[Deleted. Another Peter Hume sock puppet. His/her banning from the forum is now permanent, not just for six months.]

Matt L,

Emerging industrial societies draw people from the countryside where they would have been subsistence farming....and leaves them with those stark choices.

"Monty Python school of economics".....You're such a clever fellow. I'm overwhelmed by your wit. It's not often we're graced by such profound wisdom and banter.....

I am very sad to read of the banning of Peter Hume.

While I condemn his behaviour and the breaking of the OLO rules, I fully agree with his excellent posts, including his last, above.

Myself, I have no patience as Peter to climb the walls, repeatedly explaining such elementary basics as to why state-violence is wrong, to a mob who see no wrong in violence.

All I will say, Cheryl, since Peter is no longer with us to respond in full and I don't possess his patience, is: Yes Indeed - the whole of civil society, UNLESS ONE IS GIVEN THE FREE CHOICE WHETHER OR NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN IT, is indeed a con set up by lefties who are meddling in people's lives, with no moral justification other than the fact that they are able to force themselves on others through sheer violent power. Note that I left the word "whacko" out, as this is deliberate cruelty, rather than the result of some confusion or weakness of mind.

Peter will be greatly missed.

Yuyutsu,

Peter is not "patient".

Peter likes to carefully set out his argument like a banquet. Unfortunately he has no patience for an opposing point of view, and habitually peppers his feasts with invective and denunciation, often accompanied by a side dollop of BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

Strange, the sort of conduct that impresses some people.

(Btw, only "government" intervention in the form of Factory Acts saved British children from diabolical slave labour in the mills. factories and mines....the libertarian manufactures and mill owners perpetuated the cruelties and fought tooth and nail against regulation.)

Dear Poirot,

Freedom implies the ability to do good or to do bad (and everything in between). Yes, ugly capitalism is one of the possible outcomes, but so is heaven on earth (and everything in between).

The materialistic view (and both socialism and capitalism are materialistic in nature) is that the purpose of life is to improve the world (and it's beyond the scope of this article to explain why that is not possible). In contrast, the spiritual view is that we are here in this world in order to improve ourselves, the world itself being merely incidental. We cannot however improve ourselves just by having our hands, feet and mouth move a certain way - we need to INTEND to do better, which can only come by free choice.

By denying someone the freedom to do be a pig, you also deny their chance to become a saint. They may perform the outward actions you want them to perform (and what does it make of you but a slave-master!) but they will never reform this way, never grow. As you have killed their spirit, their very purpose to be here on earth, as you reduced them into dead/inanimate objects, you might as well do them a favour and kill them physically instead.

I don't think we can settle our differences:

For you it seems, that progress occurs when no one is hungry, when all mouths are fed.
For me, progress occurs when the factory-owner changes their heart of stone, overcomes his greed and chooses, out of the goodness of their new heart, to treat his employees well.

No amount of outside pressure can do that.

Yuyutsu,

"For me, progress occurs when the factory owner changes their heart of stone, overcomes his greed and chooses, out of the goodness of their new heart, to treat his employees well."

It's unfortunate, in that case, that we're discussing humans in harness of the will to profit. Not all factory and mill owners were heartless, but it seems that a majority didn't blink an eye to the cruelties inflicted on their workforce, particularly the children.

Here's a piece by John Fielden MP from "The Curse of the Factory System" (1836) (which I've posted before, but it's pertinent here)

"...The small and nimble fingers of little children being by far the most in request, the custom instantly sprang up of procuring "apprentices" from the different parish workhouses of London, Birmingham, and elsewhere....The custom was for the master to clothe his apprentices and to feed and lodge them in an "apprentice house" near the factory; oversees were appointed to see to the works, whose interest it was to work the children to the utmost, because their pay was in proportion to the quantity of work they could extract....cruelties of the most heartrending were practiced upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who were thus consigned to the care of the master-manufacturers; that they were harassed to the brink of death by excess of labour, that they were flogged, fettered, and tortured in the most exquisite refinement of cruelty; that they were, in many cases, starved to the bone while flogged to their work...."

I'm afraid that we'd still be waiting for these factory owners to find their "new hearts" if government regulation hadn't prevailed.

Found this today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-industrial-revolution-was-powered-by-child-slaves-2041227.html