Many US government policies have been implemented to intentionally make the American people more dependent and less self sufficient.

Since NAFTA passed, well over 30,000 small farms have gone out of business.

Meanwhile, the large agriculture corporations are making record profits.

This an older piece, but it is valuable to my point........

1) Before NAFTA, trade experts predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 U.S. jobs, while official figures show a loss of over 1,000,000 jobs;

2) Experts predicted a trade surplus with Mexico of up to $12 billion. In reality, in 2000 our trade balance with Mexico was negative $24.2 billion;

3) Commodity prices are at record lows, while prices to consumers have risen by 20 percent;

4) Prices that Mexican farmers receive for their corn have fallen by 48 percent since NAFTA, and the value of other crops has also fallen. The only positive trade balance is for the Mexican products of beer, tequila and mescal.

Mexican farmers are unable to compete with U.S. imports because our farm policy unfairly sets the minimum price far below a farmer’s cost of production whether in the United States or Mexico. In the United States, some of these losses are made up by payments made by taxpayers, not the companies that buy our commodities. Take the case of corn. For Mexico, a corn-producing society, it is cheaper to buy mass-produced U.S. Cargill corn than to grow their own.

People's Weekly World - NAFTA: good for who?

One more example, from a recent news story.......

This was combined with the dismantling of the National Company of Popular Subsistence (Conasupo), according to a provision of NAFTA. As a state agricultural trader, Conasupo had played a role in regulating stockpiling, establishing guaranteed prices, distribution, and importing grain. Its disappearance gave way to the great transnational retailers-Minsa, Corn Products International, Anderson clayton, Cargill, Pilgrims Pride, Maseca, Bachoco, Purina, Bimbo, Nestle, Sabritas-which sold staple goods on the Mexican domestic market. These companies bought corn, sorghum, wheat, and beans at depressed prices from Mexican producers, and after subjecting them to fairly simple processing, sold them at ever higher prices: While the real price of corn fell 45% in five years, the cost of tortillas (which provide 75% of caloric intake for 45 million poor people) went from 1.9 pesos per kilo in 1998 to 3.5 in 1999 to 5.5 in 2003.7

Desolation: Mexican Campesinos and Agriculture in the 21st Century - Business - redOrbit

Huh?

How is that possible?

The Mexican people are getting gouged, as are the American people. While family farms keep going under, the big agriculture corporations are making record profits.

One last piece showing how bad we are getting screwed by our government.........

82% of US corn exports are controlled by 3 agribusiness firms.

During the first 7 years of NAFTA, Archer Daniels Midland’s profits went from $110 million to $301 million, while Cargill’s net earnings from 1998 to 2002 jumped from $468 million to $827 million. ADM and Cargill are two of the main agribusinesses that control the corn trade.

Since the signing of NAFTA, migration from rural areas has skyrocketed. Today 270,000 Mexicans per year migrate to urban areas or to the U.S. in search of employment.

More than 80% of Mexico’s poor live in the countryside, 2 million of those being corn producers. Before NAFTA, Mexico only imported about 2.5 million tons of corn per year. In 2001, they imported over 6 million tons of corn. For every 10 tons of corn exported to Mexico, an average of 2 rural residents migrate to the U.S.

Between 1996 and 2001, the number of family farms in Canada fell by 11% due to government policies that support corporate agriculture, not family farms.

When adjusted for inflation, net farm income in Canada has fallen by 24% between 1988 (1 year prior to the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement) and 2002.

Missouri Rural Crisis Center

ALL of these free trade agreements have nothing to do with free trade, they have to do with making people more DEPENDENT and less self sufficient.

Then Man is born free - free to make the ultimate decision upon which all other decisions are based. If he is free, he is a slave to no one, and no thing.

Then there's no such thing as being a slave to cows, nicotine, alchohol, drugs, or anything else which we can make a choice to forego - even if that choice, made of our own volition, will cause our deaths. The cow does not coerce me, nor does the cigarette. Even if it were true that I couldn't live without it, I can still make the choice between life with it, or life without it.

To argue your fiance' is "a slave to nicotine" is just a colloquialism - like arguing someone is a "slave to fashion." She could make the choice to quit, and even though I've never heard of a nicotine addiction so deeply rooted that abstinance would cause death, she could still choose death and die of her own volition. Even in this case she would be making the choice, and there's nothing else to which she can assign blame. Slaves have no choices.
Depedency does not a slave make.
Agreed. Death is the default. Life requires choosing life.

