economics and slavery

Copyright Carl Janssen 2023

It might not be possible to end slavery to the laws of nature but it is possible to for all practical purposes to greatly reduce the degree and severity and frequency to which one human is enslaved by another on a local level and on a world wide level by doing so many different ways at many different locations that when combined cover most or of the world that is inhabited by humans.  Every location that does so would do so by having the majority of able bodied adults have a mindset of commitment to use defensive force and ethical communication to fight against violence and false information spread by unethical communication.  But different locations might have different property conventions and possibly other rules that the people in that location or territory voluntarily agree to.

Imagine there is one person on a island and no one else knows that island exists and that person does not know how to leave that island to find other people.  Let us also imagine that no other human being deliberately put them in this situation but it all happened by accident.  Perhaps they willingly and voluntarily wanted to travel somewhere by airplane or boat and there was a accident in which all other people in the airplane or boat died and they alone survived and ended up on the island not knowing where they are.  Or perhaps they took a airplane or boat to the island that they flew by themselves and then got stranded, the exact cause of the situation does not necessarily matter for this thinking exercise.  The point is that no other human being intentionally imprisoned them there but they got there by accident.

If that person does not do work to get food that person will starve to death but no one could say that person is enslaved by any other human being.  One might argue they are enslaved by the laws of nature or the laws of chemistry or the laws of physics or reality that will cause them to die if they do not work to get food to eat but they are not enslaved by any other human being.  They can not be enslaved by any other human being because there is no other human being there to use violence, fraud, or the threat of violence to force them to do work to survive.  Nor were they put in that situation where they were enslaved by nature by any other human being because they arrived on the island by accident or at least were stranded there by accident.  Nor were they enslaved by any other human being who could take or destroy or move or physically or chemically change any physical material or items on the island to create a situation where they have to work harder in order to survive.  For example if there is a fruit tree on the island and another human ate all the fruit from that tree without asking there permission, than the human stranded on the island might have to work harder to find another source of food then that tree but this can not occur when there is no other human being on the island who can do such a thing because there is only one human on the island.  One might have a discussion about if that human being is enslaved by other animals on that island if there was a predator that might try to attack and eat the stranded human or a plant eating animal that ate fruit from that tree preventing the human from eating that fruit but surely that human being would not be enslaved by any other human on the island in such a case.  Now one might argue that maybe pollution or indirect effects of other humans in the world might accidentally put that person in a state where the person is forced to work harder or do work in a different manner to survive or might even kill or injure the person on the island if some toxic chemical is produced somewhere that migrates to the island and poisons the person on the island or poisons or kills or injures the plants or animals.  But if we were to take a more extreme and specific possibility for this scenario and the person stranded on the island is the only human being in the entire universe then certainly that human being could not be enslaved by any other human being but only by the laws of nature because there is no other human being to enslave them.

Now I did not initially start with the assumption that this person is the only human being in the universe because I wanted to make this a realistic scenario in which there is a chance this other human being might survive for many or maybe even an unlimited number of years.  If the person just appeared on the island for no reason and had no prior human contact then they might not have had the opportunity to learn whatever skills they need to survive on this island from other humans prior to being stranded they would almost certainly die rather quickly, unless they were incredibly smart and could learn such skills on there own or knew such skills by instincts that they were born with as a human which is very doubtful.  Perhaps if it was a special unusual island with no predators and where all the parts of all the plants are edible with no special cooking or treatment process and all the water is safe to drink and somehow all the nutrients are present in the plants they eat and somehow they get sodium chloride or salt even though there would probably not be much of a source of salt from their food and drink unless it was salt water in which case the water probably would not be safe to drink without some special treatment process they would have needed to learn to prevent them from drinking too much salt then they could survive simply by some human instinct to drink water and eat plants if such a instinct exists in humans without having to learn it as a skill from other humans.   In fact if they arrived on this island as a baby with no adult who took care of them until they were old enough to walk on their own and feed them self prior to them being stranded on the island they would almost certainly not survive.  

