What do slaveholders think? | Hacker News Reader

What do slaveholders think?

aeon.co

108 pointsnkurz205 comments

I often wondered how slave holders justified their actions. And along those lines, I recall a lecture on Roman slavery. It made the point that it was standard-practice in Roman and other ancient cultures to raid other groups, kill everyone and take their possessions: livestock, food, valuables, etc. That was the way of the world that everyone knew. In the Roman mind, when the raiding party decided to let some people live and sell them into slavery, they were doing the captives a favor. They were saved from death. And from then on the slaves were more-or-less the walking dead with no rights and owing their "masters" everything. They were only alive because of the grace of the invaders. The lecture also noted that there was no writing from Roman times that questioned the morality of slavery. No one thought it was wrong. There are extensive writings from literate slaves themselves, and even these writings fail to question the morality of slavery. And speaking of writing, the Bible was written in a time when slavery was common practice. I don't recall Jesus preaching against slavery or the 10 Commandments coming out against it either.

How do we justify killing animals, including their young, in giant torture factories where rivers of blood flow amidst the cries and horror of the victims, while the killers laugh and laugh, as spy videos show repeatedly?

We don't think about it.

How do we justify letting refugees die on sinking ships in the Mediterranean sea, or on the shores of Europe, including young children?

We don't think about it.

How do we justify bombing civilians, hospitals, wedding parties in remote countries we're not even at war with?

We don't think about it.

It's easy, really. The only thing easier than this, is thinking we're morally superior to the Romans, or to modern slave owners, because we don't "own slaves".

We're not (I'm not vegan btw, and do nothing to stop wars or help refugees). We're worse in many respects.

I think StavrosK is largely right in pointing out that most of your points are things many people think about, talk about, write about and are doing things about. Not only are veganism and vegetarianism both on the rise in the developed world, per capita meat consumption is generally either plateauing or declining in most western countries (though this is of course dwarfed by population growth and increase in consumption in developing countries).

However, even still, most vegetarians are relatively apologetic about their diet, and definitely consider it unacceptable to enforce it on others, or even to preach. They're essentially entirely accepting of this system of mass torture and killing - and most people will even consider that description of this system to be hyperbole, because it's the status quo.

> They're essentially entirely accepting of this system of mass torture and killing - and most people will even consider that description of this system to be hyperbole, because it's the status quo.

Or, alternatively, because they disagree with you.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Sorry if I was unclear. What I meant was that 'system of mass torture and killing' is not a fact, but an opinion. I know plenty of people who find torture and killing abhorrent, but honestly don't believe this applies to the animals we eat.

Personally I disagree with that point of view, but it's a relatively common one and I do believe it should be acknowledged.

You can disagree that animals can perceive pain, or that killing is wrong, but you can't disagree that what we do to them wouldn't be torture and killing if done to a human. Most people also wouldn't disagree that animals react to painful stimuli and would struggle to explain how they don't feel pain.

IMHO this is just a really common form of cognitive dissonance, and that internal discomfort comes out as aggressive dismissal in a lot of people.

>You can disagree that animals can perceive pain, or that killing is wrong, but you can't disagree that what we do to them wouldn't be torture and killing if done to a human.

Keeping a pet dog would also be "kidnapping and slavery" if done to a human, never mind castrating the dog. But few vegans will think twice about it.

(Heck, "domesticating" dogs and cats would be a total crime of "breaking down" and ethnocide if it was done to humans, akin to what Bolson did to Greyjoy in GoT).

So, one can disagree that what we shouldn't do to humans we shouldn't do to animals also -- especially when its about feeding ourselves.

Not to mention that animals kill and eat other animals all the time.

Heck, even the lowly spiders eat much more (in mass) than we do.

This is the kind of line of conversation that I think is often brushed off for being just too far from the status quo to be grokkable but is actually fascinating. It seems you're using these points as some kind of argument for brushing off the idea that causing animal suffering is justified, but I think it rather opens up the nuances of the question even more.

The "kidnapping" point on dogs can be applied to people with intellectual disabilities, mental problems, the elderly, children admitted to state care, heck children in general in many many contexts. "Slavery" is even more easily analogised: even excepting volunteerism, the incarcerated, and unpaid internships, bed-and-board remuneration is the actual closest equivalent. And if you've ever worked with a working dog, you'll be hard pressed to argue they're unwilling. Much happier and more willing to work than most humans tbh.

