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@payalnikk
As for employment, accepting the best (or only) offer available, as unattractive as it might be, is not the equivalent of slavery–a situation in which actual violence, or the threat of it, is used to compel people to labor without pay and without the option to seek other work. Having few alternatives instead of many is hardly the same thing as being compelled by physical force to make a particular choice. A merchant who is driven by competition to sell his wares at lower prices than he had hoped might just as well complain that he too is a victim of circumstances, “forced” to sell at “unjust” prices.
...writers with such views-when they let their guard down-complain about how capitalism has produced too much and allows for too many choices! French Marxist writer Simone de Beauvoir, visiting America, complained of the “shameless profusion of goods” in the drugstores.
The critics sometimes claim that the assets of the larger corporations exceed the GDPs of some smaller nations. But it is hardly fair to contrast corporate assets–which were gained by producing and selling goods consumers were willing to buy–with the revenues of governments, which extract taxes by genuine compulsion, or the threat of it. If I refuse to use Microsoft Word for Windows on my home PC and stick to Word Perfect for DOS instead–as indeed I still do–nothing happens to me. If I refused to pay my taxes, little imagination is required to predict what would happen to me.