My point is if they were not taught such knowledge prior to being stranded on this island and not in a proper physical and mental condition the harsh fact is they would simply die on their own.  People might say that is unfair.  There is no fairness in reality.  The laws of nature do not care about fair and unfair.  Fair and unfair are conventions, things that humans have fabricated with their minds and words often to enslave other humans through deception but sometimes to get a voluntary agreement between two or more humans that all are willing to agree to live be a set of rules or make a agreed upon transaction without the need of violence or the threat of violence to enforce it.

If they ( the person stranded on the island ) have some disability or weakness or are not grown up or lack knowledge the island will not magically give them safe and edible food and water that is safe to eat and drink and bring it over to them without them having to move their body or uses there senses to find it in such a manner that violates the laws of physics to make things fair.  They will simply die and that is the harsh reality.  Nature has no legal code that requires accommodation or charity for the disabled or the weak or those who lack knowledge.

If they are paralyzed and can not move their legs the island will not take petty on them and have the fruit trees take up root and walk to them to feed them the fruit, it will not have the trees fall apart and cut themselves down and make a  wooden wheelchair and the ground or earth or land of the island will not decide to change shape and form wheelchair accessible ramps for them.  If they are lucky enough to be paralyzed in the legs but not the arms they might have to use their arms to move their body perhaps crawling on the island if they were not stranded with a wheelchair on the island, if both there legs and arms are paralyzed tough look the island will not grow hands and arms out of the earth to grab fruit from the trees to spoon feed them.  If they are blind they will have to feel there way around the island and possibly use their sense of hearing maybe to hear running water or where animals go to get food and they better be careful to avoid ditches they can not see with their eyes, the island will not magically make the island ditch free and safe for blind people or magically create some sort of braille guidance signs and handheld rails that lead to the fruit trees.  If they are missing both there arms or both their arms are paralyzed but there legs are working they might have to walk up to some sort bush full of fruit or fruit fallen from a tree on the ground and bend down and grab it with their mouth, the tall trees will not lean over and bend down and stick the fruit in their face right next to their mouths because they can not reach it.  If they are deaf and there are predators on the island that want to eat them they will not walk up in front of them where they can see them to be fair to a deaf person who can not hear a predator behind them.  Life is hard for disabled people we should not set up  a society with a higher percentage of disabled people.  But invoking using unethical communication involving claims of fairness in as an excuse to use violence to enslave able bodied people and even other disabled people to do work to help some lazy disabled people and some lazy people who pretend to be disabled has created a society with a higher percent of disabled people and made people experience a greater degree of helplessness in the face of the laws of nature.  Many people have become lazy by using unethical communication and the threat of violence to get resources without having to do any non violent and honest work.  In their state of laziness they have become weak and disabled ( or disabled to a greater extent ) through lack of proper exercise of both the mind and body and hedonistic choices in food that provide too much of some nutrients and too little of others for their types and levels of physical activity or lack there of and the type of body they have as a specific individual.  After becoming disabled or more disabled due to their own actions they use unethical communication to scream and cry and whine, it is not fair you need to give me stuff since I can not survive without other people giving me free hand outs because I am disabled and or if I must work to get my own food or die then that is slavery and if I mentally or physically can not work or will not choose to work and people do not give me free hand outs then they have murdered me.  Therefore the morally right thing to do is to use violence to force other people to give me free hand outs these people with self inflicted disability claim in the name of fairness, equality, diversity, tolerance and inclusivity.  In reality by doing so they are using unethical communication to influence people to enslave and slowly murder other people through involuntary employment in order to get themselves free stuff in the name of not being a slave of nature because of their self inflicted disability which they claim makes them a slave of nature in a way that other intolerant and unfair able bodied people are not a slave of nature.  One fraudulent claim they could use are that able bodied people are not slaves of nature but disabled people are slaves of nature and in order to make things fair able bodied people should become slaves of human beings so that disabled people do not have to be slaves of nature.  But in reality able bodied people are not exempt from the laws of nature anymore than disabled people are, they are both subject to the same laws of physics even if the disabled person has a greater difficulty dealing with the laws of nature in such a way as to survive.  This fraudulent claim often influences hard working disabled people and hard working able bodied people to be enslaved and physically and mentally weakened while simultaneously physically and mentally weakening lazy disabled people and lazy able bodied people.  

