@wowaname @matrix @noelle This would be the case in a truly "voluntary society" that did not inhibit your choosing to leave it behind
Such a society would therefore have to keep the "societal deal" sweet enough for people to actually choose to engage with it, to not keep losing people to the wilderness
But our societies take every step to ensure that you have no choice but to rely on them for everything.
A great example: Here in Britain, in WW2, food was scarce. A popular book was published, called "They Can't Ration These!", all to do with hunting and gathering and rearing food that was "unrationable." Due to the conditions at the time, this meant essentially "off grid food"
Almost the entire content of the book is now illegal to actualyl perform.
Another book in the 1970s, called "Food for Free", had the same idea. This was at the peak of the "smallholding crazy" in Britain: the dream of having a little farmstead of your own and self sufficiency.
Most of the stuff in that book is now also illegal to perform.
The current go-to is a .pdf called "Green Wizardry". See how long that shit remains legal to perform.
The books are legal to HOLD - to ban them would be too obvious. But actually using the content of them for its intended purposes would now be criminal. Like a book on lockpicking. EXCEPT THIS IS ABOUT ACTUALLY FORAGING FOOD.
The USA is even worse, becuase it has more restrictions on what you can actually do on your own land than the UK does. Americans like to say they are "free" becuase they can arm themselves (within the confines of the law!!!!!!) but the truth is that they cannot even collect rainwater on their own property, and setting up alternative non-capitalist means of food distribution, such as agricultural co-operatives, is essentially illegal due to its violation of food supply control protocols. This is well chronicled in the book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal", written by a frustrated American farmer.
I will believe that work is not coercive, or forced, labour, when those who administrate the society that its currency belongs to (and revolves around) stop trying to inhibit me from choosing not to work.
As you rightly pointed out, Opal, our choices are not "work or independence from work on our own terms", they are "work or beg and starve."
This is coercion.
Such a society would therefore have to keep the "societal deal" sweet enough for people to actually choose to engage with it, to not keep losing people to the wilderness
But our societies take every step to ensure that you have no choice but to rely on them for everything.
A great example: Here in Britain, in WW2, food was scarce. A popular book was published, called "They Can't Ration These!", all to do with hunting and gathering and rearing food that was "unrationable." Due to the conditions at the time, this meant essentially "off grid food"
Almost the entire content of the book is now illegal to actualyl perform.
Another book in the 1970s, called "Food for Free", had the same idea. This was at the peak of the "smallholding crazy" in Britain: the dream of having a little farmstead of your own and self sufficiency.
Most of the stuff in that book is now also illegal to perform.
The current go-to is a .pdf called "Green Wizardry". See how long that shit remains legal to perform.
The books are legal to HOLD - to ban them would be too obvious. But actually using the content of them for its intended purposes would now be criminal. Like a book on lockpicking. EXCEPT THIS IS ABOUT ACTUALLY FORAGING FOOD.
The USA is even worse, becuase it has more restrictions on what you can actually do on your own land than the UK does. Americans like to say they are "free" becuase they can arm themselves (within the confines of the law!!!!!!) but the truth is that they cannot even collect rainwater on their own property, and setting up alternative non-capitalist means of food distribution, such as agricultural co-operatives, is essentially illegal due to its violation of food supply control protocols. This is well chronicled in the book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal", written by a frustrated American farmer.
I will believe that work is not coercive, or forced, labour, when those who administrate the society that its currency belongs to (and revolves around) stop trying to inhibit me from choosing not to work.
As you rightly pointed out, Opal, our choices are not "work or independence from work on our own terms", they are "work or beg and starve."
This is coercion.
@DetectiveHyde @matrix good points actually. but @noelle was explicitly talking about work vs handouts. youre talking about working for someone vs working for oneself
that said, guess my family members are criminals because a few of them collect rainwater lol
that said, guess my family members are criminals because a few of them collect rainwater lol
@wowaname @matrix @noelle Oh, fair enough, that's what I get for being a fucking goon and not reading the OP. Apologies.
And yeah, what was it @jack pointed out? That statistic? The average American citizen commits 4 felonies per day, something like that?
Law is designed to be (((discretional))), to put the citizen who is ignorant of it at the mercy of the enforcers who know the Book of the Law and can enforce selectively, turning blind-eye or watchful-eye as it suits them. Law-knowers and Law-makers are essentially our Priest class, who decide the criteria by which we are judged, change it all the time, and then say: "Ignorance is no defense!"
That's why every legal procedure also has a clause that ramps up the discretional element, normally something like : ".... according to the standards of a reasonable person" or "beyond reasonable doubt." Who decides what those words mean?
Rigid enough to allow itself to justify punishment ("It's the law, we have to follow it!"), flexible enough to put you at the mercy of the Judge. That is "Law." That is why sentences are not fixed, but "guidelines". If they were fixed, those of us dragged before Judges would shout: "FUCK YOU, I DID NOTHING WRONG" and flip the Court off, yes? But we don't, becuase then our sentence might be harsher - Judge's "discretion!" - or we might be held in "contempt of court" - the emotion we all feel when we behold Courts, yet it is illegal to express.
Most of those who defend Law do so only in the hope that its "discretion" will bypass them - the "law abiding citizens" - and focus its eyes on those whose rebellion is open, instead.
"Law-abiding" = "God-fearing." they are interchangeable even in common speech, yes? Yet again Jack is right about Talmudic origin.
And yeah, what was it @jack pointed out? That statistic? The average American citizen commits 4 felonies per day, something like that?
Law is designed to be (((discretional))), to put the citizen who is ignorant of it at the mercy of the enforcers who know the Book of the Law and can enforce selectively, turning blind-eye or watchful-eye as it suits them. Law-knowers and Law-makers are essentially our Priest class, who decide the criteria by which we are judged, change it all the time, and then say: "Ignorance is no defense!"
That's why every legal procedure also has a clause that ramps up the discretional element, normally something like : ".... according to the standards of a reasonable person" or "beyond reasonable doubt." Who decides what those words mean?
Rigid enough to allow itself to justify punishment ("It's the law, we have to follow it!"), flexible enough to put you at the mercy of the Judge. That is "Law." That is why sentences are not fixed, but "guidelines". If they were fixed, those of us dragged before Judges would shout: "FUCK YOU, I DID NOTHING WRONG" and flip the Court off, yes? But we don't, becuase then our sentence might be harsher - Judge's "discretion!" - or we might be held in "contempt of court" - the emotion we all feel when we behold Courts, yet it is illegal to express.
Most of those who defend Law do so only in the hope that its "discretion" will bypass them - the "law abiding citizens" - and focus its eyes on those whose rebellion is open, instead.
"Law-abiding" = "God-fearing." they are interchangeable even in common speech, yes? Yet again Jack is right about Talmudic origin.
@matrix #repealthe13thamendment
tfw retards want to get rid of the bill of rights before the worst amendment to a constitution in human history
tfw retards want to get rid of the bill of rights before the worst amendment to a constitution in human history
@matrix but UBI makes you a slave
some of us are grateful for the opportunity to work... its hard as fuck for me to get a job at least