Not breathing is not illegal or immoral. Since you will be penalized for not breathing (you will die), is this coercion? If so, who is coercing you to breathe? If not, why not?
You're switching contexts here. Is working overtime dangerous?

I am talking about pressure from a person, or group. Not breathing is a silly example as who would be pressuring me to not breath? If you can't identify who is doing the coercion, then it is not coercion. Your example makes NO SENSE.

As to dangerous jobs.......I just gave another example. I wasn't talking about overtime with this example. I have known people who worked in construction, that were asked to do things that go against OSHA rules, or other rules, in order to save money for the company. These people had a choice, to do these dangerous things, or look for another job.

I suppose they could have also sued the company and in 4-8 years, after it is all resolved and after the lawyers got their share, such individuals may have received a nice settlement, but then the question remains of what do for a living for the next 4-8 years.

You know what? I'm going to have to agree with you, Norrin. If your boss threatened to fire you if you didn't work overtime, that would be coercion - with one caveat: you would've had to have accepted the job with the understanding that overtime would not be required. If at the time of your hiring you were told, "You may have to work overtime." Then it is not coercion.

Let's assume you were hired with the understanding that overtime would not be required and your boss asked you if you wanted to work overtime or not. Would you consider that coercion?

To bring this full circle to your response to TSG. Most coercion is not applied by employers. Simply because an employer has the power to fire you does not constitute coercion. You have the power to quit and leave your employer struggling to fill your position - is that coercion? Are you both simultaneously coercing each other? Simply because it is difficult to "just quit a job" does not constitute coercion. A lot of things are difficult, but you certainly wouldn't argue every difficulty constitutes coercion, would you?

The government is guilty of coercion to a vastly greater degree than any other coercion anyone experiences. It exercises coercion every time I turn on an electrical appliance through taxes on utilities. It exercises coercion every time I buy something through taxes and conditions placed upon whom I may buy from, where I may buy it, how it was made, how it was transported, and what materials went into making it. It exercises coercion when I send my kids to school through taxes to fund the school system, what they are taught, where they are taught, when they are taught, and who teaches them. Government coercion is omnipresent.

I couldn't agree more.

Our current vaccine policy is a great example of government coercion. While not a threat of force, any parent that doesn't vaccinate their children will be accused by doctors and nurses of not caring about their child. Doctors and nurses following government policy BLINDLY. In addition to getting verbal abuse form doctors and nurses, children are not allowed to attend public schools unless vaccinated.

Government is the main perpetrator of coercion.

While employers do engage in it at times, it is not the same as coercion from a government with the possibility of jail and/or fines.

In the old days, like when Hoover Damn was built, coercion was much more likely from employers. I believe 100 people died working on Hoover damn, but considering how few jobs there were at that time, for many workers it was a choice between dangerous work, or their family not eating.

We appear to totally agree on government coercion. I mean, we are not even allowed to grow hemp in this country, a plant which is grown in every other industrialized nation on Earth, except the US.

Thinking people might ask themselves why this is. Thinking people might wonder why we are the only developed nation on earth without an established hemp crop. Thinking people might ask why lies were told about marijuana like, "Marijuana is more dangerous than Heroin, or cocaine."

Unfortunately the average American doesn't think.

I am glad you are not an "average" American.

Greetings and Felicitations,

Perhaps you can and perhaps you can't. The fact that people have that choice doesn't mean they can make it. Some people can and some people can't. The crux of the difference between being a master and being a slave is the ability to make that choice. The greater majority of people are in such bondage to their senses that they simply cannot make that choice. The people who can make those choices are a rarity and generally are exceptional people.

Is it? Fashion and nicotine are two completely different subjects. Fashion is a cultural meme and nicotine is a physicallly addictive substance. However, people do become slaves to such things to the point where they bring death.

It all depends doesn't it and that is a matter of perspective. It is also a matter of degree. We all need food to live. We all need drink to live. We all need oxygen to live. The only substance that isn't variable is oxygen. Food and drink can quickly become dependencies that don't have anything to do with the basic requirements.

