Are you a domestic terrorist?

[kandrathe]

It seems rather difficult to reconcile the idea that you have absolute self-ownership, and that free exchange between people is sacred and should be totally unfettered (including wage work- trading labour for money) with the idea that wages are slavery and represent a total negation of your freedom which should be eradicated as surely as chattel slavery.

ESOP and profit sharing help to make things more equitable, but most places where I work consume their workers.

If an employer does not have coercive power to make me work for them specifically, as would be the case in slavery, debt peonage, or Jim Crow-type "wage slavery", how is the wage relationship fundamentally unjust?

For the bulk of people, employment is their only option. Their are huge barriers to entrepreneurship, and sustaining a family run business over generations. So, collectively, corporations know they are the only deal. When there is a "shortage" in any particular field, the government(in collusion with corporations) selectively opens up the immigration spigot with special employer sponsored VISA's. Thus, the employee is always kept in an insecure position.

People earning income, in increasing proportion to that income? You said yourself that the poorest earners are paying little if any of their income, and the highest earners pay the lion's share of the taxes. That means the little guy isn't being taxed heavily until *after* their income has reached a high level - a point when they are comfortably above poverty and can save and invest to accumulate wealth. That's the whole idea.

Except, it's not democratic, or in other words equal. It is no more fair that someone with tremendous wealth and small income pays zero. The fundamental unfairness is that the government has grown so large as to become a burden on all classes. We need to cut it back to a sustainable size.

I'm not sure I share the class-based view, or the narrow focus on the productive, but we are at least agreed that people being dominated by government or by tycoons (or both) is something to avoid.

Good. :D

You aren't chained to it, and I can only imagine you signed the employment contract in full possession of your free will. Individual responsibility, right? You might not find it optimal to leave your job, but you could. You can self-employ, or find work elsewhere that leaves your free time open. I'm not saying that's a great plan, but nature's a bitch and we all have to eat and keep a roof over our heads - you have choices about how you do that. That certainly wasn't true of a slave - don't like your job? You have no recourse except to break the law, put yourself in enormous danger, and run. Freedom might look like slavery if you focus exclusively on specific aspects and ignore the rest, but there are still fundamental differences, ones that define the relationship.

Yes, it the IT world, our freedom ebbs and flows with the economy. I have the choice to rebel and join the ranks of the unemployed, and they will easily replace me with someone who will gratefully obey.