Castration opens up huge cans of worms. Human overpopulation is a very serious problem but the idea of even dissuading reproduction is completely taboo in our society.

The last point is the most cliché and least interesting. Animals kill and eat eachother because they need to: massive physiological differences result in different nutritional requirements, or simply scarcity in the wild. Even so, it's rare (though not unheard of) to see animals involved in the systematic internment and subjugation to extreme suffering of other species.

>The "kidnapping" point on dogs can be applied to people with intellectual disabilities, mental problems, the elderly, children admitted to state care, heck children in general in many many contexts.

Only dogs don't have "intellectual disabilities, mental problems" etc. They are perfectly fine to function if let in nature.

>And if you've ever worked with a working dog, you'll be hard pressed to argue they're unwilling. Much happier and more willing to work than most humans tbh.

That's because they've been domesticated and/or conditioned from a small age (living with a human, in an apartment et al). They wouldn't "volunteer" to work otherwise.

>The last point is the most cliché and least interesting. Animals kill and eat each other because they need to: massive physiological differences result in different nutritional requirements, or simply scarcity in the wild.

No, they also do it for fun. Ever watched a cat play with its catch (and then not eat it)?

The greater point is that one can be too ethical for their own good. What's next? The rights of mosquitos?

> They are perfectly fine to function if let in nature.

Not really. Domesticated dogs are quite reliant on us.

> That's because they've been domesticated and/or conditioned from a small age (living with a human, in an apartment et al). They wouldn't "volunteer" to work otherwise.

You're right that it's due to domestication, but it's more innate than you make out. It's instinctive, breeds having been conditioned over countless generations.

> they also do it for fun

True, which I mentioned in my next sentence.

To be clear, I'm not making out that it's wrong to kill animals. I'm not a vegan either. But I think discussing these questions is extremely worthwhile.

> The greater point is that one can be too ethical for their own good. What's next? The rights of mosquitos?

Why not? There's been quite a lot of discussion of this on HN in the context of malarial vectors, with many advocating wiping the species out completely and others rebutting with points on previous disastrous examples of human interference in eco systems. There's very interesting research into actually using mosquitos to combat malarial spread.

You could go further and talk about the rights of protozoa. Why not plants. The further you go, the more bombastically ridiculous the conversation seems to get for some (e.g. those holding to the belief that all killing is wrong) but the more interesting it can be for others. For example, if you look at it from the perspective of minimising - rather than eliminating - harm, it becomes an issue of general environmental conservation, and the stereotypical motivations of animal-rights-motivated vs eco-motivated vegans could almost be combined harmonically.

I don't think you're right though. One may disagree that the system is wrong or morally unjustifiable or whichever general view someone may hold there, but it is very much a fact that the meat industry does subject animals to intense suffering and does kill them in large quantities.

My statement is indisputably factual, the only subjective element is whether you believe that system is justifiable.

Depends on the meat. Grass fed beef tends to be treated well as animals are outside eating their natural diet, etc. Huge difference to a feedlot. Saying that the conditions in a feedlot are universal is inaccurate and completely guts your "indisputable facts"

I'm looking around for where I mentioned universality. "in large quantities" is the only vaguely similar term I used, which could still be 0.01% of agricultural practice and qualify as a "large" number of animals. Not that it is 0.01% of course: I live in Ireland where our beef is pretty much universally grass fed, and relatively well treated, but even here the same cannot be said of other meat production (chicken and pork really ain't great), and this is a tiny country, not producing on anywhere near the scale of many outside of Europe where standards are far worse.

I'm all for more advocacy for those involved in meat production who are adhering to a stricter standard of quality and ethics, but there mere existence doesn't negate the overall dreadful impact of the meat industry as a whole on animal welfare.

The only subjective aspect is whether you believe that's a worthy trade-off, but you can't argue that it isn't happening.

> but it is very much a fact that the meat industry does subject animals to intense suffering

>My statement is indisputably factual, the only subjective element is whether you believe that system is justifiable.

That sure sounds to me like it's universal. Which is why I responded the way I did. I'm not arguing that's everything is totally good. But your statement reads as everything is universally bad. Which isn't factually correct, as you've admitted.

Ultimately yes there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the system. But if you only buy animals that were humanely treated it's pretty easy to sleep at night.

