Quote from: RE on Mar 10, 2025, 01:52 AMThe master has a right to correct his servant moderately, and if he should die under his correction it is not murther, unless it was done with an offensive weapon or with forethought and without provocation.Quote from: jupiviv on Mar 10, 2025, 12:37 AME- just to clarify, the term "the individual" as used in my brief comment on Protestantism refers to individuals who really matter, i.e not peasants, proles, slaves or servants.
Why don't peasants et al matter?
RE
-Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence
The great philosopher also bitterly denounced slavery in America, especially after they foolishly revolted against the wise and just rule of George III.
It has been the principal cause of the rapid progress of our American colonies towards wealth and greatness that almost their whole capitals have been employed in agriculture... Were the Americans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence, to stop the importation of European manufactures, and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness.
- The Wealth of Nations
Protestantism whether religious or secular mirrors the innate contradiction between universal and particular characteristic of capitalist modernity, because it developed in tandem with capitalism. In the case of climate "action" the universality of net zero in theory becomes in practice: selective denunciation of "fossil fuels" combined with the usual greentopian mythology... in short, NIMBYism.