I would like to point out that there is nothing wrong with voluntarily helping out disabled people by giving them free gifts or material items and or services but if your goal is to live in world with the least degree of slavery to nature and to humans then people should not be influenced with unethical communication, violence and or the threat of violence to provide material items and or services to people who are disabled, weak or lack knowledge in the name of fairness and equality.  There is also nothing wrong with helping a disabled person receive a material item or service in exchange for the disabled person doing something for you as long as it is voluntary and not achieved through violence, the threat of violence or unethical communication.  I also would like to point out that from my moral viewpoint there is nothing wrong with taking free hand outs if you are offered them even if they are gotten through involuntary taxation because the taxpayer will not get their stuff back if you refuse to take the free hand outs and that I am not encouraging people to put themselves in a situation where they will starve themselves or suffer harm because I am opposed to enslaving people in the name of free hand outs.

Now imagine that same situation except instead of being one human being on the island there are now at least two human beings and they all know about the existence of the other human being or human beings on the island.  Now there are many ways they can work as a team to reduce the difficulty of surviving for groups of them as they face the laws of nature which do not change to make surviving easier or fair, nor do they change to make surviving more difficult or unfair.  Using only voluntary means would result in as little slavery to humanity as possible.  Using involuntary means to enslave some of the people to other people might make things easier for the slave masters temporarily in the short term but result in increased difficulty for the people being enslaved by other humans.  Some people using involuntary means to enslave other people can not result in freedom from slavery to the laws of nature as many people are under the delusion of believing when they use unethical communication, unethical trickery, violence or the threat of violence to demand free stuff from other people as I already discussed.

I would suggest that although the slave masters might not know it it will result in more difficulty for the slave masters in the long run then if they learned to do hings by voluntary agreements with other people and no humans were enslaved by other humans on the island.  

Neither being the slave of another human nor the slavemaster over another human would have the best result in the long run, enslaving another human who wants to enslave you rather than be enslaved by them would have the second best result, enslaving another human who does not want to enslave you would have the third worse result, surrendering to someone who wants to enslave you to prevent them from murdering you would have the second worst result and embracing the choice to be a slave of another human who wants to enslave you for reasons other than self preservation such as blind faith would have the very worst result for you in the long run.

There is only one means to get items or services if you are the only animal on a island and that is to do it yourself.  If you are the only human on the island but not the only animal you could do it yourself or somehow persuade, force or trick another animal to do something for you.  How to know if the animal is willing to voluntarily help or is enslaved is beyond the scope of this chapter although ethical questions involving human use of animals will be discussed elsewhere in this book but most likely in a manner that still fails to resolve that question.

If there are exactly two humans there are certain perhaps three to five simple voluntary means to get items or services.  However the fourth and fifth mean are sort of combinations of the first three means.  The first three simple voluntary means are someone makes it or does it for them self, they barter or trade it with a willing person or someone willingly gives a gift to someone else who willing receives the gift.  The fourth and fifth means are someone willingly does or makes something for themself with the willing help of the other person as a gift or someone willingly does or makes something for themself with willing help from someone else in willing exchange for something.  

If there are at least three people there are more complex voluntary means to get items or services based on combinations of the first five means where you can replace the word someone with some group.  These new complex variations also include two new additional means.  One of the new additional means being  self production or self service or group self production or group self service plus barter with someone else or some other group and additionally plus a gift of service or help with the production process from someone else or another group.  The other new means is barter with a group or person plus a gift from a group or person  with no self production or self service or group self production or group self service.  This then leaves us with seven voluntary means someone or some group can get a material item or service.  But these seven voluntary means ultimately are similar to a combinations of the three means of either do it or make it yourself, trade for or barter for it and or get it as a gift.