>How do we justify killing animals, including their young, in giant torture factories where rivers of blood flow amidst the cries and horror of the victims, while the killers laugh and laugh, as spy videos show repeatedly? We don't think about it.

For bombings yes, but for eating animals that's not the case. Modern city dwelling folks might not "think about it", but for millenia people not only knew all about it, but also do it themselves, with their bare hands, skinning the animal and all, with no problems.

In rural places they still do it, including where the majority of the world's population lives.

I'm actually old enough to have witnessed the killing of a pig on a farm when I was around 10. It wasn't done "with no problems".

For one, it was horrible. The pig, which is quite big an animal, had to be caught in its den by three people. Then it was attached to a wooden ladder with rope, all the while shouting and crying, very much like a person.

And then its throat was cut open with a big knife and it was let to bleed in a big steel bucket, still crying and shouting.

I wasn't allowed to watch but managed to hide and do it anyway (and even if I hadn't been close I would have heard the noise from afar).

People were sad and hated doing it; they actually postponed the deed every day for a week because they liked the pig in question.

Today we see nothing and so it's much easier for us to completely forget about it; farm people were much more involved and cared a lot more.

Eh. I've slaughtered animals.

I'd procrastinate it too, just like mucking out stalls: becuase it's messy and work, not because of moral qualms.

What evidence do you have to support the idea that people "did it with 'no problems'"? Why does the profession of a "Butcher" exist ? How about Hindu's, Buddhists etc?

Maybe people used to enjoy a a more symbiotic relationship with their livestock / prey which doesn't exist now with advent of factory farming, it's just pure exploitation and obviously. I'm sure not everyone in the middle ages or ancient hunter gathered societies would've been fine with that.

Also, the world's population doesn't live in rural areas according to the UN: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-...

> Why does the profession of a "Butcher" exist ?

The same reason the profession of a "Mechanic" exists, specialization allows for greater efficiency.

I occasionally do final trimming on cuts of meat for my family, deboning chicken breast or cutting down a steak or tri-tip. But I'm not quick or efficient at it, so better to let someone else do that and pay them for the service.

Same with doing maintenance and repair work on my family's cars. As I've gotten older and made more money at my specialized profession, I'm shifting from doing all my own car work to paying someone else to do it.

> Why does the profession of a "Butcher" exist ?

Because comparative advantage and the economic benefits of trade and return on specialization exist on the individual level as well as the national level.

Which is also pretty much also a big reason why human societies exist.

>What evidence do you have to support the idea that people "did it with 'no problems'"?

Familiarity with history and humans? Being from a rural area myself, and having seen tons of people (including my grandparents) do it, and having travelled all around the world?

Really, you'll contest that the majority of people killed and ate animals themselves (without some specialist to package them for them) for most of recorded history and still do in tons of places?

>Why does the profession of a "Butcher" exist?

For the same reason that the profession of a cook exists, even though people cook themselves all the time too, and used to cook even more so back in the day.

As with tons of other professions, because cities and towns first and foremost.

Note that the "profession of a butcher" in most rural areas around the world either didn't exist at all as something specialized, or was a place one rarely visited, and only if they didn't have land and/or animals of their own.

Because almost everybody (and surely many more than actual framers, cattle raisers etc) had their own animals, for eggs and wool and occasionally (as it was quite expensive and a treat) meat, not everybody did.

>How about Hindu's, Buddhists etc?

These have sacred animals (and some of them, not all), or religious diets. Those have existed since forever (also fasting certain foods for certain times).

But since you've asked:

A vast majority of Indians ate meat regularly and meat eating was never prohibited in ancient India. Certain sections of society and some ascetic traditions practiced vegetarianism both for religious and spiritual purposes, but it is not true that they constituted the majority.

Meat-eating is strictly prohibited in Jainism, whereas it is conditionally allowed in Hinduism and Buddhism. In all three religions, the rules regarding meat eating are established according to their beliefs regarding karma and virtue such as nonviolence and compassion

Hindu law books prescribe rules for meat eating for the four castes and specify which type of meat is allowed for human consumption and under what circumstances. Buddhist texts also lay down rules for meat eating by the monks.

