Re:Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
by zo1 on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:24PM
(#12146082)
Signing a voluntary contract is the antithesis of slavery. It may be boring and soul-sucking labour that you do not enjoy, but it is no more slavery than signing a contract with a customer is. Your time and effort are your own, and the reward is rightfully yours.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
He's taking a much broader view. You aren't forced into that job, but how are you going to survive if you don't do some form of work that's accepted by society as such?
If people own essentially all the livable land on the planet, then there isn't really a way to retreat from society to live on your own terms. The owner of the land will eventually stop you from using it. So in a sense, you're being forced to participate in a human society to some degree, and forced to provide benefit back to that society. Consequences for not doing so usually end up to be having some form of violence or another done to you.
It's not a voluntary contract if you have to sign that contract to survive. At least not "voluntary" in a sense that is meaningful to most people living today.
As opposed to my "voluntary" contributions and obligations to the state? In that case, it's all about a magical "social contract" that I never signed, and inherited from birth. From birth, let that sink in for a little bit. That is an order of magnitude more slave-like than a voluntary contract that I enter into as an adult.
But when it comes to an actual contract, willingly signed, then "oh but you have to sign to survive". Well yes, except I don't. I can go live in the middle of nowhere and live off the land. You try doing that with the anything state-related, and then tell me how voluntary it is.
</rant>