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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35361 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?

Because if a country does that, people will predictably stop producing stuff for the country to take, and also will leave the country if they can.

Unless you mean "some of your stuff, but not enough that you're strongly incentivized to leave or stop producing stuff", in which case they're called "taxes".

But they aren't taking "people's" stuff, they are taking your stuff specifically. You the defector is getting your stuff taken, the cooperators keep their stuff.

How is the government in question distinguishing "cooperators" from "defectors" here, such that they are specifically taking the stuff of "defectors"?

If "defector" is a broad enough category, it might still be better to take only some of their stuff rather than all of it, even from the perspective of a government that only cares about obtaining resources for itself.

First they came for the defectors? This is fine.

If your state ever gets to the point where people are so desperate to leave that the government starts going to extremes to discourage it, it's time to leave anyway, while the penalty is merely robbery, before the next "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall" goes up. "You're worthless and so I want to make it hard for you to leave me" is a self-contradictory claim. It's only a popular claim because the first part is a too-often-effective lie that abusive relationship partners use as a control tactic. But even when the best time to escape escalating abuse has already passed, the second-best time is "as soon as possible".

going to extremes

Better revision of the article, before the COVID19 section got blanked.

Edit: Don't know why that link didn't work, hopefully this one will.

Strangely, that links to something unrelated.

Your link does not mention COVID.

The point is not so about you defecting against the state, but rather about preventing the state from defecting against you.

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