I found your posting well worth the time to reply to Naughty Felid. If you are prepared to take the time to write such a long and considered piece, I feel obliged to reply in kind. I have taken the time to question a lot of what you have written, not with the intention of trying to insult you in any way, but because I felt that you make a number of very Hobbesian assumptions about humanity that modern anthropology has all but conclusively proven are not factually accurate depictions of human nature. This is not to say that human beings can't and don't behave abysmally on occasion, but that this is the exception and not the rule. I have criticised even modern anthropology on occasion by suggesting "Yes, and a serial killer is only a bad person once a year." So I don't want you to assume that I am in any way dismissing your opinions, more that I am elucidating some weak points.
One question I have however is how this really critiques my post on conspiracies. I didn't feel that you adequately addressed any single point that I raised. Am I to understand that you are putting forwards a philosophy of human nature that suggests that conspiracy is commonplace and inevitable? If so, I would counter that you are perhaps drawing a bad definitional separation between what is a social institution and what is a conspiracy. Any model of a conspiracy must be covert, and maintaining covert power structures is what I was addressing in my post. Let me address your post however.
Being a peasant it was any interesting post.
Are you actually a farmer (what peasant actually means)? May I inquire as to what you produce?
Does a dog need another dog, or a horse, another horse? No animal depends on any other of its species. Man, however, has received that divine inspiration that we call Reason. And what has it wrought? Slavery almost everywhere we turn.
Yes, animals need each other. Especially dogs and horses that move in packs and herds in nature. Plenty of human relationships don't revolve around the institution of slavery btw. In fact reason had precious little to do with the creation of the institution of slavery in ancient times and more to do with the abolition of slavery in all its forms during the 19th Century and subsequently. The simple fact is that slavery makes precious little economic sense.
If this world were as good as it seems it could be, if everywhere man could find a livelihood that was easy and assured a climate suitable to his nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruit, if the air, which normally should contribute to our lives, did not carry disease or death, if man needed no other lodging and bed than those the buck and his doe require, then the Genghis-Khans and Tamerlanes would have no servants other than their own children decent enough to help them in their old age.
I would argue (based on archeological evidence) that in the early days of humanity, as we first reasoned about our environment, noticed patterns in nature, and made our first rudimentary tools, that the world was an infinite larder of useful things, much as you suggest. Over time, human populations increased and our species was able to meet the requirements of survival through the development of herding and agriculture. In what we call the stone age, wealth was limited to what could be carried, and there were no Oriental tyrants per se. While social competition exists within all human societies, warfare begins in earnest only with the introduction of an agricultural surplus. Paleolithic peoples seldom fought engagements beyond the level of a skirmish, and were generally well in food surplus, spending as little as an hour a day to gather their full dietary requirement. If anything, the complexity of our current social model is a testament to the success of our species at harmony and cooperation.
If some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny arm had the idea of enslaving his neighbor who is weaker than he, it would be impossible. The oppressed would be one hundred leagues away before the oppressor had taken his first steps.
In historical times, territory has become survival. If you don't own enough territory, you lack the resources to live, or you live by supporting someone else. While there is territory to support those who flee, they may do so with impugnity. Even the strong who hold the best territory may rapidly find their wealth desert them if a new discovery means their territory lacks a newly valued resource. To further elucidate, look closely at Karl Marx's Theory of Value. It was something he could never reconcile. How is it that a building that takes hundreds of tons of resources can be worth 100 million dollars one day and 30 million the next? Value is often merely a matter of sentiment and circumstance, arbitrarily assigned by human whimsy under the guise of "market forces." Circumstances change, and no bully goes unpunished for long, whether a man or a nation, or an empire. Complacency makes a coffin for us all.
If all men then were without needs, they would thus be necessarily equal. It is the poverty that is a part of our species that subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality, it is dependence that is the real misfortune. It matters very little that this man calls himself "His Highness," or that man "His Holiness." What is hard is to serve them.
Poverty is ignorance. A knowledgeable person can find the tools they need to make any tools and objects of technology lying abandoned in any city dump, and available for free. Of course you need to meet Maslows pyramid of needs first, i.e. water, food, shelter, medicine etc. To a knowledgeable person, meeting these needs is a fairly simple logistical problem.
Now consider the trained ignorance that views a designer label as a symbol of social achievement. Is there any notable merit to paying far too much for an item that is likely to be barely fit for purpose? Advertising creates needs that we don't actually possess i.e. it manufactures ignorance.
So ask yourself, how much poverty is real poverty, and how much poverty is imagined poverty produced by social gaming?
In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to be divided into two classes:
The rich who command, and the poor who serve. These two classes are then subdivided into a thousand, and these thousand have even more subtle differences.
