What about if, without an existing government, some people were tricked into becoming slaves held by force, being incommunicado in a fortified compound. Why would this be impossible?
It’s not impossible. It’s completely feasible.
I say, “I will work for you for my entire life if you just provide basic food and shelter.”
He may simply not see that as slavery.
A euphemism you might prefer is “perpetual, lifetime servitude.”
Slaves in the market aren’t slaves, then. Just individuals offering perpetual servitude in exchange for the equal trade (since value is subjectively ordinal) of basic subsistence.
He gave Walter Block’s book, “Defending the Indefensible,” a very positive review.
Dude, that happens under the current government…
It only involves fraud (tricked into becoming slaves), coercion (held by force) and theft (of labor) so I can’t see any rational person having any moral issues with a situation like that.
As to your ‘without government’ question, I would say that without government or any other method to protect human rights that slavery isn’t only possible but virtually inevitable.
Witness the ‘child solders’ in African lawless areas and the ‘sex slave’ trade that exists today.
Human beings having volition and the fact that they can’t throw it away unless they don’t mind harming the means enabling the control of the body means that under no circumstances can a human being truly be a volountary slave. You are not a slave if you agree to what is happening - this is called cooperation. Some people, masochists for example, will willfully do things I would not. Are they slaves if they agree to subject themselves to their master’s wishes? If they do it, its simply because they get something out of it and that although you may not agree that they benefit from this, they will beg the contrary. Slavery happens when you are forced to do something against your will under the threat of force.
Please, kindly help yourself outside these forums. You are embarrassing yourself.
Oi, double posting…
The is a big, huge as de Nile difference between someone agreeing to work for basic food and shelter and grabbing someone on the African plains, shipping them to another continent and forcing them to work against their will for the rest of their useful lives. Frickin’ massive difference.
What if this person who ‘sold them self into slavery’ decided to back out of the deal? What recourse would the party that now lost the services of this individual have against them?
They couldn’t force them into a continuation of the arrangement, that would involve coercion, so the only thing they could do would be to exercise the contractual clause that was included to deal with exactly this occurrence.
They did include a ‘breach of contract’ clause right?
I’m tending to agree with the ‘grasping at straws’ assessment of your argumentative base.
You have it almost right. Anything goes as long as no human is coerced.
By the way, that free trade is amoral is not a contention it is a truism.
Are not the above statements contradictory?
I’m perfectly capable of throwing away my volition, in three ways:
#1. Supporting the government and having them make decisions for me.
#2. Suicide. Can’t have volition if I’m dead.
#3. Selling my right to volition to a private entity, like Walter Block.
You can say it’s wrong, but it’s not “impossible.”
Now, you might not consider that slavery since volition is never transferred, merely total control over the person’s physical body, and that’s fine. That’s a technicality. As I said, “perpetual servitude” is a suitable euphemism.
As for the rest of what you said, very little of what you said contradicted anything I did. Yes – according to praxeology, if I sell a lifetime of servitude in exchange for basic subsistence, I am voluntarily cooperating out of subjective, ordinal self-interest
We’re not really in disagreement at any given point. I think you’re just disturbed by the terms “slavery” and “perpetual servitude.”
Perhaps a better euphemism: Perpetual cooperation. Is that an accurate description?
If free trade per se is amoral, then is free trade in slaves immoral?
I’m not sure I’d call free trade totally amoral, since both involve parties in a trade must respect the other’s property rights (else they’d call it theft).
However, you are confusing the issue. The morallity isn’t in the trade, but in the appropriation. Slaves were appropriated by force. Their lives were effectively stolen from them. In addition, the lives of their offspring were also stolen. This is not trade, this is theft.
Anything stolen can be traded. I can steal someone’s wallet and use their money to buy goods and services. I can steal a car and sell it. Under some of the logic being displayed here, free trade in cars and the use of currency would be immoral because thieves trade in these things by selling stolen goods. Obviously this is not the case; the trade is a neutral process and the immorality originates from the original theft.
Some other people have pointed out the role of government. I wouldn’t go so far as to say slavery can only exist within a govenment, but I think the government is a strong enabler. Without the security of government-backed slavery, no one would go to the expense of shipping Africans across the Pacific only to have them run away at the first opportunity. In other words, government action created the market for slaves.
Look Nathyn, I am really trying to stay civil here but you are making it difficult. You act like a child and your reasoning is not unlike one which would be expected from such child.
As I said, the only way to get rid of your volition is through the destruction of your body. How good is a dead slave?
“Yes – according to praxeology, if I sell a lifetime of servitude in exchange for basic subsistence, I am voluntarily cooperating out of subjective, ordinal self-interest”
Wrong again: If you agree to such a bargain, it is precisely because you are doing so out of self-interest. The moment you decide that you don’t want to be a slave anymore, you are by that very fact of thinking proving that actually selling yourself to slavery is impossible if it is not done on a continually volountary basis.