Then there are involuntary means to get items or services which are different variations of slavery.  These are unethical communication or unethical trickery, threatening violence or using violence to influence the other person to be their slave.

By trickery someone could point at a human or animal made object in the island and say could you believe this item came to be in such a state without a creator or do you believe it had to be made by a human or animal.  Then the person would say it must have been made by a human or animal.  It could be a tool made by a human or a animal made object like a spiders web.  They then would say the universe is much more complicated then this object so the universe must have been created by some God or gods.  Now I am not confirming or denying that a God or gods might exist but they would then go to some non sequitur point that does not logically follow from it and go into much more detail about this God or gods and trick the person into believing that although they would certainly not use violence against the other person if they do not do whatever they say that God or some gods would punish them in this life or after they die if they do not do whatever they want.  Or they could make some other religious claim that is unproveable and or untestable but seems to be proven, tested and or confirmed by some other deceptive trickery of theirs to enslave the other person.

They could also trick them by using a real or fictitious disability or physical or mental weakness as an excuse to enslave the other person.  They could trick them in the name of equality by working less or not at all to get fruit from the fruit tree and then demanding that there is a moral obligation that they divide all the fruit collected equally even though they made no such agreement.  Now it is not necessarily wrong to agree to divide something equally whatever that means or to agree to voluntarily help someone because of some physical or mental weakness or disability but I am talking about using trickery such as insisting things be split when no agreement was made or tricking someone into thinking you have a right to enslave them because of your disability or physical or mental weakness.

If they had lots of types of real or fake weapons and lots of weapons and unarmed fighting training and the other person had little weapons and unarmed fighting training and no weapons then they could simply use their weapons and real fighting skills or fake fighting skills to threaten the other person to do what they want and in doing so enslave the other person.  

If the other person is exceptionally gullible they could also use money as a form of trickery, they could give them some sort of monetary item that has no survival or enjoyment or comfort value to the other person in exchange for services or material items and say they can later use it to pay other people for services or material items.  They can then do all sorts of sneaky things like producing a unlimited supply of such items and then doing less work, or exchanging less of the same kind of item, or doing less time or quality of the same kind of service for the same amount of money as the other person would be required to do to get that amount of money or downright refusing to work for payment of money after getting the other person to work for payment of money.  Now I am not saying people should be violently influenced not to use money but I personally think using money will make it more difficult to survive when faced with the laws of nature and not easier, because it is exchanging something of no survival value for something of survival value, so at that point you might as well just give whatever as a free gift because you are giving something of value essentially for free in exchange for something that is worthless for survival value.  Or it could also make more sense at that point to barter and get something of survival value in exchange for something else of survival value.

