https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8O4y7wsjg
A classic debate between the idealist and the cynic. Which one is more right about the origins of political freedom...or are they even right at all? This is a setting where every conspiracy theory is true after all.ANNETTE
Political freedom is "rhetoric?"
CHARLOTTE
A necessary deception of the industrial age.
ANNETTE
A realization, rather, of the value of human life.
CHARLOTTE
Human life was valuable only in one sense. Suddenly any person was a unit of
labor in the factory system, roughly equivalent to all others, and was therefore
a transferable resource...
ANNETTE
It was the greatest age this planet has ever seen! The age of invention, of
self-reliance, of the individual artist.
CHARLOTTE
...And transferable resources must be free to move about, in response to market
forces. That's "freedom." Now that most people don't produce anything of value --
ANNETTE
We're talking about the inherent worth of an individual, not economic utility.
CHARLOTTE
Now that only a few people create wealth - the scientists, engineers, bankers,
and so on - we require an arrangement of the few over the inert mass the rest
of us have become.
ANNETTE
A nation's government does not have to bow down beneath economic laws!
CHARLOTTE
That is where we differ. I believe the evolution is always in that direction.
Though the exploitation of the working class during the Industrial Revolution seems to lend more credence towards Charlotte, the cynic...