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Originally Posted by Cato
Then I expect compensation.
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Don't worry, I'll pay my taxes on it, which will go to services that help support you. The law says that's the compensation you're entitled to.
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Again, you'll have to find some way to distinquish between goal-directed effort (like writing your book)
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Ah, I see. So what you're saying is, that the fact that I couldn't have written the book without the contributions of lots of other people, and certainly couldn't publish it without the contributions of more, means diddly-squat unless they were helping me on purpose?
That's a pretty convenient distinction for your purposes, dude.
However, it's not one I'm willing to recognize. If someone's actions helped me to survive, or gave me ideas that I incorporated into my writing, the fact that they didn't do these things deliberately for my benefit or with my book in mind doesn't in any way change the fact that my book was not a completely individual effort undertaken in a vacuum.
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I'm a little confused. The first sentence in what you quoted is, "Doesn't address the point."
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I understand your confusion. Here are the two sentences I was referring to:
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The point is that wealth begins, and ends, with individual effort. Were there no individual effort, there would be no wealth.
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In making that response, I forgot that there were actually three sentences in what I quoted not just two. The first sentence above is false. The second sentence above is true, but the first does not follow from the second. I hope that is clearer.
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Then not all of your wealth was a group effort. That one original thought is part and parcel of every other thought you've taken from others.
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You cannot atomize a work of art that way. For one thing, even my original thought wasn't
completely original in the sense of being independent of the world around me. It was expressed in the English language, to start with, and I did not create the English language. I had read a great many works of English literature, as well as history, science, and so on, and held a large number of conversations with other people, before I wrote the first word. Can I truly say that even the most "original" of my thoughts was not influenced in any way by this earlier interaction with other persons living and dead? I don't think so.
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Really? You can't wake up in the morning without someone else's effort? You can't move your body without the effort of someone else? You can't think without someone else expending their effort?
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All of these things are true. I could not wake up in the morning, not only without the contributions of other people, but also without the contributions of the entire planetary biosphere. Without those contributions, I would be dead, and so I would be unable to rise, move, or think.
Very well then. You have been in the position of having to work for the benefit of another. Or at least, a portion of the work you did went to the benefit of another, because if they were paying you the full value or your work in terms of revenue potential they would not have made any profit on what you did and so would not have hired you in the first place.
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Is that all? Is that the complete criteria for owning someone?
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Being able to work the person in whatever way desired without legal limit, being able to sell them, being able to kill them. Add being able to do them physical harm short of death, too. Yes, I think that about sums it up.
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If so, would exhibiting this criteria, or ability to exhibit this criteria, indicate someone is owned? If so, if this owned person is subsequently forced to work would that constitute slavery?
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It would constitute slavery whether the person is subsequently forced to work or not. After all, a slave owner is free to allow his slave to lie around and eat bonbons all day if that's what he wants to do.
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I know many vegetarians who don't cook their food. Does this mean they're not human?
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I know some who would suggest that.
Let's just say that the cooking of food predated civilization and leave it at that.
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Adaptability? Is that the word you meant to use? Does it mean - "changing easily: able to adjust easily to changes and new conditions?"
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I'd say so. We have certainly exhibited unusual ability along those lines in adjusting to the radically different conditions of civilized life compared to those of precivilized life, and of modern industrial civilization compared to classical agrarian civilization. Most biologists would agree that we are a highly adaptable species. Do you dispute that?