely fritter away but it will happen all the same, entropy spares none.

Probably not. This goes against the findings of people who study social mobility. Gates' kids may not be intelligent money makers, but they do not need to be. They can hire someone to do that for them.

But as long as we agree that inheritance is one of the ways that class systems perpetuate themselves, the rest is a tangent,.

If these unnamed and uncited people that "study social mobility" are anything like you then I wouldn't trust them an inch with anything. All things wax and wane, and inheritances tend be split between siblings, then split with their spouses then split again with their children. Even if those estates are smartly managed from one generation to the next still they dissipate. The Rothschilde famously tried very hard to contain this natural tendency to dissipation to the point where they had a family rule that a Rothschilde could only marry their own first cousins.. lol, it didn't work, well the Rothschilde are still a fabulously wealthy family but their fortunes now are allegedly a tiny fraction of what it was in their golden age back in the 19th century. What will it be in another hundred years? Or a thousand? Or a million years? Random thought! The Rothschilde are jewish, would you expropriate them if you could? Isn't expropriating jews anti-semitism?! OMG you are a nazi!

Yes Pinochet was good. The only fault I can find in him is that he didn't kill enough socialists.

So when you talk about freedom and choice, you do not actually mean it. Good to know.

I do! I fully support Augusto Pinochet's freedom and choice to shoot socialists. I can only hope I have the freedom to make this choice too someday.

No, I support people making their own choices and living with the consequences.

No, you do not. If you did not, you would not support authoritarian military dictatorships imposed by foreign gov'ts against the will of the people. You seem to be using this word "choice" as a slogan, rather than as part of a logically consistent or moral position.

No I want to choose my destiny and I wish that for all those that I care about too but I would get more of that under a "authoritarian military dictatorship" like Pinochet's regime than I would under Allende's moronic mob of dupes and monkeys.

My government probably does make some people poor, anyone caught and convicted by them for committing a crime, such as theft, rape, murder or trading in narcotics will very likely go to prison and take a massive hit to their earning ability and future prospects... that happens... is it something that shouldn't happen? I don't know, honestly. What do you think?

In every capitalist country, there are poor who have not committed crimes.

Yes but even the poor of a "capitalist" country are objectively richer than the "rich" of a socialist country.. So what is your excuse for that? But you said "capitalist" governments make people poor, but did not a thing to justify that or explain how they allegedly do that. Seriously fuck off. The existence of "poor" people hardly proves the government is up to some kind of dastardly conspiracy to make them poor. Why do you tell this lie? They do make people poorer through tax but they also use those resources to do stuff for people. If they did that inefficiently then that might make people poorer but that hardly suggests the intention to make people poor. Also in your eyes it is apparent that rich = evil and poor = good, so if it were the case that government was making people poor you should love them for turning "evil" people into "good" people .

Well maybe you should straighten me out on that?

I suggest you read my posts and answer my actual points instead of assuming I am a college kid who worships Marx and has never read him.

Oh I do read your posts they are hilariously dishonest, stupid and hypocritical. You do talk exactly like some silly college kid, what else shall I read in you?

[Pants-of-dog]

It isn't very relevant. Why does it even matter? Why do we all have to be in the same class? I don't get the importance of this to you. I do think I get why you single out commerce for criticism but wilfully ignore the far more rigid class systems of academics, military types and it may also be said priests but I think I will save that for another time.

Again, you are focusing on my emotions instead of my argument.

Well alright you acknowledge the market has no class system, that is progress of a sort, but then say society does.. Well you can argue that, class systems are intellectual constructs for describing things sometimes imaginary things and descriptions are really malleable so yeah you can take an imaginary thing cut up its imaginary elements and place them in little separate boxes in your mind and say see there is a class system. You can do that. I can do that too. I can divide up society into famous people and unfamous people, or happy people and sad people, music lovers and the tone deaf, ugly people and pretty people, fit people and slobs, bright people and stupid people, sane people and socialists, people I like and people i don't like... on and on.. we can play these games.. so what? Oh dear I created in my mind a class of ugly people and a class of beautiful people and that is just so unfair!!! We need to take action, and give all the ugly people cosmetic surgery and mangle the faces of the pretty people until everyone is the same. But really why bother?

Class does not exist as a taxonomic system. It is a real thing that defines how many opportunities we have in life, our income, our power in society, our ability to effect real change to our society, and our ability to access the resources we need.