When barter is done willingly both people win based on each of their own value systems because they both value what they are getting more then what they are giving up.  Often giving a free gift of a good or service can also help the gift giver because if the people they help are kind they are more likely to be in a better position in the future to accumulate health, skills, resources and knowledge which they later might give to the gift giver or someone else for free.  If you are giving something for free in exchange for the chance to get something for the chance of getting something else for free with no guarantee how does that help you?  Very simply because it takes work and wastes mental and or physical resources to do record keeping and calculations of every transaction.  Another reason is because when you mass produce items you would have to intentionally avoid a situation of abundance or you will have wasted resources by producing extra items that you can not personally use and can not personally sell.  Having a giving mindset you might be willing to mass produce more items than you plan to use and sell and thus have an abundance instead of planned scarcity.  For example if you cut the eyes out of potatoes and spit out the seeds from watermelon to keep from eating them you can use the eyes and seeds to grow potatoes and watermelon.  Someone with a scarce barter only or worse yet a monetary mindset might intentionally not plant all the seeds and eyes in order to limit the amount of crop produced so that each item might have a lower supply and trade for more items or services per potato or watermelon so that they do not have to carry as many potatoes and watermelons to trade but can still get the same amount of money.  If you are not using the full gardening space available and have room to grow more and enough seeds this monetary mindset can produce a scarcity in food relative to the abundance of food produced with a giving mindset.  But so what how does the giving mindset benefit me if I hypothetically could trade to get the same amount of goods whether I trade a small scarce amount that is more valuable per item based on supply and demand or a large amount that is less valuable per item based on supply and demand to get what might potentially be the exact same number of items from another person?  If the other person also has a giving mindset they might be able to produce more items if you gave them more items and they might give you the extra items they do not need instead of hoarding them for barter only but now it is simpler because you do not have to use calculations to figure out how to intentionally limit production, especially with something that is hard to figure out since not all watermelon seeds will produce watermelons and not all potato eyes will survive to produce potatoes.  Numerous resources are wasted hiring accountants whose only job is to limit productivity in order to maximize profit based on tax codes, a monetary mentality and government and corporate regulations.  If the regulatory record keeping bureaucrats were fired they could do something useful instead of harmful and you would get the benefit of their useful work and they would probably also in the long run be happier doing something else that actually helps themselves and society instead of dragging down society into slavery and artificial scarcity.  It is important to note that just because someone gives some things that they produce in extra abundance as gifts they would not have to give everything as a gift, if some item is scarce or difficult to produce or they do not want give it away and or produce it for some other reason they could choose not to.  There might be some services people really dislike doing or items they really enjoy making which they would only do for barter and other services they enjoy doing or items they enjoy making which they might give away as free gifts.  There might be some items they hate doing the effort of making but they can make a lot of them at once with approximately the same amount of time and effort as making a few at once due to the nature of the production process which when they make them they could give away the extra they do not use for free with little more burden then if they made less and did not give them away or hoarded the extra in a storehouse.  It is important to note that just because someone is giving away things for free without demanding something in exchange for it people could choose who they give their free items or services to and choose to give them to other people who they believe will give stuff for free to people in the future with the hope that the free goods and services might result in a chain event in which someone else gives the original giver free goods or services later instead of giving your stuff to people who you notice are very money centered not because they are poor and need to be money centered gift giving avoiders to survive but because they do not have a giving attitude and or do not understand the concept of abundance vs artificial scarcity and are still deceived by the money paradigm.

Hoarding extras in a storehouse leaves someone open and vulnerable to people who use violence to get such items but someone who is reasonable will not use violence to get an item from you that you offered to give away for free.  However occasionally there are unreasonable people who will do senseless acts of destruction anyway such as when people deliberately leave their cars unlocked with the side windows rolled down and people still break the front window of the car after they steal stuff.  Such people would probably be willing to use violence to get something they were offered to get for free without violence or do violence to the giver of free stuff.

Another benefit of giving and or barter is it reduces the temptation of some but not all people to use violence on you to get resources.  Let's say you are the only person who knows how to or is physically fit enough to make some specific sort of gardening equipment in whatever region someone else can travel to and you own the only item of whatever that piece of equipment is.  You could intentionally have more food then your neighbors by having a monopoly on a gardening tool that enables you to produce much more food in the same area of ground and the same amount of plant growing time with much less effort and labor time and you refuse to give more of those tools, sell more of them or teach people how to make them.  You could then demand lots of difficult services in exchange for that food but people might get really mad at you and simply attack you and take the food when they run low of food and are tired of doing these difficult services in exchange for food that would be easy for them to grow if you did not hoard the knowledge of how to make these tools and the supply of these tools.  Now if you simply were willing to trade for these tools or trade the knowledge of how to make the tools or give the tools or knowledge away some people would be less tempted to take food away from you by force because they can now produce it on their own very easily.  Hiding the knowledge of how to make the tool but merely selling the tools could enable you to get more in exchange for each tool then spreading the knowledge by maintaining some artificial scarcity but not as much artificial scarcity as if you chose to only ever create such a tool one time in the history of the world.  However if you publicly taught how to produce the tool but only in exchange for material items or services you would have less artificial scarcity of the production technique at first then if you gave the secret away for free to anyone but still have some artificial scarcity of the knowledge for a limited time.  As long as the other people you taught chose to only teach the secret in exchange for material items or services and everyone did likewise the artificial scarcity of the knowledge would be maintained.  But if just one person decided to gift other people with the knowledge for free the artificial scarcity of the knowledge could start to be broken, however real scarcity of the knowledge might continue if it is a difficult process that takes a certain amount of time to teach per person and can only be taught to a limited number of people at a time by one teacher.  However if it is something easy to learn that could be instantly learned by most people in a single internet video then the knowledge would be almost unlimited in supply.  If most people were to give away as much knowledge as they can on how to be more productive and about how to make inventions to make things more productive for free and if most people were willing to risk producing excess items for free and gave away the items they did not use there would be much less temptation to use violence to get stuff in the world because stuff people want to get would be much more abundant.  This is not a method to magically end all violence in the world as there might still be people who would use violence anyway for motives other than getting material items or services or there might be some material items and services that are really scarce that some people are willing to use violence to get, but it would reduce the temptation of using violence to get stuff to survive among many people who would more easily have sufficient things to survive.  