However, as time went by, meat-eating became a more restrictive practice in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Presently, vegetarianism is a fashion and a vanity among the elite and the middle class Hindus. They may not perform sacrifices, worship gods, or practice virtues such as honesty, compassion towards fellow human beings, charity, etc., but would make sure that everyone knows about their preference for vegetarian food because it is the current trend and gives them an aura of superiority in a community that has taken to the filmy practices of pseudo culture and hybrid lifestyles.

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/concepts/meat-eating.as...

People pay for meat not from stores because slaughter is a difficult, physically demanding, messy and potentially psychologically distressing job. Not just because "butchers are good at it". All I'm refuting is the statement you made about "people doing it without problems".

Slaughter is outsourced for the same reason people pay nurses to change their sick, elderly parents diapers, it's not a pleasant task. Efficiency might be one reason, but there is more too it.

If you do your research, you will find that in a lot of cultures, taking an animals life was not considered a trivial thing, it had to be done properly, by skilled hunters or butchers, with respect and in some cases, a prayer would have to accompany the task. Take Halal for example.

I've also done quite a bit of travelling and my family also have an agricultural background, so I'm not totally ignorant to the processes and attitudes discussed.

>People pay for meat not from stores because slaughter is a difficult, physically demanding, messy and potentially psychologically distressing job. Not just because "butchers are good at it". All I'm refuting is the statement you made about "people doing it without problems".

That statement "without problems" only meant "people did it without qualms". It is/was just what you do. And millions upon millions still do it.

I didn't mean that it wasn't messy or physically demanding (especially for puny city dwellers, for the average farmer person it's really not much of a deal) and that people wouldn't want to pay to have someone else do it.

The example I gave of cooks captures exactly that. It's not that the cook does it better than cooking your own (and especially not on places like McDonalds), or that people have any psychological distress doing it, it's just that it's faster, more convenient, more specialized, and allows them to do other stuff with their time (opportunity cost).

Of course for someone that has never experienced having animals around, and his parents and relatives hunting and killing them, etc, it's like killing Bambi. Because essentially for those city/suburban kids their exposure to nature is Disney-like or through the families pets. But in general, It being a "psychologically distressing job" was never much of an issue through history, until people strayed off farm/natural life.

>If you do your research, you will find that in a lot of cultures, taking an animals life was not considered a trivial thing, it had to be done properly, by skilled hunters or butchers, with respect and in some cases, a prayer would have to accompany the task. Take Halal for example.

That's because when those traditions started getting food was difficult and meant to be valued as a "god given fortune" -- they way christians were supposed to pray for their every meal too to god who provided it), and some hygeinic practices were also thrown in as "religious texts" too. Not because they had second thoughts about killing an animal. They were not meant to appease the animal, but the gods. And some of those ritualistic preparations of food are more gory than just cleaning it up and being done with it. Halal slaughter is not by any means pretty., and it also encodes the draining one should do of the blood, not eating dead carcasses and other sanitary precautions in the context of religious law (the same way the 10 commandments are more about a community getting along).

Really, you'll contest that the majority of people killed and ate animals themselves

Well, yes and no. People have always eaten meat of course, but the amount of meat per person exploded after WWII. Meat used to be a treat ("kill the fatted calf") that one indulged in maybe twice a week if you were well off.

Now we eat meat or other animal products twice a day, every single day of our lives (which is bad for us btw). It's a scam perpetrated by the meat industry.

I know many people who do think about it, don't justify it, and are quite vocal about all those things being terrible. Not everyone is as indifferent as you describe.

"Many people", maybe ("some people" would probably be more accurate). But does that make any difference, at the level of society?

My point is, the article in reference, seems to be amazed that people could own slaves and live with themselves; but we do much worse than own slaves, and live with ourselves pretty well, so maybe we should start wondering about ourselves first.

I agree with you, but there's also another level that I saw mentioned here, namely that, back then, nobody seemed to mind it. Today, at least some people do.

Yeah, well it's also not true. Many people in Rome wrote against the barbarity of the games, or even slavery, the most famous being Seneca:

> I am glad to learn, through those who come from you, that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. This befits a sensible and well-educated man like yourself. "They are slaves," people declare. Nay, rather they are men. [1]

They are men. Nothing more to say.

[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...

I figure it's a simple case of what humanity considered to be wrong and right have changed. Our advancements in technology and society have changed what is required just to live; have given us room to re-evaluate the status quo.