You can classify the shop keeper in one class and the store assistant he pays to help him in another.. you can do that.. but would they do that? I don't think they do or even if they do they don't see anything wrong in the arrangement or that it is somehow set in stone or the consequence of some dark conspiracy. Why don't we inject a little reality into our abstract classifying?

Again, you are focusing on people's feelings about the class system, instead of addressing my argument.

Mr Patel arrived in the UK some twenty years ago as a fresh faced young man with a wad of cash that his whole extended family back in Pakistan saved up and entrusted to him to start a business in the UK. Twenty years on he owns and runs a convenience store and he is doing all right. He has married and had children and they helped him out with his shop but now his wife is not so interested and wants to take things easy at home and his children are almost grown up and leaving the nest to pursue their own enterprises and whatever else. He decides to hire someone to help out. In the end a young lad from the neighbourhood gets the job. The young lad is a native English as it happens, he doesn't really know what he wants to do but he does know that he wants paying work.

How do we classify them? Foreigner and native? Young and mature? Capitalist and worker? Brown and white? Jazz fan and bangra fan? Family man and single? Focused and unfocused? Does it matter? Does it matter to them? If it doesn't matter to them why does it matter to you? Why should they conform to your dictates? Are you pointing a gun at them or just pointlessly blathering on the internetz?

The social dynamics of a small business worker are qualitatively different from large business owners such as factories. I pointed this out earlier.

That depends on the market rate for manual labour, though generally that isn't as much compared with more skilled work, okay probably not enough for med school. Does the child even want to go to med school? Does he have the ability to make that expense worth it? Assuming he had both the ability and the desire then that might be something to fret over. What should he do? He could try for a loan, he could try for a gift like a scholarship or bursary, he could just pick an easier career path that didn't require such enormously time consuming and expensive training, something like commerce.. I don't know why but seriously my heart is not bleeding for this. Remind me again why I should care?

I am also not concerned with your feelings about this. I do not expect you to care.

Is that why you believe parents make gifts to their children? To maintain their economic leverage whatever that is? Has it not ever occurred to you that parents are biologically and quite properly pre-disposed to helping their children? You know out of love for them? So we must abolish love? Meh I'll pass thanks, I'd much rather Bill Gates' ungrateful brats have their easy money than live in your nasty little world where parents have to hate their children and dump them on a bunch of crapped out crazy socialist bureaucrats to mentally mutilate. Your feelings are on topic, because it is only because of your feelings that this very good, natural and necessary tendency for parents to help their children is being painted by you as something dark and conspiratorial. I am just as aware that people help their children (in general there are always exceptions, I guess to avoid hypocrisy you don't help yours) but it doesn't annoy me, I am glad that people do that, I do that for my son and fuck you for saying I shouldn't!

And now we are discussing the feelings of parents. These are also not relevant.

Plus, you are accusing me of holding positions I do not support.

If these unnamed and uncited people that "study social mobility" are anything like you then I wouldn't trust them an inch with anything. All things wax and wane, and inheritances tend be split between siblings, then split with their spouses then split again with their children. Even if those estates are smartly managed from one generation to the next still they dissipate. The Rothschilde famously tried very hard to contain this natural tendency to dissipation to the point where they had a family rule that a Rothschilde could only marry their own first cousins.. lol, it didn't work, well the Rothschilde are still a fabulously wealthy family but their fortunes now are allegedly a tiny fraction of what it was in their golden age back in the 19th century. What will it be in another hundred years? Or a thousand? Or a million years? Random thought! The Rothschilde are jewish, would you expropriate them if you could? Isn't expropriating jews anti-semitism?! OMG you are a nazi!

Nothing here contradicts my claim.

I do! I fully support Augusto Pinochet's freedom and choice to shoot socialists. I can only hope I have the freedom to make this choice too someday.

No I want to choose my destiny and I wish that for all those that I care about too but I would get more of that under a "authoritarian military dictatorship" like Pinochet's regime than I would under Allende's moronic mob of dupes and monkeys.

Your confusion is not an argument. Also, the fact that you support military dictators pretty much contradicts any claims of yours that you support freedom or choice.