If weapons or defensive tools and the knowledge of how to make them are mass produced and knowledge of how to use force defensively is mass spread with a giving and abundant mindset instead of a artificially scare monetary mindset from members of a community to other members of the same community in a community that supports the use of defensive force but not violence that community would be better able to defend itself against outside communities that wish to use violence against them.  A community with a giving mindset that mass produces food and each member gives some of the extra food they produce to other members of their own community first after they have ate enough food for themselves and then once every member of the community has had what they want gives leftover food to outsiders might be targets for ignorant people who want to attack the community and get all the stuff instead of just taking whatever leftovers they are willing to give as free gifts but as I already said such a community would be will prepared to defend itself against starvation at the hands of such people as the result of a violent raid if they also had a giving mindset in terms of gifts from one community member to another in terms of self defense techniques and tools.

Gift giving and barter are good in different situations although I believe the more we can get communities to place emphasis on gift giving to other people who are also gift givers and the less emphasis is placed on barter the better off the people within that community would be.  Although we can not force people to give gifts that would be slavery, if someone really strongly does not like doing something or giving something away but wants to benefit from something that someone else really strongly does not like doing or giving away but both people feel better off getting what they want in exchange for doing the thing they do not want or giving away the thing they do not want to lose than barter is a better choice then gift giving.  However if someone can get lots of extra things or enjoys providing a service then gift giving to other gift givers or potential gift givers is better than barter because the alternative is promoting a society of artificial scarcity which is bad for the person who can offer material items or services in the long run.  Generous communities who follow these principles are not defenseless especially if they are generous with teaching self defense techniques and creating self defense tools only to people who refuse to use violence but are willing to use defensive force and who follow the same code of ethics in regards to who they gave the knowledge, skills, resources, weapons and self defense tools to.

At this point I have barely scratched the surface on material items, services and economics because I have avoided the question of how do you know who truly owns what to begin with.  I contend there is no one size fits all universal property ownership convention throughout the entire universe but there are objective results of what conventions are used by what people.  Property ownership is simultaneously both absolute and relative.  Property ownership is relative because different people can different agreements about who owns what.  Who owns what it is not a physical law of the universe metaphorically engraved in stone and foisted upon people without their choice or ability to change it.  But property ownership is also absolute because once someone agrees to a property ownership convention an item can absolutely fall into certain categories.  These categories might be objective known ownership by a particular person or group, known lack of ownership by a particular person or group, or subjective ownership that is unknown or undefined to or debated by one or more individual within the group based on so called gray areas or undefined areas or unclear areas of the property convention system.

Some religious systems have certain property convention systems that make ownership of some things objective and absolute from the viewpoint of those religious that will be discussed later in other parts of the book.

Distributism vs other types of ownership distributions

Importance of some region to travel on not being privately owned

Not a right to distributism many ways to get there but why distributism is better than some other methods in terms of the consequences 

Distributism is not redistributing wealth by taxes