I’ll spare you the “gruesome” details, but I did have a mistress in the “master” sense of the term a couple years ago. I had my own reasons to get into such a bargain, but regardless of what others may have thought I got non-pecuniary advantages that I, myself, am the only one capable of judging the value. This was done on a completely voluntary basis. One day I got tired of this and broke out of the deal. Was I really a slave?
"Now, you might not consider that slavery since volition is never transferred, merely total control over the person’s physical body, and that’s fine. That’s a technicality. As I said, “perpetual servitude” is a suitable euphemism. "
And hence the crux of this technical problem: If you cannot transfer volition out of the body, “the body” only follows your orders inasmuch as the volition inside agrees to do it. Of course, you may use force to bend the will of your slave, but at this point this is no longer voluntary slavery isn’t it?
You are probably childishly refering to the fact that people can physically write on a piece of paper that they are selling away their body and volition, thus completely walking around and avoiding the fact that writing words on a sheet of paper does not change the laws of reality.
The difference hasn’t really been noticeable, in practice, because historically people have still just referred to both as “slavery.” When you see a half-naked person who has no control over their life, you don’t see whether or not that action was entered into through contract or coercion. All you see is just a hale-naked person who has no control over their life.
In some cases, like in Africa, slavery was compulsive. In a lot of others cases, such as modern slavery, people became slaves-by-debt. It’s the basis for laws banning slavery and allowing for bankruptcy.
If you owe me a lot of money and don’t pay up, according to Anarchism, I have the right to seize your assets, if not simply use violence… If the only thing you have is you, then what do I do?
This is a strictly metaphysical objection!
What you’re saying is, “You can’t sell your self or your body,” but you can sell the permanent, unhindered use of your body.
So, even if you claim it’s not slavery, you’re still acting like a slave and living like one.
You mean like how having sex is like rape except the concept of consensuality?
That is a good question. Obviously the appropriation of slaves is immoral. But what about the trader who simply buys and sells them?
The trader could free the slaves he buys. But then he would quickly run out of money, and not be able to buy any more. In short, he’d leave the business. The slaves he did not end up buying would stay slaves.
The trader could buy slaves and take care to only to sell to people he believes will treat the slaves well; doing this would likely be an improvemnet over his not being in the slave trading business at all.
Or, the trader could just buy low and sell high, not caring about the morality of it.
To trade presupposes property, so the trader must recognize the slave as owned property. At the same time, the trader cannot free every slave he trades. The trader is not an enabler of slavery, as he is neither responsible for the supply or the demand. I don’t think its an easy question to answer, but I would say that any slave trader who does not make some effort to assist his slaves is committing an immoral act. He must deny their own self-ownership. I would say the trader who recognizes the injustice of the system and words to correct it, by any means, is acting morally, even if he is buying and selling slaves in the process.
The physical states are the similar, but the thoughts going on in her head are going to be totally different.
If I’m a slave-by-contract, I’m going to do my job, but I’m still going to think, “This is b******t!”
If I’m a slave-by-coercion, once again, I’m going to do my job, but I’m still going to think, “This is b******t!”
Now, the difference in mental states between a rape victim and someone just having sex are worlds apart.
No they haven’t. Throughout most of human history, people were half-naked and barely in charge of their own lives. They were confined to subsistence hunting, gathering and farming and survival dictated most all actions. They had no human master, and so we do not call them slaves. You might say they are slaves to nature or subsistence, but historians do not refer to the poor (who made up the vast majority of all people throughout time) people as “slaves”. I would refer to someone who was tricked into servitude (via obscufucated contracts, such as debt, or whatever) as a slave, but I don’t think many other people would.
Then why did you sign the contract? Were all your options bullshit, and you selected the lesser of the evils? In that case, doesn’t the problem lie with the circumstances which put you in your position, and not the existence of servitude contracts?
Honestly, many contracts include penalties for defaulting on them. This is done to re-imburse the company for profits lost due to an employee quiting unexpectedly, as well as to discourage such behavior.
Like I wrote earlier: I have been there and done that. I thought this was an extremely fun experience and we both had our own reason to get into this deal. How can you explain I did not think " This is b******t!" ?
The difference between a voluntary act and a non-voluntary act is like that of night and day. If it applies to sex vs rape, it also applies to everything, else its not a universal concept and that volition to do something is important must thereafter be rejected.
No. Slavery is immoral. Free trade is an entirely seperate issue. As Grant has nicely illustrated.
Umm, no.
The first is saying that without government protection for the slave holders that slavery is impossible.
The second is saying that without a method for protecting human rights, be it government or other means, that slavery is possible.
So human rights == no slavery and no human rights == slavery.