Yes but even the poor of a "capitalist" country are objectively richer than the "rich" of a socialist country.. So what is your excuse for that? But you said "capitalist" governments make people poor, but did not a thing to justify that or explain how they allegedly do that. Seriously fuck off. The existence of "poor" people hardly proves the government is up to some kind of dastardly conspiracy to make them poor. Why do you tell this lie? They do make people poorer through tax but they also use those resources to do stuff for people. If they did that inefficiently then that might make people poorer but that hardly suggests the intention to make people poor. Also in your eyes it is apparent that rich = evil and poor = good, so if it were the case that government was making people poor you should love them for turning "evil" people into "good" people .

Swearing at people like you did here is a rule two violation.

Capitalism makes people poor by pinning their wages to the market, instead of providing a decent wage and services to alleviate poverty.

Oh I do read your posts they are hilariously dishonest, stupid and hypocritical. You do talk exactly like some silly college kid, what else shall I read in you?

You are free to not reply to my posts.

[Truth To Power]

Class does not exist as a taxonomic system. It is a real thing that defines how many opportunities we have in life, our income, our power in society, our ability to effect real change to our society, and our ability to access the resources we need.

And it's largely determined by your parents' class. So, you are talking about intelligence.

The social dynamics of a small business worker are qualitatively different from large business owners such as factories. I pointed this out earlier.

True: the factory owner has greater responsibility, is taking more risks, has to be more intelligent, informed, industrious, and productive to succeed, etc. Is that what you mean by "class"?

Also, the fact that you support military dictators pretty much contradicts any claims of yours that you support freedom or choice.

Have to agree. Much as I am sure the world would be a better place with fewer socialists, if SC is serious about wanting to shoot them, that to me indicates a pathological mental condition.

Capitalism makes people poor by pinning their wages to the market, instead of providing a decent wage and services to alleviate poverty.

See? You don't have a clue about how capitalism works, and that is why you are wrong about how socialism works. Capitalism doesn't make people poor by pinning their wages to the market, but by depriving them of their rights without just compensation. The poor in capitalist countries are not poor because their wages are too low, but because out of those wages, they must first pay landowners for permission to earn wages in the first place, and must then pay the taxes that fund the government services and infrastructure that the poor must then pay landowners for access to. A just -- i.e., geoist -- society would ensure everyone equal, free, secure access to opportunity to earn wages, and relieve them of the burden of taxation on those wages by recovering publicly created land value to fund desired services and infrastructure instead of giving it away to landowners in return for nothing.

You are free to not reply to my posts.

I see you are taking advantage of that freedom...

[Pants-of-dog]

TTP,

Please see my last post to you. Thank you.

[SolarCross]

Have to agree. Much as I am sure the world would be a better place with fewer socialists, if SC is serious about wanting to shoot them, that to me indicates a pathological mental condition.

I have a lot of respect for you TtP, but the one with the mental condition here is you.. don't worry it is mostly a benign condition. This mental condition is "civility", it is the product of 8000 years of having warlords, kings and cops tell you that they will take care of your enemies and punish you for doing what comes natural with regard to those enemies without their licence. Thus you have to fight your own natural instincts for self-preservation and trust that a remote other (the warlord and his henchmen) will do it for you.

Eventually this civility becomes "second nature", note that is second not first nature, and you come to abhor violence and also become more or less incapable of it, just as man who spends his whole life in a lightless cave will come to abhor sunlight and be incapable of tolerating it.

If socialists are your enemy then they are a threat to you and it is most certainly adaptive to destroy threats. Of course for the civil person in the civil context you must leave that to your governors to do for you or if they licence you to do it for them, this I would do, but it sometimes happens that civility becomes so ingrained that some people, perhaps this is you, come to abhor even your own governors necessary violence for self-preservation even when it is deployed for your benefit. It is at this point that civility becomes maladaptive both for the individual afflicted and civil society that is his context.

I am a civil person and I enjoy the benefits of civility, but my instincts for self-preservation remain clean and true, I would not touch my enemies without licence from my governors but with that licence I would kill. In the context of my comment Augusto Pinochet was the governor and it was he that realised that socialists were a mortal threat to the country and quite rationally gave licence to select professionals to destroy that threat. If I were a Chilean citizen I'd have acted on that licence, I guess you would not. Perhaps you would even be so maladaptive as to oppose your own saviour's attempts to save you!

