So how do you propose we take out the garbage then? Or are we supposed to make sure that everyone is paid equally? Where does value come from?
By the way, there is no such thing as a “slave wage.” Big time oxymoron.
I’m not sure there can be much discussion with someone who would define Frederick Douglass as a laborer and not a slave. Have fun “not being confused”.
“This is rather ambiguous and does not provide a clear distinction between various types of productive activity. There’s no doubt that slaves, laborers, land owners and capitalists are productive, but the question is, what is the key (essential) difference amongst them? How are they defined? Typically, they are defined by their respective forms of remuneration: slaves earn nothing, laborers earn wages, land owners rent and capitalists earn interest.”
Slaves earned wages. What defined them is:
A.) they were usually, not always, a minority. Most were African Americans and Indians but Indian slavery died out due to African slavery.
B.) It was involuntary servitude. Slaves were not voluntarily contracted to work such as indentured servants.
So in a sense GotLucky is correct in thinking that it is more about the social aspect then the economic aspect when it comes to defining slaves. A good book about the slave market in antebellum America is Soul by Soul by Walter Johnson. He actually shows that slaves participated in the market experience by utilizing a degree of power over their masters in relation to the selling or buying of slaves. A slave might be more willing to be traded if the family remained intact or they might feign sickness in order to dodge being sold to cruel buyers. He also debunks the myth that all slaves were constantly beaten and tortured. There were instances of it but it was not a widespread practice because white farmers perceived slaves as a commodity that was not meant to be damaged due to their high cost. It’s ghastly how the commercialization of Africans happened but it is not a subject that should be hushed up.
I’m wondering about Obama, who is a mullato.
Does his white half owe anything to his black half because the black half was enslaved by his white half before the Civil War?
Slavery long predates the use of African and Indian slaves. In fact, the word itself is a reference to the Slavic people who were widely enslaved during the middle ages.
It is undoubtedly involuntary. Being forced to work without any form of compensation/remuneration always requires coercion.
Maybe he can elaborate on what he means, on the ‘social aspect’ you mention. As it stands now, his definition is entirely incoherent.
At some points in his life he was a laborer and at others, he was a slave. Get it?
There is a lot loaded in here. So, first let’s put some context on the table.
- When Nike or gets subsidies, tax breaks, or even direct protection from competition for labor from a second or third world govermnet, that’s not a free market.
- Whether or not the first condition applies, the other piece of context you need is to ask whether or not the worker is being forced by threat of violence, or is simply choosing to take that job due to a lack of viable alternatives.
If the worker is being threatened or the private corporation/government are preventing competition, then we would argue that it’s not free market and that the institutions involved are violating the rights of the workers.
Even if the first option is happening, the laborers are choosing the job. This necessarily implies that they view this “ridiculously low wage” as better than their alternatives. If you kick the 12 year old malaysian boy or girl out of the factory job, where do they go and what do they do instead? Remember all economics questions need to consider not just the seen effects but the unseen effects also. So, instead of laboring for even less in some other job that’s harder, or scavenging for food/clothing in dumps, or a life of crime stealing to feed him or herself, or finally the one we all deplore most the sex trade.
You might wish to reread what I wrote. I provided no definition. I was merely critiquing your definition for not covering the social aspects of slavery.
He was a slave until he escaped from the South. Until that point, he was owned by others in the eyes of the law. Using your definition, during the times of his life when he was owned by others but still earned wages (and even kept some for himself), he was not a slave but a laborer.
If that does not fit your definition of slavery, so be it. I think that is a poor distinction between slave and laborer, and I think that is all I have to say on the matter.
I’m asking you to elaborate on the ‘social aspects’ of slavery that you continuously raise as problem with my definition. What are they? How are they unique to the phenomena of slavery? Do they provide clear distinctions that avoid ambiguity? So far, the only thing I know is that you’re not satisfied with my definition of slavery, but I don’t know why.
This is merely a legal aspect and is quite irrelevant to the actual phenomena at hand. The fact that an individual is legally considered an ‘adult’ at the age of 18, by the law, says absolutely nothing about ‘adulthood’ and/or maturity in general.
Indeed, the same way that I’m a capitalist when I earn interest on bonds and a laborer when I punch in at work.
this is completely untrue. Those categories are defined by the nature of the working relationship. Laborers can earn piecework or a salary. Land owners as producers are defined by the fact that they permit someone to use their land productively, the question of whether they collect rent is not relevant to the definition of terms. Capitalists accumulate capital and reinvest it, this is the nature of a capitalist. The term used to describe his earnings is irrelevant. Slavery is involuntary servitude, the issue of pay is irrelevant.
Initially I completely agreed that someone getting wages is by definition not a slave, but now thinking more about it I think it’s quite possible for someone to be getting a wage while still being a slave. Surely some slaveowners recognised the power of incentives. If you own me, force me to labor for you, yet offer me an incentive to do a better job, am I not still a slave?
At this point though the 2 concepts are working against each other, to the extent that I am working for the positive incentive I am a laborer, to the extent that I am working because of your power of coercion over me I am a slave. This still isn’t exact, but I think it brings things a little closer.
Does his white half owe anything to his black half because the black half was enslaved by his white half before the Civil War?
Thats a good question except for the part where the black half didnt descend from slaves but the white half did.
do you know whether unpaid volunteers are slaves or not? Because that should answer your question.
You mean like the pretentious, condescending, overly-flowery, muddled language you used above to defend your undeserved, unsubstantiated, shit-eating sense of superiority over Got Lucky, a much more informed and consistent thinker than you have shown yourself to be?
To the original question, I want to ask if these low wage workers even care about me!
"Slavery long predates the use of African and Indian slaves. In fact, the word itself is a reference to the Slavic people who were widely enslaved during the middle ages. "
Oh my mistake, I thought we were talking about slavery in America.
“It is undoubtedly involuntary. Being forced to work without any form of compensation/remuneration always requires coercion.”
I think there are examples of slavery in which it can have both compensation and non-compensation. Like in the classical era, you were a slave and you didn’t get paid. At least that is what I have heard, I’m not a classical historian. I do know that African and Indian slaves in the United States did get compensation. So really a determining factor in defining slavery is not so much the question of compensation but the fact that it is involuntary which we both agree on.
Let’s ALL overuse this meme!
Actually, it was used properly both times.
Anyway, I hope we do not offend Esuric away. He does provide intelligent discussion in his posts.
Esuric’s posts on economics rarely contain errors, to the extent I can tell.