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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20314 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The frontier of exploring the US only happened for a very short time. Maybe if you go back to the times before agriculture, you will see men be mostly well respected as members of their tribes. But for most of recorded history it seems clear to me, that the majority of men lived under conditions that would be considered borderline slavery in today's terms, essentially being forced to fulfill whatever role they happened to be born into.

I don't think 300 years is a short time, actually.

You are making a lot of assumptions that I don't necessarily agree with.

  1. That life on the frontier was freer than life today. That may have been true for some people in the sense that they were subject to fewer regulations than modern citizens. It does not seem true regarding how many different options people have in terms of lifestyle and career path today. You can specialize in so many different professions that just did not exist back then. Modern citizens also seem to have more opportunities to recover from mistakes. A lot of things that just killed you back then can be treated today, which gives modern men more opportunities to recover after making mistakes. This seems very significant to me.
  2. That the majority of people on the frontier lived under freedom from rules and regulations. Given that many people on the frontier were soldiers living under a strict hierarchy, this seems doubtful to me. You are also clearly not counting Native American tribes in with the free citizens, since they saw their freedoms vastly diminished as they were slowly conquered by the colonists.
  3. That for 300 years, the majority of Americans lived the frontier life. But by definition, the frontier is the edge of civilization where few people lived. this map shows the frontier line as the point where population density dramatically drops. Over time, areas that were once the frontier transformed into governed cities. So you are really pointing to a small minority of people when arguing about how society has betrayed the majority of men overall.

Freedom is not safety, and freedom is not leisure, and freedom is not prosperity, and freedom is not the ability to recover from mistakes. Those are all valuable in their own way, but they are not freedom.

You are also clearly not counting Native American tribes in with the free citizens, since they saw their freedoms vastly diminished as they were slowly conquered by the colonists.

Of course not, why would I? They're not me, they're not my people, they're not my ancestors, and they're not what we're talking about.

That for 300 years, the majority of Americans lived the frontier life

You are the one who first said "majority." I made no argument about numbers or proportions, just existence.

Some men have been much, much, much freer than I ever have been or ever will be, and I'm not going to sit here and let you say that I'm so free because I have medicine, but I can't own a gun and I have to get a permit to build a house. I say bullshit, that's not freedom. It might be prosperity, or it might be safety, but it isn't freedom. This freedom lasted for generations, and many chose not to take the chance because freedom isn't safety or prosperity. Now that choice is gone, and it's not coming back.

Some men have been much, much, much freer than I ever have been or ever will be

And some men are today as well! What does that have to do with anything? Why are you counting yourself as someone who would have been among the frontiersmen instead of the disease ridden factories or back breaking farm labor of that period? In time people might speak of the spirit and freedom of the startup entrepreneur of today who romantically earned no returns yet lived on VC money with a hope for striking it rich with a buyout. And you'd rightly point out that many of those startup founders failed with nothing to show for it or never got funded in the first place, but what do you think happened to most of the people on the frontier?

This is a discussion about whether society has betrayed men. Talking about the majority of men then is the point.

That life on the frontier was freer than life today. That may have been true for some people in the sense that they were subject to fewer regulations than modern citizens. It does not seem true regarding how many different options people have in terms of lifestyle and career path today

You're failing to separate human actions from surrounding abundance. Human parasites make regulations. The way to deal with parasites is judging them as bad and acting accordingly. Abundance has increased because there is more technology. Just because parasitism has not increased as quickly as abundance, does not mean society is not more parasitic than before.

I think you are taking it for granted that most men have access to this abundance in the first place. That is a political choice. It is absolutely possible for the majority of resources to be controlled by relatively few individuals that everyone else must choose to either suck up to, or accept starvation.

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