The freedoms which had been so hard won from colonial domination were being crushed by Soviet-inspired and funded military and political forces. Their clear intention was to deprive the people of their democratic freedoms. As history shows, this is what had happened in the Soviet Union and in Cuba, and continues to be the case in other parts of the world.
Augusto Pinochet - Statement (8 November 1998)

I have lived with my conscience and my own memories for over quarter of a century since the events of 1973.… These are not easy reflections for me. But I am at peace with myself, and with the Chilean people, about what happened. I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government.
Augusto Pinochet - Statement (8 November 1998)

[Pants-of-dog]

And now we are lauding the works of an embezzler who used his gov't position to make himself rich.

This is why right wing libertarians will never get anywhere.

[SolarCross]

And now we are lauding the works of an embezzler who used his gov't position to make himself rich.

This is why right wing libertarians will never get anywhere.

I'm not a right wing libertarian, I'm a pragmatist. Also I did not know he was accused of embezzlement, though in all honestly if that is the worse poop you can throw at him.. He cleaned Chile of soviet agents he should have his reward for that, shame if he had to do it with some irregularities but hey, he wasn't a king only a president.

[Pants-of-dog]

The fact that he tortured children in order to make himself rich is one of the many things he can be accused of. I guess you support torturing children if it supports capitalism?

I am aware of how little you know about the men you respect. For someone who claims to support freedom and honesty, you actually support a man who embodied oppression and thievery.

Lol at your Soviet agents claim. There is no way you will support that with evidence.

[Truth To Power]

I have a lot of respect for you TtP, but the one with the mental condition here is you.. don't worry it is mostly a benign condition. This mental condition is "civility", it is the product of 8000 years of having warlords, kings and cops tell you that they will take care of your enemies and punish you for doing what comes natural with regard to those enemies without their licence. Thus you have to fight your own natural instincts for self-preservation and trust that a remote other (the warlord and his henchmen) will do it for you.

Eventually this civility becomes "second nature", note that is second not first nature, and you come to abhor violence and also become more or less incapable of it, just as man who spends his whole life in a lightless cave will come to abhor sunlight and be incapable of tolerating it.

If socialists are your enemy then they are a threat to you and it is most certainly adaptive to destroy threats. Of course for the civil person in the civil context you must leave that to your governors to do for you or if they licence you to do it for them, this I would do, but it sometimes happens that civility becomes so ingrained that some people, perhaps this is you, come to abhor even your own governors necessary violence for self-preservation even when it is deployed for your benefit. It is at this point that civility becomes maladaptive both for the individual afflicted and civil society that is his context.

I am a civil person and I enjoy the benefits of civility, but my instincts for self-preservation remain clean and true, I would not touch my enemies without licence from my governors but with that licence I would kill. In the context of my comment Augusto Pinochet was the governor and it was he that realised that socialists were a mortal threat to the country and quite rationally gave licence to select professionals to destroy that threat. If I were a Chilean citizen I'd have acted on that licence, I guess you would not. Perhaps you would even be so maladaptive as to oppose your own saviour's attempts to save you!

You raise an interesting and complex issue (though I don't agree with your answer): under what circumstances is violent resistance to evil, resistance by deadly force, justified or rightful? Consider a slave. Let's say she is a house slave, who has routine access to the means to kill her owners -- kitchen utensils, blunt instruments, maybe even firearms. Should she kill them? Is it self-defense? Does it depend on how likely she is to get away with it? Does it depend on how she has been treated?

Though my rights have been violated, and are threatened, far more by landowners than socialists, I don't feel like I am justified in killing landowners in self-defense; though historically, landowners have often arranged for the abduction, torture, and even assassination of land reform activists like me. If you think it is justified for you to shoot socialists because you think they threaten your rights, is it also justified for me to shoot landowners who actually are violating my rights?

[SolarCross]

You raise an interesting and complex issue (though I don't agree with your answer): under what circumstances is violent resistance to evil, resistance by deadly force, justified or rightful? Consider a slave. Let's say she is a house slave, who has routine access to the means to kill her owners -- kitchen utensils, blunt instruments, maybe even firearms. Should she kill them? Is it self-defense? Does it depend on how likely she is to get away with it? Does it depend on how she has been treated?

I can only answer as a pragmatist. It is "rightful" if you win, "wrongful" if you lose, okay that is too simple but more or less how I see it. So your slave should first ask herself does she want to kill them? If yes then she should consider how likely she is to get away with it, if the governors have prohibited slavery then she has a good chance of getting away with it however if the governors haven't her chances are very much less. Whether she wants to do it or not also does very likely depend on how she has been treated but it also depends on how her personal disposition towards that treatment, a very proud person will feel vengeful over the slightest thing while a very meek person will tolerate a great deal of abuse without tipping over into vengeance. Alternative solutions should also be considered, running away is the obvious one. In the end though for the pragmatist it is right if you win and wrong if you lose.