Of course not everyone is. The main reason we most people know about these issues is because there are many people that are not indifferent.

I wonder what other things we're not seeing.

>> We don't think about it.

I'm a 10,000 BC chieftain. My village of Hutsville is within raiding distance of the northern village of Teepeetown. Teepeetown just a my neighbor of mine. I've never really liked or disliked Teepeetown, as I don't really know them. But I am sure thinking about them now. I'm going to raid Teepeetown before they raid my Hutsville. Whether I like raiding or not, if I don't do the raiding, I'm gonna get raided. Civilization is too hard right now, and someone bigger and stronger than myself will have to figure out how to make that happen.

Fast forward to 500-ish BC. My city state of Rome is within raiding distance of...

This is a rather ahistorical claim that presumes colonization to be a historical inevitability. Most historians - yes, even most Western historians - would disagree with that. The fact that this is the direction history happened to take does not mean that it was inherently inevitable or "natural".

I don't understand what this comment means. A biologist would argue that spread and colonization is inevitable when local resources are exhausted/scarce.

Eh I don't think that we're "worse in many respects". We're not perfect, but definitely objectively morally superior to the Romans.

It seems to me thay moral standards are relative to the cultural/contemporary context.

Some things are absolute. Race and gender equality for instance, is absolutely better. No relative cultural context needed to agree with that.

Also, life is absolute. The amount of people who are unjustly prevented from living their life is an absolute number, as a percentage of the population.

So I guess I don't really see your point. Do you disagree with any of the above?

> Some things are absolute. Race and gender equality for instance, is absolutely better. No relative cultural context needed to agree with that.

Can you explain how this is objectively true? How would we reason a Martian, a Roman, or an Aztec into believing this is morally correct?

We believe it because it is absolutely true in our moral system, which is not some grand system arrived at by reason alone, but by changing social norms and mores - fashions, basically.

To some degree, 'morality' is based in genetics, human being social animals - we all mostly start out with some broad in-group altruism. But the expression given to this varies wildly throughout human societies - people have believed it was perfectly moral, good, and correct to sacrifice slaves to the sun god, and other people have believed that all humans are equal. Neither one of these are objectively correct in any meaningful sense, although I much prefer living in the latter system. But of course, I would say that, being inundated from birth.

> The amount of people who are unjustly prevented from living their life is an absolute number, as a percentage of the population.

The idea that people can be unjustly prevented from living their life is, itself, a moral judgement.

Sorry for the late reply. I'll just address the fact that the slave being sacrificed to the sun gods was a slave in the first place, because it's well known that totally messed up things are justified by religion, and that's a whole different thing. The fact that this sun god society has slaves in the first place is sufficient for me to make my point.

Being a slave means that your masters consider your life to be less valuable than theirs. So even though you're a human being, they deny you rights and treat you like a lower form of life. This is what I meant by unjust suffering, perhaps I phrased it wrong, but my point was that it's simple math. Is this life form a human being? Are they well intentioned? Do you prevent them from leaving or harm them regardless of their good intentions? Does your society condone your actions? If so, morally speaking, you're living in an objectively worse society. You're doing harm to someone of your own species who doesn't wish harm on you.

> Being a slave means that your masters consider your life to be less valuable than theirs. So even though you're a human being, they deny you rights and treat you like a lower form of life.

The same can be said in our society about criminals or the poor. Not universally, but slaves were not universally seen as "lower forms of life" either.

> Is this life form a human being? Are they well intentioned?

The use of "well intentioned" here is a catch-all for being able to say "anyone who does not follow my moral framework may be subjected to the punishments of my moral framework." It is equally capable of condemning the well-intentioned thief stealing food (or money for food) to live, with no ill will but no belief in other opportunities for getting by, and also the well-intentioned parents who refuse medical treatment to a dying child due to the belief in their religion that God will heal the child without the corrupt manipulations of the material world. There is no objectivity here.

We don't have race and gender equality anywhere, and the one place that has it less is probably the US (see incarceration rates for blacks for instance).

Same for respect for life; we seem to be quite indifferent to the victims of our bombs, while we mourn the loss of one soldier (this has been going on forever, but hasn't changed in recent times).

Also, our "way of life" is built on the massacre of trillions of animals, many of which mammals who have feelings very similar to ours; being indifferent to their suffering and death is not an absolute value, nor is it "better" than the opposite.

