Comment on Feelin free
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 days agoIf you want to simplify the thought experiment, imagine being the only person in existence. You would still need to struggle just to meet the basic needs of survival, but you would definitely not be oppressed.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Nature is as oppressive as billionaires. Working together helps overcome that, both when combatting nature and the asset class
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I think that those are different meanings of the word “oppressive”, which has a moral component when referring to human actions but not when referring to natural phenomena.
Imagine the following scenarios:
You’re alone on the planet. You struggle to survive.
Now there’s a wealthy person on the other side of the planet, where his lifestyle has no effect on you. He could rescue you but he chooses not to.
The wealthy person offers to rescue you on the condition that you must work for him. He would get most of the products of your labor but survival would still be easier than it was when you were alone.
Now you have no choice except to accept the wealthy person’s offer. Survival is still easier than it would be if you were alone, but there isn’t anywhere left where you could survive alone.
Your life is oppressive in each of these scenarios in the sense that simply surviving is difficult and there’s no possibility of improvement. However, there’s clearly no moral component to that in (1) because you are alone, and (4) seems like it almost certainly has a moral component. However, in every steps from (1) to (4) you’re either better off or not worse off than you were before. Where does the moral component come from?
frosty99c@midwest.social 6 days ago
At step 3. Where the rich person forces conditions onto you and takes most of your production.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Does it matter what your “default” state is? If you’re safe until I threaten to harm you unless you comply with my demands, then I’m obviously oppressing you. If you’re in danger until I offer to rescue you only if you comply with my demands, your options are the same (either harm or compliance) but the two situations don’t intuitively feel morally equivalent to me.
With that said, humans do innately interpret an offer of rescue contingent on paying a very high price as a form of compulsion. Someone who makes such an offer is going to be viewed much more negatively than someone who simply does not offer to help at all. I suppose it’s a way of making credible threats.
A purely logical person cannot negotiate with the rescuer, because the rescuer knows that purely logical people will pay any price. However, a person known to be irrational and willing to die rather than be taken advantage of can negotiate. There’s a trade-off between the advantage of negotiating and the very high price of failing to come to an agreement, and I suppose the strength of humans’ innate intolerance for unfairness has been tuned by evolution to attain this balance (or perhaps it attained balance in our ancestral environment but no longer does in our civilized state).