Though my rights have been violated, and are threatened, far more by landowners than socialists, I don't feel like I am justified in killing landowners in self-defense; though historically, landowners have often arranged for the abduction, torture, and even assassination of land reform activists like me. If you think it is justified for you to shoot socialists because you think they threaten your rights, is it also justified for me to shoot landowners who actually are violating my rights?

I don't know how you see it that way so this is more difficult for me to comment on. Your rights are determined by the governors and governors almost universally say that land ownership is okay, they do it themselves after all... My governor Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II owns truly vast swathes of the planet in her capacity as head of state for some 15 or 16 different countries including a couple of really big ones Australia and Canada, no joking that is gargantuan amount of land, why would she make landownership unlawful, even though as sovereign she is literally above the law so it wouldn't apply to her anyway?

I want to shoot socialists and if I had licence to I would because I hate them, and do not want to be governed by them or their lying stupidity. I don't feel that way about land owners not in general. A specific land owner might annoy to the point of vengeance of course but not just from being a landowner. If you feel that bad about it then you will have to go rogue, because your governors will probably never back you up on that one. If you go rogue then you are your own governor and then whatever you do will be right and justified to yourself if no one else.

[Truth To Power]

It is "rightful" if you win, "wrongful" if you lose, okay that is too simple but more or less how I see it. ... In the end though for the pragmatist it is right if you win and wrong if you lose.

So, essentially, "There is no good or evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it." I.e., the Voldemort ethic. You are aware, aren't you, that Voldemort is not exactly the good guy?

I don't know how you see it that way

I see it that way because that is the way it is. My natural liberty to use what nature provided for all has been forcibly removed for the unearned benefit of landowners.

Your rights are determined by the governors

Nonsense. If that were the case, there would never have been any reason for anyone but slaves to oppose slavery. But normal people understand that rights do not come from government or laws, because government's job is to secure and reconcilepre-existing rights. To regard the millennia-long fight for human rights as nothing but a power struggle among competing self-interested factions is absurd.

and governors almost universally say that land ownership is okay, they do it themselves after all...

You can't account for governors that divest their land, power, etc.

My governor Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II owns truly vast swathes of the planet in her capacity as head of state for some 15 or 16 different countries including a couple of really big ones Australia and Canada, no joking that is gargantuan amount of land, why would she make landownership unlawful,

To avoid destruction of the society that serves her, as landowner privilege has done repeatedly throughout history.

even though as sovereign she is literally above the law so it wouldn't apply to her anyway?

She's not above the law, that was settled at Runnymede, and terminal reminders given to her ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries.

I don't feel that way about land owners not in general.

Most people didn't feel that way about slave owners, either.

[SolarCross]

So, essentially, "There is no good or evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it." I.e., the Voldemort ethic. You are aware, aren't you, that Voldemort is not exactly the good guy?

I like fiction as much as anyone but it isn't reality, it plays by different rules. I may be the only person on the planet that has not seen nor read any of the Harry Potter Chronicles so though I am vaguely aware that Voldemort is the name of a character in those stories I know nothing very much else about him, but I can guess a thing or two since apparently he is a "bad guy". He embodies values or characteristics that the author dislikes and so is cast as the bad guy, whilst another, presumably Harry Potter himself, embodies values or characteristics that the author likes and so is cast as the good guy. The author sets them up against each other and in the end she contrives for the designated bad guy to lose and the designated good guy to win, and so the author shows us that in the world she has created the values and characteristics that she likes are more powerful than the values she dislikes.... So even in fiction power is good, weakness is bad. It may also be noted that by far the most powerful character in an author's work is the author herself! She is the one that tells everyone what to say and do and contrives every event and circumstance and all must obey. Indeed it is the power of the author that determines the good and the evil.

In contrast to fiction in reality things are different for there is not one all powerful author that sorts the good from the bad by her own likes and dislikes. There are instead an infinite number of wilful agents trying to advance themselves by what means they may, from the humble bumble bee to the monstrous dinosaur. If you want to see the absolute absence of good and evil you should read history or watch a natural history programme rather than Harry Potter or Star Wars. Good and evil in the real world are subjective to an agent never objective to a higher super being. For the tiger catching, killing and eating an animal in the hunt is good because it is a thing he wants and needs, failing to catch that animal is bad as energy was expended but horrible starvation will be the pay off. For the animal it hunts the reverse is true being caught is fatally bad, escaping wonderfully good, because it wants to live and does not want to die.