> We don't have race and gender equality anywhere, and the one place that has it less is probably the US (see incarceration rates for blacks for instance)

The US is not a paragon of racial or gender equality (not is any other modern Western society, for that matter), but it is not demonstrably worse than Ancient Rome.

Our common perceptions of Roman history are shaped heavily by romanticized contemporary depictions which downplay the exteme aspects of their culture (except in a few cases so as to exoticize it).

There's more slaves today than then. I guess Romans win.

You forgot the arena like fights transmitted live on TV with little difference from gladiator fights.

Just with the difference that people usually don't get killed on the arena, and the subject being some kind of martial arts instead of reproducing past battles.

Comparing modern combat sports to slavery and animal torture is ludicrous.

The contestants are there of their own free will and the sports are actually pretty safe.

You might as well claim that all physical sports are in the same camp as slavery, because its physical competition and people get hurt sometimes.

Not all gladiators were slaves. Many were well regarded for their abilities.

We still have trophy hunters today, who hunt not for food or sustenance, but for a pelt or a tusk.

> are actually pretty safe

We used to think that Boxing and Football were "pretty safe" as well. Then we learned how much impact things like concussions have on a person's life. I can't really imagine that MMA is that much safer when I see people repeatedly being choked out, having joints nearly separated, getting knocked out...

Your comparison to trophy hunting makes no sense. One entity killing another unwilling entity for sport is no comparison to two willing participants engaging in a physical contest with rules and a referee where at least one of th goals is to minimize long term damage.

Agree on football and boxing, not a fan of either. As for MMA the jury is still out but I hardly think equating it with slavery makes sense because you "can't imagine" it's safe, even though you don't have the data. I mean, comparing that to literally owning another human?

All sports have physical risk, even solo sports. Does that mean that when I go rock climbing, I might as well be owning slaves or torturing animals?

> The contestants are there of their own free will and the sports are actually pretty safe.

So were most gladiators, it was a an actual job for many of them, not everything was like on Hollywood movies.

People should read more old actual sources of information and watch less movies.

As for being safe, tell that to the ones that have spoiled their future thanks to major injures to member or head concussions.

I'm skeptical of your claim that "most" gladiators were just professionals freely doing a job. If so, please cite these "old actual sources".

As to your claim that modern combat sports aren't safe because some athletes have suffered injury, I'd like to hear why that doesn't apply to any sport. Or even any job where someone at some point gets injured. The fact that a vanishlingly small number of MMA contestants have "spoiled their future" due to injury is irrelevant without knowing the broader context of how many haven't, how it compares to other activities, etc.

Lots of activities are risky, that doesn't make them morally reprehensible and it's baffling to me that anyone can make that claim with a straight face.

Even if it WAS very dangerous and they freely choose to compete in a sport where half will end up with a lifelong injury, it still doesn't have anything to do with slavery, animal torture, murdering civilians, etc.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-may-...

#1 talks about how free vs slave gladiators changing over time.

Most interesting to me was #3, where it talks about how most were not killed but wounded instead. "historians have estimated that somewhere between one in five or one in 10 bouts left one of its participants dead."

>Just with the difference that people usually don't get killed on the arena

That's a pretty significant difference.

Neither did gladiators, usually.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-may-...

"Historians have estimated that somewhere between one in five or one in 10 bouts left one of its participants dead."

It's notable that they are there of their own free will.

So were many gladiators. It was a profession then, as it is today.

> How do we justify bombing civilians, hospitals, wedding parties in remote countries we're not even at war with?

Just War Theory has existed for long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

We talk about all of those things.

If you really want something we're blind to, it needs to sound a little nuts. For example, cruelty to fungi, or music as a manipulative weapon.

How do we justify pulling a fetus out of a womb, piece by piece, or by submerging it in poison and then sucking it out, a fetus who without this intervention, 99% of the time would have been a life.

We don't think about it.

We don't think about it because we don't want the guilt and there is next to 0% chance of actually doing something about it. Well, for most of us anyways.

We're stuck with feel-good non-sense such as "Pray For Paris", "Hashtags", "Rainbow-color our profile pics" and "Take a picture making hearts with our hands" type of stuff. Even petitions don't work, because our leaders are not beholden to them and they're the ones with the real power.

