Slavery and oppression of blacks violates the same moral rules as oppression of businessmen

"My opponent seems to have abandoned his original claim. He now states that this debate is not about whether businessmen are enslaved and oppressed, as he originally stated. He now says "there was an initiation of force" against them," Oppression= initiation of force. Slavery =claim of ownership in another human being without their permission. The essence of taxes. :) "Here, he is clearly likening the "initiation of force" against businessmen as "slavery" and "suffering", not simply an unambiguous definition of "initiation of force". " The initiation of force causes suffering. :) " -Here he clearly shows how he intended to prove his point on initiation of force by imprisonment using the case of US vs. Alcoa. Alcoa won that decision" Time for a history lesson, no it didn't: http://blogs.wsj.com... "and "prison" was never an option for the government." Try resisting the ruling and see what happens. EVERY government action implies prison or death as the final consequence of disobedience. Without that, the government has no power. "but later concedes that Alcoa won this ruling, and changed his comments to "The assertion of ownership by the government that lead to Alcoa having to bow and scrape before a court in the first place, and still leads to Alcoa's continued payment of dividends from the government's ownership share in the life of every last shareholder into the US treasury"." I'd taken your lies for granted, sorry :). "1. Businessmen have not been stripped of their culture. They operate within the culture of Capitalism" Capitalism has never existed anywhere. They operate within the government-imposed culture of Keynesianism. "which has rules and regulations designed to protect the individual, and the fundamentals of capitalism- the right to individual ownership" Capitalism would. The actual rules that do exist are designed to attack the individual and the right to individual ownership. "In fact, some of these rules and regulations helped free the slaves from the tyranny of businessmen in the first place. It was businessmen who took, sold, traded, and used slaves." Feudal lords, which is in essence what the slaveowners were =/= productive businessmen. To be a "businessman" is to organize willing workers to provide products at a profit. " 2. My opponent has failed to show how businessmen have been systematically robbed from their homes as African slaves were. He has failed to even make the comparison through "imprisonment" as he suggested in R1." This is completely nonessential, nevertheless, it is common practice to send men to prison for tax evasion-- i.e, denying that the government's ownership share in them is valid :). " 3. My opponent has failed to show how systematic imprisonment of businessmen has separated them from their children and families as it occurred with the African slaves." Prison tends to do that to such an extent it's really rather pointless to show. They don't imprison the children and families WITH them after all. :) "He claims that the method of enslavement has nothing to do with a comparison of moral rules, but I affirm that it does. The slaveowners violated one set of moral rules that were not criminal in their time and society, but the pirates who stole the slaves (especially after 1808) violated those moral rules, as well as the laws barring them from continuing the slave trade." You're focusing on the law to prove moral comparisons, this is invalid. Law=/= morality. " 5. My opponent has failed to show how the government owns businessmen. He has made veiled remarks about taxes" Nothing veiled. Taxation is the claim of dividends for a certain percentage ownership share in the individual. Demanding payment for that which you do not own is nonsensical, therefore, the claim of right to such payment is a claim of ownership. "This government is of the people, by the people, and for the people," Ambiguous collective fallacy. "and taxation helps to run the government" And picking cotton helps run a plantation. "If businessmen are "conceptually" slaves to this system, we are all, and we are all responsible for establishing and continuing this system as it is we who choose our government." Ambiguous collective fallacy again. "African slaves did not have this option, nor did they have the pride to say "I am a slave of 'so and so'". I can say I am proud to pay my taxes and be a productive member of this society, as can a hundred million other citizens." Many slaves in fact have prided themselves on good service, even the African ones. The fact of pride for some individuals does not alter the fact of slavery. " 6. My opponent has failed to show how businessmen were beat and tortured" I never attempted to. It's nonessential. " 7. My opponent has failed to show how the rape of innocent women somehow compares to the rape of guilty men by other guilty men. He later changed his claim to "innocent men" being imprisoned, and so "neither law can be justified". What law?" These women were guilty of not escaping their masters when the law stated that they were owned and could do nothing but what the master said, just like the businessmen were guilty of not escaping the government when the law stated they could do nothing but what the government said. Neither law is justified, no law is justified which forbids anything other than a violation of rights. The "guilt" of doing business with willing people to earn one's supper is no more valid an excuse than the "guilt" of being black. Both were punishable by law however :). " 8. My opponent has failed to show how businessmen have been forced to forget their given names. He has shown how employees of a business are given an employee number, and how citizens are given a social security number, but neither is related simply to businessmen because they are businessmen. It is businessmen who force the assignment of an employee number in the first place." A businessman cannot force you to become their employee, you can work for someone else or yourself, with no limits on your production in any of these arrangements except those imposed by nature. A government, however, forces you to work for them or not at all, i.e., to work for them or die from not having any means to feed oneself. One can choose a different tyrannical government, but one cannot choose to strike out on one's own in this regard, there is no place to do so. It is, by the way, impossible to force someone to forget something except by means of brain damage, which was not in fact common practice among Southern slaveowners to my knowledge :). "My opponent has not shown how going to court has anything to do with being a businessman. He made suggestions of "mobs shouting" and being encouraged by the government, but has shown no examples." It's known as an election-- a mob consisting of the majority of the people, shouting for what they want to be stolen from the businessmen next. "Indeed preventing them from doing so would be a violation of the mob's free speech" But failing to listen would not :). " My opponent originally claimed "The fundamental moral rules violated by both cases are the rights to liberty and property, both of which are consequences of the right to life". He has failed to prove this point. He conceded this point by changing his argument to "I meant simply the initiation of force"." This is not a change. These rules are different phrasings of the same reality. The initiation of force necessarily equates to the violation of one of these rights, and vice versa.