I see it that way because that is the way it is. My natural liberty to use what nature provided for all has been forcibly removed for the unearned benefit of landowners.

You are claiming that as a right, but have not the power to make it so. You are claiming the landowner is offending your rights but have not the power to punish. You will need a loyal and mighty army to make it so, or it will not happen. If not your own army then you need to persuade the commander of an army to make it so, a governor. In the end it is all power.

Nonsense. If that were the case, there would never have been any reason for anyone but slaves to oppose slavery. But normal people understand that rights do not come from government or laws, because government's job is to secure and reconcilepre-existing rights. To regard the millennia-long fight for human rights as nothing but a power struggle among competing self-interested factions is absurd.

The fight for rights is indeed a power struggle among competing self-interested individuals and factions. As for non-slaves taking sides with slaves there are reasons for doing so because compassion and empathy are real and also it may be said other material interests can play their part. The Qin Dynasty of China abolished slavery as means of increasing tax revenues because unpaid workers don't pay tax, paid workers do! Rights come from and depend upon force / power and government if it is government, is the local power because it has police, mobs of supporters and / or soldiers. How was the legality of slavery settled in the US?

You can't account for governors that divest their land, power, etc.

I can, sometimes notional governors lack the power to defend themselves from more powerful supporters, sometimes they are trading something for something else they want more, sometimes they are just are feeling generous, sometimes they tire of some burden and want to be rid of it, sometimes it is part of some elaborate scheme to advance their interests in other ways, sometimes it is just folly. Being a governor does not exempt one from folly or error.

To avoid destruction of the society that serves her, as landowner privilege has done repeatedly throughout history.

Can you elaborate on that? How does the cause and effect play out? Also please provide actual historical instances as evidence.

She's not above the law, that was settled at Runnymede, and terminal reminders given to her ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries.

You should read history a little more carefully..

Magna Carta was forced on King John by rebelling barons, they rebelled because John was losing an number of conflicts with a rival king. He "agreed" to magna carta because the baron's military assets were superior to his own, neither the barons nor the king abided by any of the terms which eventually resulted in the First Baron's War..

As for the English Civil War... well what can I say, a timid king with a small army is undone and killed by a brute with a bigger army. That brute Oliver Cromwell murdered a king no less in broad daylight and got away with it! Why? Because he was ABOVE THE LAW, he was sovereign.. why was he sovereign? Because he won the war, his army was both loyal and victorious. Kings are not above the law because they have the nominal title of king, they are above the law because they have a loyal and victorious army. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is above the law because she has a loyal and victorious army, it is this that makes her sovereign.

The glorious revolution? Same deal, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with King James II apart from being scottish, but parliament didn't like him so they invited a dutchman William of Orange to land an army in England to chase him off. James II went to france in exile and William became king. Sovereignty passed from James to William because of a victorious army.

Incidentally ancestors of the current monarch of England (and many other places) first acquired the throne of England through King William so it was not her ancestors that received any "terminal reminders" in those centuries.

Most people didn't feel that way about slave owners, either.

And many did, Americans were among the very last people on earth to abolish slavery and don't know much about history so perhaps you wouldn't know. Slavery has been abolished over and over again all over the world since the dawn of time, though often coming back later. Land ownership has not had this perennial controversy.

[Drlee]

I have actually read this entire off-topic novella and it seems to me that the wheels come off here:

But normal people understand that rights do not come from government or laws, because government's job is to secure and reconcile pre-existing rights.

The cannot in any way follow pass either a philosophical or historical test. "Rights" have been created from whole cloth innumerable times in history. Women were given the right to inherit and own property where once the mere idea of it was unthinkable. Just one example. "Normal people" had a hand in the creation of this "right". I will not allow you to make statements like this then engage in the circular argument that the government was created to accomplish the task. That does not pass the historical test.

To regard the millennia-long fight for human rights as nothing but a power struggle among competing self-interested factions is absurd.

