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Page 371 of Arthur Herman's brand new scholarly book:
Aristotle had been right all along. Freedom and slavery were indeed mutually excusive states.
But it can actually make sense: the freedom to take whatever job you take justifies the abuses that come afterwards; and then this can be so bad that it excuses the evils of the freedom that was the source of the problem in the first place; so you take another chance with freedom, and the cycle starts all over again.
Only probably not what Mr. Herman had in mind. Still leaves Aristotle.
If you take a job, that's not freedom. The only significant difference between slavery and wage-slavery is that if a wage-slave is injured, ill, or there's a lag in business, he can be readily jettisoned. If you spent a minor fortune to buy a slave, failing to provide for slaves in times like that is stupid.
Both wage-slaves and traditional slaves are abused in myriad ways. Freedom is self=employment.
In 1950, you might need 3000 machine tools to economically make a complex product, because setup was difficult and expensive. With numerical-controlled tools, you can make complex products in a garage, and economically make one=off products. As tools get better and better, and raw materials get more expensive, we'll see more and more highly competitive proprietors and small partnerships employing only family members.
We'll probably still have huge factories making commodities, where dullards can get jobs, but others will pity them.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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