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How do big, scary corporations force anyone to do anything? (Beyond their lobbying the government for unfair laws, which would not be a problem in a libertarian government)
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Sorry, I just really can't see big business as a threat to freedom, not in the way big government is...
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Sorry, I just really can't see big business as a threat to freedom, not in the way big government is...
There are ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) and RSAs (Repressive State Apparatuses).
They are good cop and bad cop.
In this game, you probably met good cop, ISA, first. You had a nice hobbit hole to live in. You went to school. You liked it pretty well. It felt good. Political Parties, Unions, Educational Systems, Media Outlets -- all these gave you the tools with which to think and how to structure your life. Rules were laid out and made sense. Or appeared to, until you may or may not have had your own unique ideas about what to do.
Then you met the RSAs -- Police, Prinicipal's Office, ATF, Homeland Security. The general idea behind our society is that the RSAs will mop up what the ISAs miss. (This runs counter to the good cop / bad cop game, where "good cop" is your friend after "bad cop" brutalizes you. Then he betrays you.)
Well, the weird catch, I believe, is that in the absence of RSAs that *claim* a proletariat mandate, there are 2 options. First, society collapses into anarchy, which is not so bad -- subsistence level farming. OR, the ISAs create their own RSAs, but no one really gives a shit, since there bias is in the open. (Notice from this, that a truly marxist revolution would establish no new government, which is scarily close to the libertarian platform. At the extremes, left and right meet!)
Imagine, if rather than the police arresting you for trading .mp3s, Sony sent a thug over to your house to break your jaw. (Sony, like the mob, can't really profit from your death, so they have no interest in *killing* you, just beating you into compliance.) There would be no outcry if you shot this thug -- no one would view him as a "noble officer, gunned down in the line of duty."
The even sadder state of affairs is that the anarchy of subsistence farming is the baseline of humanity. We *opted* for tyranny, but it was ever thus.
Let me get biblical on you: Freshly freed from the Pharaoh, the Israelites established judges, but sensing there poverty with regard to their neighbors, they cried to HaShem: "HaShem, give us a king!" And HaShem said: "Whatwhatwhat!?! A king!?! Bist verruckt!?! But he will tax you and enslave you and make you fight foreign wars and separate children from parents and imprison y.."
"Yeahyeahyeah," saith the Israelites, "Assyria has a king, Egypt has a king, what are we without a king!?!" And HaShem said, "Screw you, take your damn king!" Don't believe me? Read Samuel 3.
As for enslaved children making our clothes? Boycotts do not result in freed children. They result in unemployed children. Between making shoes and prostitution, it's a toss up. I was actually rather amazed visiting the Slate Mill in RI, that they made learning to read and write, along with basic education, part of the work day when they first hired children. No one really goes in for that now.
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