No its not. The morals that people adopt serve their perceived self-interest. These beliefs (certainly historically) most frequently serve a fundamental religious purpose. Even the atheist asserts that the origin of these beliefs either arose for the desire for an orderly society (and then were codified by religion) or the desire for the personal gain of powerful people.

Slavery is most often mentioned. Blinded by our modern belief systems we fail to understand that there was a time when it was thought to be the natural order of things. Slaves were the spoils of war. Or they were a useful class. In the US the movement against slavery was most often and strongest in the churches. The abolition of slavery by a religious person is not altruistic. It is a duty to one's religious belief. Being dutiful to one's religious belief bears a reward which (in the Judeo Christian tradition) is a heavenly reward. But what of the slaves themselves. Did they not assert their desire for freedom independent of abolitionist movements? Sure. But they lacked the power to accomplish their assertions. Then there is the caste system in India. It is unfair to believe that the lower castes did not accept their fate in the service of their religious beliefs. Maybe not so much now but certainly not long ago this was often true.

I see it that way because that is the way it is. My natural liberty to use what nature provided for all has been forcibly removed for the unearned benefit of landowners.

But clearly you have no such liberty. Not only that clearly no large group of people ever will have such a liberty. Just because I own my house and deny you the liberty to drink from my swimming pool does not mean that you have no right to property or water. It merely reflects useful conventions for managing the resources we do have. You are not prevented from buying the house next to mine. Circumstances may find you unable to buy the house and still prevented from drinking from my pool but you are not denied water. But then. Circumstances may find you unable to find water and forced to barter for it. That reflects the self-interest you just said was absurd. Nothing more.

In the end there is no "nature" from which to forcibly remove anything. Nature is not an entity. Nor do you have any "natural liberty" to do anything. You are born bartering as has been every child who ever lived. You lack the "natural" ability to anything else. You are a heard animal in essence. Even if you were the only human on the planet you would be very hard pressed not to be eaten and therefor denied your natural right to this property you so lust for. Of course you just be the natural prey of the tiger onto whose "property" you sadly wandered and which she controlled out of self interest and force. But absent her; in her place another predator would appear. None of that would alter in any way the fact that you were destined to be lunch.

[SueDeNîmes]

I have actually read this entire off-topic novella and it seems to me that the wheels come off here:

It went unreadable pages ago for me. When you see a derail, get out of the way to avoid a trainwreck

[Godstud]

My governor Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II owns truly vast swathes of the planet in her capacity as head of state for some 15 or 16 different countries including a couple of really big ones Australia and Canada, no joking that is gargantuan amount of land, why would she make landownership unlawful, even though as sovereign she is literally above the law so it wouldn't apply to her anyway?

The Queen is a symbol, and has certain powers that are granted to her by the Dominion of Canada. Were she to "lay claim" to "gargantuan mounts of land" tomorrow, you'd find she has as much power as you do to actually do that. She doesn't OWN fuck, and all.

The ignorance spouted by people who know absolutely nothing about such things, is staggering!
Don't talk about that which you don't know.

[SolarCross]

The Queen is a symbol, and has certain powers that are granted to her by the Dominion of Canada. Were she to "lay claim" to "gargantuan mounts of land" tomorrow, you'd find she has as much power as you do to actually do that. She doesn't OWN fuck, and all.

The ignorance spouted by people who know absolutely nothing about such things, is staggering!
Don't talk about that which you don't know.

Yeah you tell yourself that, she is a symbol of what who knows? So she can symbolically tell the respective governor general that she symbolically appointed to look after her symbolic interests in her symbolic dominions to symbolically sack the symbolic prime minister she symbolically employs to do PR work in the symbolic dominion should he not perform to her symbolic satisfaction. Hey it is all cool, if symbols make the plebs quiet.

[Pants-of-dog]

@SolarCross,

Please mention the last time the Queen of England "sacked" the Prime Minister of Canada. Thank you.

[SolarCross]

Please mention the last time the Queen of England "sacked" the Prime Minister of Canada. Thank you.

She hasn't done so yet as far as I am aware. Why is this relevant?

[Pants-of-dog]

Sorry, I thought you were claiming that the Queen actually had power in Canada.

Since you are not claiming that the Queen actually has power or owns land in Canada, please ignore my post.

[SolarCross]

Sorry, I thought you were claiming that the Queen actually had power in Canada.

Since you are not claiming that the Queen actually has power or owns land in Canada, please ignore my post.

I should ignore your post as it is just more of your usual dishonest stupidity.