As I said above it is all a matter of perspective. True freedom, to me, is about making conscious choices about whom, and what, you allow to restrict your choices.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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I think your use of the word "can't" is where we're getting hung up. I interpret "can't" to mean "impossible." Do you have any links to people for whom it is impossible to quit smoking, eating, doing drugs, etc. I mean "impossible" as in they have some physical limitation which prevents them from making the choice. I don't mean that choosing to quit these things would be nearly impossible, or so difficult that it would bring overwhelming pain. Even heroine addicts whose bodies become so dependent upon the drugs that withdrawal would kill them are capable of making the choice to quit.

No matter how difficult the choice is, having the power to make it means freedom exists. Just because making the choice is difficult, even so difficult that one doesn't want to make it, doesn't mean one is a slave.

Greetings and Felicitations,

I have been trying to find something for this thread but my books are currently all packed up. One of my favorite books is The War Against the Chtorr Series by David Gerrold. In the first book there is a discussion in the Global Ethics class about freedom and responsibility. I finally found a source for it online.

This quote, and many ideas from the book, are cornerstones of my personal philosophy.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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If freedom existed as you describe it, why would there even be a choice to make? Surely, each and every human would not allow any restriction, thereby making choice itself redundant?

Greetings and Felicitations,

It is this very fact that makes your freedom to choose those things you allow to connect to you the only valid freedom. Everyone is free to make what choices they will. Their choices aren't a problem until they start to impact your choices. When they start to impact your choices then you have to start deciding which of those choices are valid to you.
For example, someone decided that smoking was a good thing to do. As long as that person keeps that choice to himself it's a problem only for him. It's his choice between life and death. As long as that choice is his, and his alone, there is not a problem. However, at the point where his choice starts to affect my choices, I have a decision to make. I have to decide if I will let his choice affect my right to choose. It is that very moment that defines freedom. I have the freedom to choose to embrace his choices or avoid his choices. The freedom to decide that fact is the only freedom that I really have that anyone can't take away.
At some point this may become a societal choice. At some point society may have to decide how his freedom affects the whole.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

__________________

I have to admit that I don't know Whitlaw and I'm probably taking on a greater authority than is wise but as it's literally written in the quote, I can't but say that Whitlaw, in part at least, confuses rights with privileges.

The privilege can be said to be an opportunity in that it provides you with an opportunity that would not (legally) exist without the privilege. It works directly on actions so that a person can take certain actions, i.e. seize certain opportunities, without getting into a (legal) conflict.

The right, however, is a circumstance rather than an opportunity. It doesn't work so that taking certain actions, i.e. seizing certain opportunities, can escape (legal) conflict. On the contrary, it's designed so that taking certain actions, i.e. seizing certain opportunities, can cause a (legal) conflict.

A right can of course be said to provide the person, to whom the right is granted, with certain opportunities but it only does it indirectly by the absence of actions while the privilege provides opportunities through the presence of actions.

I don't see that the choices of a person affecting your choice is a limitation of your freedom, per se. On the contrary, the choices of others often broaden the scope of your freedom by adding to your possibilities (apropos the talk about privilege and opportunities above).

It's only choices that expressedly limit your freedom that, well, is a limitation of your freedom. This means that your freedom is not defined by any particular choice or decision made but that it needs to already be defined before any kind of choice is made. Otherwise, you won't know if it'll pose a limitation to your freedom.

In fact, if you need a decision to define your freedom then it instead defines an insecurity as to what your freedom actually is. This is what Supreme Court cases are often about and if that's the case then it is the only freedom you have that can indeed be taken away

Society can't make choices. Society doesn't have free will. Society isn't human. At best you could say, "At some point, this may become a choice which the majority of humans wants to impose on the rest." But then, we're really just talking about tyranny.

Greetings and Felicitations,

I tend to use the smoking example because it is a prime example of other people's choices affecting my freedom. The person who smokes choice to smoke directly affects my freedoms. His expression of his freedom to pollute his body directly affects my freedom to be free of that pollution. This situation has been remedied somewhat by recent laws but for many years it made my freedom limited in a great many ways. There were jobs I couldn't take and places I couldn't go. There are still people I will not associate with because of their choices and the fact that don't have enough respect for my freedom to express some control over theirs.
There are other similiar facets of our current culture that do the same thing.

I don't need a decision to define my freedom. I need a decision to clarify my freedom. It is not a societal decision but a personal one. Its a choice I have to make every day and in every moment. It is when you stop paying attention to your choices and your expressions of freedom that you start to lose them. The payment of that loss tends to be expensive. Many of the current economic problems we are having is because people stopped paying attention and stopped considering the ramifications of their choices.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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