Suppose You Wake Up Free Tomorrow.

Recently, Demi postulated that a huge sum of money falls into your lap, and then asked people to list what they might do with it. He rather ignorantly equated this power over other men, to get them to fulfill your wishes in exchange for money, with "freedom."

I forget which particular fallacy Demi was using that day, but I believe it had something to do with setting the poor free by taxing the rich, or some such similar bullshit as we've all come to expect from centrist/moderate/communist Demi.

So here's my question -- the real question, perhaps the one Demi should have asked:

Suppose tomorrow you wake up to find you are radically more free. All the laws against anything that doesn't actually victimize someone else are repealed, except that drug use and prostitution are still illegal. What would you do?

You would still pay taxes, but assume only those taxes which go toward protecting the rights of other honest citizens; not toward "fairness" or "equality". The redistribution would be over.

For the hardcore libertarians, you can assume that drugs and prostitution are legal, as long as you don't list your use of drugs or prostitution as your answer.

For liberals, assume the days of government checks are over for everybody who isn't a civil servant enforcing of laws that protect people from violence and fraud, and perhaps EMTs and firemen. The rest of you are going to need to find a job, or at least a generous charity.

The truth is, I already have a pretty good idea of how all of this law costs us, and the opportunities it robs us of, but I will withhold my own answer so as to not influence others.

But I do want to see if the thread confirms my suspicions.

What would you do differently with all this newfound freedom? What's really different when you're free?

So... this is a callout thread?

Wow, that's epic fail. You sure do like your alternate realities.

Here's the thread:
http://www.wordforge.net/showthread.php?t=92320&highlight=million

I made absolutely no distinction about 'power over other men.' That's YOUR baggage, and it's awesome that you can't even understand a basic question without overlaying your own template of 'money = control of other men' on it.

But then, that explains the quote in my sig a bit more, doesn't it? YOU want to be rich, because you want to control others. Hence your idealization of the CEO without any oversight or control by government.

Man, I love your posts. Normally I'd have to read this shit in articles on deviant psychology.

I think a lot of self-described libertarians would be unpleasantly surprised to learn which side of the "redistribution" equation they actually fall on.

We'd have feudalism re established with 2 generations.

How old were you when you were sold into slavery? How did you survive once you were too old to work in the sex trade? How have you managed to feed and educate yourself since, and how gave you access to a computer? Should we send Sally Struthers to your house to rescue you?

Asshat.

No. Instead of the notion that wealth sets people free, I want to examine real freedom where some will be wealthier and some will be poorer -- and why.

But it doesn't hurt to understand that I'm not starting from the premise that waking up free automatically comes with a billion dollars.

FTFY

So "free" equals "my taxes don't help smelly poor people."

Got it.

"Baggage?" No, that's just what having a bunch of money actually is. In yet another thread, you made the case that having to provide for yourself excludes the possibility of ever being free. You reason that having a bunch of money sets one free because the money gives you the power to have others meet those needs for you. Admittedly, you were more politically correct and deceptive about it than that, but it is as I describe.

Hardly. Trade is not "control." If I have money to spend, you still have the option of refusing it -- or raising your price. Even if you're flat broke, you should always be able to choose not to work for me. That's freedom. Whether you have to work for yourself -- just like any free animal must labor to survive -- is irrelevant. That's just part of being alive.

The question is whether the wealth you're trading for the service of others belongs to you, or whether it was forcibly taken from someone else. If you take a pile of my money and trade it voluntarily for someone else's work, then this hasn't set you free. It has simply transferred your burden onto me.

We'd all like to be rich, but I don't rationally expect to take value from others that exceeds the value I produce. I only want the power over other men that I have earned -- surplus value that I have created and banked for my own consumption later.

It's interesting how rolling back the lawbooks to a level of liberty that clearly wasn't feudalism the last time it was tried is somehow presumed to be the path to feudalism today.

And I believe a rather famous book has been written to explain which road leads to serfdom (feudalism) -- and according to that author it's the one you favor.

No, I don't think you do. Are these smelly poor people who could get jobs if they took a bath?

I truly don't see we can say that we have the government off of our backs unless those 2 issues are legal.

That premise does seem to be the basis for a lot of class warfare / populism that says rich people somehow have more rights than the rest of us.

You keep using that word...

And yours is the side that keeps accusing others of wanting "free stuff."

Yes, it's your one true book. It's the gospel of your unthinking faith.

Problem is, it's just the thoughts of one man, and he got some shit wrong. Just like Keynes did.

And I don't know why I need to remind you of this AGAIN, but the reason we stopped along this blessed path is we saw what the path led to under the gentle graces of the Robber Barons - and that was company towns and economic serfdom for a good chunk of the populace. Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts - and that's why he got booted from the Republic party. He wasn't ideologically pure enough - meaning he dealt with reality, not things in pretty books.

can't see too much that would change for me unless i couldn't get pell grants any more, in which case i couldn't go to school.

You only have yourself to blame. The pioneers, they BUILT their own schools, and educated themselves with the only book that matters - Frederich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Redistributionist parasite!

Then you're not really free, are you?

i've also been on unemployment before.

i'ma stealin' all yer monies!!! bwahahahaha!!!

I doubt it. Jobs are pretty hard to come by these days. Something about the economy tanking when wealthy people decided the rules didn't apply to them anymore.

It's always funny to see people who associate freedom simply with less taxes, while being happy to keep controlling others lives when it's things like drugs they purposefully disagree with.
A well designed social safety net in some ways increase individuals freedom, admittedly at the social cost of slightly higher taxes. A strong level of social mobility requires people to take chances, and with the knowledge that there is the net there for if they fall more will take that chance.

The bottom line is that I'm looking for an honest "What I'd do if I was free tomorrow," answer and what I mean by that is "other than drugs and prostitutes". What I don't want is answers like "I'd smoke pot" or "I'd get a hooker." I'm assuming you can do that shit today anyway.

But I am interested in how freedom would change as it applies to things you can't do today. And I have something very specific in mind which would likely become apparent if people would just answer the fucking question instead of critiquing it.

It's a little unsettling how many people are hung on that even though I clearly allowed for hard-core libertarians to presume that freedom as long as they gave the "besides drugs and prostitutes" answer.

As for any suggestion that I want to control lives, that's nonsense. To clarify, my position is that it's politically possible for individuals to be more free, but it's a pipe dream to assume that prostitution and hard drugs are going to be legal. Since I'm talking about a change that's well within reach, I just want to see how many people would reach for it, given the freedom to do so.

What sorts of things are you more likely to do if you suddenly found yourself more free tomorrow?

Gee, and it's also just about the most heavily subsidized service you can buy, too. You'd think all the grants and subsidies would have fixed that whole "expensive" thing, wouldn't you???

What a bunch of fucking morons.

What would you do?

I promised my answer after we see what others say. I don't want to influence others' responses.

trust me... you don't influence much of anything.

If anything, your arguments tend to dissuade the moderate among us.

The only way I would wake up to truly being free is that every single one of you fuckers, along with everyone else on the planet, were gone.

That would be true freedom.

Did you see the video of the President of Ireland taking a Tea Partier to task on this vary issue during a recent trip to America? The previous governments of Ireland screwed the pooch policy wise but this guy seems pretty level headed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B5OWRRJh-PI