Blowhard, Esq. writes:
With the rise of the state all of this [economic and political freedom] was swept away. For the past five or six millennia, nine-tenths of all people who ever lived did so as peasants or as members of some other servile caste or class. With the rise of the state, ordinary men seeking to use nature’s bounty had to get someone else’s permission and had to pay for it with taxes, tribute, or extra labor. The weapons and techniques of war and organized aggression were taken away from them and turned over to specialist-soldiers and policemen controlled by military, religious, and civil bureaucrats. For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
epiminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
How Dark Enlightenment that all is…but quite valid I think.
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But…but… Steven Pinker says that things just keep getting better and better!
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Two claims stand out as eminently attackable:
1 – nine-tenths of all people who ever lived did so as peasants or as members of some other servile caste
I would like to see him try to prove that, just so that I could point and deprecate his attempt.
2 – For the first time there appeared on earth
Prehistory is speculation, not science.
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What makes him think that peasants were necessarily “a servile caste or class”?
“ordinary men seeking to use nature’s bounty”: nature’s effing bounty? What sentimental tripe.
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The more egregious type of libertarian is pretty much indistingiushable from the dippier kinds of leftists, and this proves it.
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