The loss of the concept of consent

One of the deepest problems in the world is the loss of the concept of consent.

Just because something is foolish or even immoral *does not* entail that it's justified to *prevent* it. There's a huge gap there. You just can't go from "it would be better if everyone did X", or even "everyone *should* do X", to "we should *make* everyone do X". Consent means nothing unless it means that you must allow others to make foolish and even immoral choices. If you don't believe in doing that, you don't believe in consent.

The most revealing form of this is the way American neoliberals talk about their designs for the world. I hear them ask "what are the *pros and cons* of (forcing people to do) X", and "to even out wealth, we should tax it", and "mass slavery would have 3 main benefits". They phrase things from an impersonal perspective, as if there's no such thing as something that's *not your decision*.

"to even out wealth, we should tax it"

"mass slavery would have 3 main benefits"

I once explained to a neoliberal that drivers' licenses are tyranny because it's unjust to use violence against people for no other crime than driving without your approval. His response: "Well, I don't know if we can just get rid of that whole system... I'd wanna see some certification before I let someone drive." To him, all decisions are his. If he thinks it would be safer, it's just automatically justified to impose it on *other* people, no matter how much cruelty it takes to enforce it.

The enforcement fallacy

The worst part of it all is their insistence that child slavery is good for children. The US *vice fucking president* unironically advocated putting parents in jail for *truancy*. The same one who in the debates raged about anti-abortion advocates wanting to "control women's bodies".

School is slavery

Kamala Harris quote

Hell, even my early philosophies were influenced by this! I was a "Chaos Anarchist" before what I am now, where I basically imagined a society with a weak concept of property and everyone would fight and take from others to get the resources to accomplish what they thought was right. I had been trained to undervalue property rights - in other words, to undervalue consent.

Property ethics

Moral conflict