All the poor are not unhappy. The majority are born in that condition, and continual work keeps them from feeling their fate too keenly. However, when they do feel it, the result is wars, such as that in Rome where the People's party was pitted against the Senate party, or such as those of the peasants in Germany, England, and France. All these wars shall finish sooner or later with the subjugation of the people because the powerful have money; for in a state, money is master of all. I say in a state, for it is not the same between nations. The nation that makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation that has more gold and less courage.
On the contrary, we might divide our society into umpteen billion different social classes, rather than a mere two. To say there are only the haves and the have-nots is immensely simplistic. Are you advocating for a Socialist revolution as a remedy? I personally see the issues of scarcity receding everywhere and personal wealth increasing everywhere. Ultimately nanotechnology stands to end scarcity altogether.
As to the relations between states, that has also notably changed. We are in a post-imperial age. Nations don't wage wars of conquest anymore. That may change, but the nature of asymmetrical warfare makes any conquered nation that has a patriotic core determined to resist all but impossible to conquer. We have lived to witness superpowers unable to pacify much smaller and weaker nations. This is no longer the age of Imperial Rome, nor is it even the age of Imperial Britain.
All men are born with a rather violent penchant for domination, wealth, and pleasure, and with a strong taste for idleness. Consequently, all men covet the money, wives, or daughters of other men, want to be their master, subjecting them to all their caprices and doing nothing, or at least only doing enjoyable things. It is easy to see that with these honorable tendencies it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for two preachers or two professors of theology not to be jealous of one another.
This is a crypto Calvinist perspective. Deeply nested in this paragraph is the notion that human beings are utterly depraved without the grace of some god or other. I reject that notion. Human being are neither saints nor sinners, we are merely highly intelligent animals, and for the most part we live together in surprising harmony, despite the lies that the evening news put about to cause you to fear your fellows. We form our laws out of the notion of reciprocity, and they are more just than any handed down to us by religion. To be covetous is merely to be ignorant, for there is an abundance of all things for the person with the wit to realize what is freely available to them.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an endless number of useful men who possess nothing at all. For it is certain that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come and plow yours, and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Appellate Judge who will make them for you. Equality is therefore both the most natural of things, as well as the most unreal.
The use of "men" here is rather dated, and neglects the fact that women contribute plenty. Furthermore, to say that there are men possess nothing at all is a patent rhetorical absurdity. A person who owns nothing dies of starvation, and is thus far from useful to anyone. Please concede on this occasion that your assertion is a nonsense on that point.
On the other hand, the issue of the rich man not plowing your field, this is a matter of the relative value of his skills and his time using that skill. Would you seriously expect a Nobel prize winning biochemist to stop their research into preventing a lethal disease in order to grow their own food and water every day? You may personally lack the skill to solve the problems they daily grapple with, but if you plow their field for them, you will find a terrible disease will no longer trouble you. I'd say that is an exchange worth the price. As for appellate judges not making your shoes, well, obviously their personal specialty is not in that area.
I worry that none of your models or opinions adequately deals with the idea of a middle class, and its value to a society.
There are in fact four forms of poverty recognized in social studies
http://www.eschooltoday.com/poverty-in-the-world/types-of-poverty.html
as well as aspirational poverty (wherein one is poor because one wants something out of one's economic reach), and poverty of diminished expectations (wherein your expectation is of worse conditions to come).
As men go to extremes in everything when they can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has been claimed in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where fate has placed him. The idea behind this law is obvious: "This land is so bad and so badly governed that we forbid anyone to leave for fear that everyone will leave." Do better: make all your subjects want to live in your country, and make foreigners want to come.
I would say let everybody leave. Eventually people who are better able to utilize the resources will arrive. A person with a crippling disability may find valuable employment in many areas, but a stupid person will always be poor.
I would also debate the truth of the notion of humanity ever rushing to extremes. That is true of a certain unstable mentality in some people but is far from the rule.
Deep in their hearts, all men have the right to think themselves entirely equal to other men, but it does not follow from this that the cardinal's cook can order his master to prepare him dinner. But the cook can say: "I am a man like my master, born in tears, as was he. When he dies, it will be with the same fear and the same rituals as I. Both of us perform the same natural functions. If the world was turned upside down, and I became cardinal and my master became the cook, I would take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just,
To say that something is "deep in the hearts of all men" is an immense assumption. You are ignoring the sizeable portion of the population who consider themselves utterly worthless, and also those who think themselves
better than everyone else but are
actually utterly worthless.
To your example...the cardinal's cook is within his rights and his means to quit his employment at any time and seek better opportunities elsewhere. One might ask why he didn't take orders and diligently pursue his faith rather than gaining expertise in the culinary arts if his position were even remotely sincere in wishing he were a cardinal. I would argue that the cook is acting in what Sartre would deem to be "bad faith", i.e. adopting false values and disowning his own freedom. I would further argue that for all practical purposes, the world benefits far more from the skills of a cook than those of a cardinal, who is, after all, merely a parasite.
