More on Mandatory Blood Donation

As faithful readers and people who exerted the effort to look directly to the left to see "Popular Posts" already know, one of my greatest hits is a post on mandatory blood donation.  It is of course an absurdity to stand for individual freedom and also advocate for mandatory blood donation, but is it really the worst thing a citizen of the united States might be subjected to?  Consider this:

• If you are a male over the age of 18, you have probably registered for the selective service.  As I write this, you are in no danger of being drafted, i.e. forced into slavery and subjected to mortal danger during war time.  I cannot speak for the future.  From the website of the selective service "In a crisis requiring a draft, men would be called in sequence determined by random lottery number and year of birth."  This brings a whole new meaning to the word "service". Sears' call center isn't looking so bad now. 
• If you work for a living in sectors of the economy visible to the eyes of the law, somewhere on the order of one-third to one-half of all of your earnings are taken by one government or another.  Now of course, you may receive some benefits and services as a result, but nevertheless, your payments are not truly voluntary, contrary to the assertions of Harry Reid. 

To me, a pint of blood here or there pales in comparison to risking my life and having a large chuck of my earnings taken before touching my bank account.   So why don't they do it?  It makes so much sense; most people could spare the blood, especially the young and healthy who benefit so much from the system of law and order created single-handedly by government.

They don't do it, because the force in the process is too obvious.  Evan an idiot like Harry Reid cannot fail to see the needle in the arm, even though he seems oblivious to the gun in the room. 

The Not So Fundamental Right to Vote

It's time to elect the "leader of the free world" again.  How wonderfully contradictory by the way.  Everywhere you look there are proclamations that you need to get out there, exercise your fundamental right and vote.  After all, I learned in High School government class that if you don't vote you can't complain about the political system.  We cheer when nations around the world hold their first elections - finally liberty and justice for all!  We've rallied to war under the battle cry of "making the world safe for democracy."  People just have to be able to vote.  Anything less would be uncivilized.  Our own nation's past with respect to the right to vote is anything but perfect.  At one point only property owning white males could vote, but over time we have seen the light and opened it up every adult.  Occasionally, there will be an uproar over attempts to restrict voting only to those with identification, and it makes for exciting news stories.

Now I take no umbrage with everyone having the privilege to vote, but I can no longer stomach the cognitive dissonance required to embrace voting as the be-all and end-all of human rights.  For instance, while we have been arguing over which individuals should have the opportunity to have zero influence over the make up of government by voting, we have had military conscription.  Now to be fair we don't currently have the draft, but there are politicians who salivate at reinstating it in one form or another.

What good is the right to choose your masters without the right to your own life?

Conscription vs. Slavery

I don't know why I torture myself with useless and difficult thought experiments, but I find myself debating which is worse between military conscription and chattel slavery.  This brings to mind the schoolyard debate over whether it would be worse to burn or freeze to death.  I think in order to openly debate myself on this question without bringing offense to too many readers I must remove the quandary from its historical context.  To clarify, I am not considering the difference between being a slave in the antebellum American South or an Egyptian pyramid laborer on the one hand and fighting for the "good guys" in any of the various attempts to "make the world safe for democracy" on the other.  I don't think such a question could be answered, and frankly, it doesn't interest me in the slightest.

So imagine the situation that a war started tomorrow and a draft was instituted the day after.  Your number was called and your only opportunity to avoid compulsory military service was to submit to slave labor to a private farmer for a period of time equal to the alternative military term.  What would your preference be?

When placed in this context, I think the decision is easy.  I would much prefer private slavery to groveling before the state for the privilege of having my ass shot off.  Clearly the risk of death is less in slavery, and the risk of killing is practically zero.  Further, in slavery I could appeal to the good nature of a single person as opposed to the mob (a.k.a. the democratic majority), an entity with no heart and no brain.  I have no delusions of being set free as that would sort of ruin the thought experiment, but it is nice to know that I could  at least try for favorable treatment.