Comment by fallingfrog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fallingfrog | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a nonzero chance that slavery reemerges in a different form in the next century. We're not that far from it now.

Imagine this: you are offered an LEC (Lifetime Employment Contract) with some property owner. The contract states that you are to give the holder of the LEC 8 hours a day of your labor, and that's it. Beatings and other forms of physical punishment are illegal. In return, you get guaranteed room and board, education for you and your kids, free medical care, for life, even into retirement. And in exchange for that contract, they will give you 500,000 dollars. And hey, you can always work extra hours and buy your contract back, right? Of course, if you learn new skills, your contract will become more valuable, so harder to buy back.. but if your contract is bought for more money, then your new contract holder will likely put you up in a nicer residence anyway. Would you make that deal? Or the real question is- if you offered that deal to that lady working at the local supermarket checkout counter, would she take that deal? Of course she would. Slavery is evil and soul-crushing even if it could be stripped of its racial and more brutal elements. But how different is the life of my hypothetical contractual slave from the life of the average low wage worker today? If anything, I'd say they are treated worse now than they would be under slavery. I mean, how free are we really? It seems that the situation described in the article where slaveholders run the government is not too different from our situation today, and I'd argue that people with a lot of power think like slaveholders too.

A lot of people hold the misconception that slavery is simply a system of working without pay. In some times and in some places, possibly that is true. But that's not how it worked in America. We're pretty far from slavery in America now.

There are so many obvious differences, but let's start with the foundation. A slave is not a person and therefore has no more legal rights than my armchair or my goldfish. A slave is personal property, livestock. Being able to enter (and breach) contracts is something people can freely choose to do.

The holder of an LEC would have obligations and limits specified in advance. Beatings: illegal. Room and board must meet certain standards. Any deviation and the LEC laborer can sue for breach. Slaves are livestock and can be treated in the manner of the worst factory farms, subject to the owner's whims. The slaveowner cannot breach a contract with livestock. The very idea is absurd.

> you can always work extra hours and buy your contract back, right?

Say what? No, slaves can't buy anything. Livestock doesn't get to possess anything.

> But how different is the life of my hypothetical contractual slave from the life of the average low wage worker today?

Let's go back to the livestock example. The offspring of livestock are livestock, and under law are also owned by the owner of the parent stock. There is no analogue to this in the world of people with any rights under the law. People can have hopes and dreams for their children; human livestock knows their offspring will suffer as they have, if they are even allowed to meet them before they are sold.

We're pretty far from slavery.

(Yes, there are real slaves even now, but it looks like the OP is referring to poor people and not actual modern slaves.)

" A slave is not a person and therefore has no more legal rights than my armchair or my goldfish."

"No, slaves can't buy anything. "

Your mistake is in assuming that "slavery" is a monolithic phenomenon, with identical details across all of history. It wasn't.

For instance, Roman slaves could own property and earn their own money in their free time, and could in fact buy themselves free. It didn't happen often, but it wasn't impossible. The rights of Roman slaves increased even more during the later periods of Roman history.

Similarly, during the period when Europeans were being enslaved into North Africa by the Barbary corsairs, some freed themselves by converting to Islam (it being technically disallowed to enslave a Muslim).

The linked article, and my comments, are about American slavery. (Since we're being pedantic: it's about slavery in the United States of America, and may not apply over the entire American continents.)

Actually, no, you were responding to a post about a hypothetical future "Lifetime Employment Contract", not about historical American slavery.

Sounds unlikely. People aren't that valuable. It's much better to be able to hire someone to replace the fellow who just got in an accident than to sink half a million in today dollars on some guy.

It never left. In the US, the Constitution has an exception that allows slavery for people convicted of crimes. I recently learned this after watching the netflix documentary 13th. As a US citizen I felt a bit ignorant that I didn't know this. Would guess that most people don't. Very insightful film. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

Here is the text of that amendment: "ARTICLE XIII. Section 1. Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime; whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction"

And globally, human trafficking is a huge problem. It is another term for modern day slavery. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-hum...

And the people in power of the prizon-industrial complex have a big role in government. Guess not much has changed.

where can you get offered a Lifetime Employment Contract?

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