When people are used by others without consideration of conflicting goals.  Oftentimes the exploiter does not know the conflicting goal exist.  I don’t think this was payed attention to until the 19th century.  Before that, ideas about a fairer society were mostly aimed at the arbitrariness of people in positions of power.  But there are many examples of people being systematically exploited.  Either there is a person who exploit many others.  Or it is common for people to exploit one or a small number of others.

Breeding slavery: When men require reproductive monopoly on many women for this purpose.  This can be anything form just a few to a few dozen women.  Regardless, he requires monopoly on them to maximise the number of his own children.  If they are not sexually attracted to the other women, they get almost no sex at all.

Child slavery: When children aged 4½ ‒ 12 are forced to use so much time for manual labour it harms their psychological development.  Then I mean they don’t have time and energy to socialize and discover the world around them.  At worst they don’t even have time to sleep as much as they need.

Colonialism: When people from one country lay hands on the profits from another country’s natural resources.  A country as such earns little or nothing on the resources it has itself.  Instead, the profits go to foreigners from a more economically advanced country.  Historically this have required military conquest however, this is no longer necessary.

Forced marriage: When someone is forced to marry another without consideration of the individuals’ mental characteristics.  Instead they are only based on economic or political advantages.  At best such a practice is an emotional lottery.  At worst it is laid out for one abusing another.

Prostitution: When people are forced or fooled to have sex several times a day in order to make a living from it.  It is not humanly possible to enjoy such large amounts of sex.  Some are not even capable of enjoying sex at all.  This applies to many child prostitutes as well as people victim to genital mutilation.

Serfdom: When people are forced to live and work within a certain area.  Another person then has the right to demand their work or parts of their production.  How much is decided by this person who as such can demand as much as he or she likes.  The only thing stopping it is if the person can see they become less exploitable.

Trading monopoly: When one organisation is the only one available to buy something from.  Either it has legal monopoly on this specific good or place.  Or the seller is the only one physically available to buyer.  In both cases the seller can demand any price it likes.

Wage slavery: When people are forced to work unreasonably much just to make a living.  I mean they work so much it is harming their health.  At worst not even that is enough to make ends meet.  Then people are still dependent on welfare or charity despite working too much.

Work slavery: When humans are owned like livestock and can be bought and sold as such.  Not only has the owner the right to demand their labour.  As a rule, slaves are entirely without legal rights in relation to their owners.  Then there is nothing stopping slave owners from behaving as bad as they like.

The boundaries between different forms are not always so sharp.  Take for example Russian serfs between 1679 (abolishment of slavery) and 1866 (abolishment of serfdom).  They could be bought and sold but were not legal to kill.  I don’t know to what degree the later rule was followed.  There does not seem to have been any system for keeping their rulers responsible.  If so you can’t presuppose people to keep with the rules.

There are still people defending different forms of one-sided exploitation.  They tend to commit many errors out of which some are logical fallacies.  However, there are many other errors which don’t qualify as such.  Then it is a matter of thought patterns which still give the wrong idea of others.  I will not list the ones I see as severely outdated.  As for example accusing others of being in league with the Devil.  How many present-day Westerners are there which even listen to that?  It seems to belong to the 17th century rather than the 21st century.

Accusation of national traitor: To accuse one’s opponents for being the tools of foreigners.  As if members of a certain ethnic group could not by themselves want something else than the accuser.  The accused does not even have to feel like being part of the ethnic group they are ascribed too.  Yet they are assumed to betray a loyalty they never have had.

Black and white thinking: To place everything which don’t quite fit into a specific category in another category.  No more categories are allowed and no border cases are admitted.

Circular reasoning: To presuppose something to be true in order to show it to be true.  Alternatively, the way one thought leads to another can be described as a circle.

Clanism: The belief that someone’s biological decent on either the father’s or the mother’s side determines a person’s characteristics.  Most human characteristics are only partially hereditary.  To the extent they are hereditary it is still a matter of probability.  A probability which also decrease by about half for each degree of relationship.

Classism: The belief that members of different social classes would have different abilities.  What is humanly possible to members of a social class is supposed not to be this for others.  Oftentimes, individuals in a position of power are presupposed to be good people just because of that.  If their position of power lacks systematic checks and balances rather the opposite applies.

Predetermined conclusion: To always daw the same conclusion regardless of what one comes across.  It is also called Morton’s fork after John Morton.  He would have used this thinking error to extort money from nobles he presupposed they had.

Racism: The belief that people of noticeably recent decent from different parts of the world would have different mental nature.  Alternatively, people from different countries are believed to be made for different cultures.  I have already explained here why evolution does not allow for this.

Sexism: The belief that differences between men and women would be essential.  Current science only gives support for some characteristics being more common among men or women.  Moreover, there are about 4% which can’t be categorised so easily.  Sexists then argue as if the genitals one was born with decided someone’s characteristics.  That 0,5% are born with ambiguous genitals they likely don’t know.

Tunnel vision: To argue as if one’s goal could only be reached by a certain method.  That some other method may work the person don’t spend a thought at.

Victim blaming: That the one or ones who suffered the worst consequences of an occurrence would have caused the event.  Alternatively, the condition of the person or group would have invited to the occurrence.  In both cases their suffering is belittled or even denied entirely.

Villain labelling: To assume one’s opponents to be willing to destroy for themselves and/or others just because they are opponents.  Then one does not say outright that one’s opponents are evil.  Instead, one argues as if they were.

Please note that people doing these errors themselves think they do right.  About logical fallacies the person is too home blind to see his or her errors.  Or someone has never learned that such thinking leads the wrong way.  Otherwise, it is stereotypes which are assumed to apply to every single case.  But it does not at all have to be so.

 

Uploaded on the 12th of April 2023.