[net.philosophy] tale of the slave

flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (12/12/83)

Here is an interesting sequence of cases.  Imagine that it is about you.

1.  There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims.
    He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and
    so on.
2.  The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions
    of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, etc.).  He gives the slave
    some free time.  
3.  The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be
    allocated among them on "nice" grounds, taking into account their needs,
    merit, and so on.
4.  The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to
    work only three days a week on his land.  The rest of the time is their
    own.
5.  The master allows his slave to go off and work in the city (or anywhere
    they wish) for wages.  He requires only that they send back to him
    three-sevenths of their wages.  He also retains the power to call them
    to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or
    lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him.  He
    further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in
    certain activities that threaten his financial return, for example,
    mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
    [Sound familiar?  Do you see where this Tale is headed?  You will...]
6.  The master allows all 10,000 of his slaves, except you, to vote, and the
    joint decision is made by all of them.  There is open discussion, and so
    forth, among them, and they have the power to determine what uses to put
    whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take;
    what activities may be forbidden to you, and so on.
    [If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot
    withdraw it, you have a change of master.  You now have a 10,000-headed
    master, instead of one.]
7.  Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the
    right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000 to try to persuade
    them to adopt various policies.  They then go off to vote and decide
    upon policies covering the *vast* range of their powers.
8.  In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000
    allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this
    procedure.  After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper,
    and they go off and vote.  In the event that they divide evenly on some
    issue (5000 for and 5000 against), they will look at your ballot and
    count it in.  This has *never* yet happened.  (A single master might
    also commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue on which he,
    the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
9.  They throw your vote in with theirs.  If they are exactly tied your
    vote carries the issue.  Otherwise it makes no difference to the
    electoral outcome.

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Reprinted w/o permission from Robert Nozick, *Anarchy State & Utopia*, New
York: Basic Books, 1974, pp. 290-2, by
					--Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink

norm@ariel.UUCP (N.ANDREWS) (12/20/83)

Paul Torek recently submitted to this newsgroup an excerpt from Nozick's
Anarchy, State & Utopia.  In this excerpt, a slave who is subject to brutal
abuse from his master undergoes a change in status (gradually) until he now
is (only?) subject to brutal abuse from a majority of a voting population of
10,000 people. (The slave can vote with the same weight as the others).

It would be interesting to see what conclusion or principle Nozick derives
from all this.  I regard democracy as the moral equivalent of slavery.  The
framers of the U.S. Constitution tried to prevent the slavery of a democracy 
by making this government a constitutional republic in which the power of 
government is constitutionally limited.  Unfortunately, the Constitution's
protection wasn't sufficiently iron-clad to prevent democratic injustices
from being enacted into federal law.

No political system will be immune to corruption or perversion if it isn't
built on the solid foundation of a culture whose dominant outlook is reason,
self-interest, and recognition that self-interest is opposed to seeking the
unearned.  Of course this statement can be interpreted to mean a lot of 
things, so rather than try to pin it down in this article, let me just indicate
that I mean a culture based substantially on Ayn Rand's philosophy of
Objectivism.  In such a culture, slavery wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance...
--Norm Andrews, AT&T Information Systems, Holmdel, N.J.   (ariel!norm)