However. The reality, is that for most of us, we're 100% good towards those around us and those that depend on us. The tragedy is making it seem like that is not good enough. For not caring enough to do something for someone half-way around the world that we never seen or interacted with. That is why the above feel-good nonsense is so widespread: we just want to get rid of the guilt that is being artificially imposed on us.

> for most of us, we're 100% good towards those around us and those that depend on us.

This really isn't true, even in the narrowest sense. Domestic violence is extremely common!

The typical broad outlines you'll see from Christians goes something like this:

1. The Old Testament generally approved and regulated slavery, but it was different than the chattel slavery we tend to think of when we think of the word today. It'd have been a little close to the debt slavery you see in this article, but in its ideal form there were provisions for release after a period of time.

2. The New Testament didn't outright condemn slavery, but the Epistle to Philemon is a short book that shines a lot of light on the attitude that Paul had and that Christians used as a basis for their positions on slavery down the line. Onesimus needed to return to Philemon, but Philemon needed to treat him as a brother in Christ. Peter expressed similar views as well.

I think it'd be far more accurate to describe the New Testament's attitude toward slavery (and debts in general, but that fact is de-emphasized) would be to say that

1) they must end. It is absolutely forbidden for any Christian to own slaves or excessive debts, or to help slavery practices in any way.

2) it is, however, not for Christians to violently take other's property away. Not even slaves. A Christian should campaign for slave owners and creditors to release their charges, maybe even convince them to convert, but violently or legally freeing slaves away is forbidden.

3) Using money to achieve slaves' or debtors freedom is a specifically named virtue.

So it's a "let it die" attitude. End slavery with minimal disruption.

During the middle ages, traders from Southern Europe would often trade with muslims, and as a "good works" effort for their bosses/companies, they'd go to the slave markets of whatever city they were in and buy some slaves. They would be offered a free ride to Europe (and be paid for cleaning the deck or cooking on the way, to get some starter cash) and allowed to settle in Europe. If they didn't speak the language they'd take them to a monastery where they could often stay to learn. This worked, while islam requires slavery and slave trade (halal/wajib), it recognizes that freeing slaves is a good deed. Therefore they'd often sell slaves to be freed at a discount. The freed slaves could, but generally didn't, stay where they were, because muslims would simply capture them again (there's many such things in trade ports in Northern Africa. For instance, these muslim cities would often organize a yearly slave sports event. If the slaves won, they'd often get their freedom for that. However, more often than not, the owners of losing slaves would kill any slave that actually took his freedom).

The whole "Islam says freeing slaves is a good deed" is untrue and extremely misleading. Everyone always quotes the first part of the sentence from the Quran, but the last half is left out:

> This is a command from Allah to slave-owners: if their servants ask them for a contract of emancipation, they should write it for them, provided that the servant has some skill and means of earning so that he can pay his master the money that is stipulated in the contract.

Yeah, let the slaves go, but make sure they sign a contract such that they have to give all their earnings to their masters for the rest of their lives.

1. http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie...

Islam seems to be much more specific in regards to economic issues. The Jizya is another example.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya

One of the best books on the subject is Prof. Mark Noll's "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis". The first part is a discussion of how different American groups understood Slavery as Christians in antebellum America. Broadly, several strands can be identified 1) Southerners generally felt content to argue that Slavery was in the Bible, and thus Christian. That Roman and Hebrew slavery was wildly different than Southern Slavery, with race as the underlying factor was not generally mentioned. Roman Slavery was done on peoples of all sorts, and not generally passed down from family member to family member, and was not conceived of as part of a racial hierarchy. There was also a lot of nonsense about sons of Ham and such. 2) Northerners generally felt that the Bible was "in Spirit" against slavery, either broadly in the sense that one should not do it (but not necessarily seek emancipation violently), or actively as many Abolitionists read it. Interestingly, Northerners sort of gave up on the literal argument, and generally argued from broad principles of the New Testament. What could be Christian about owning other men? If all Christians are brothers, how can one justify such an institution as slavery? 3) African Americans read the Bible as not only "in Spirit", but also sought a lot of specific arguments. How could Slavery be Christian when it broke up Christian marriages between slaves? Encouraged the rape of black Women by often married white Slave owners? That banned reading, and thereby prevented Christian blacks from reading the gospel? There was a lot of discussion about how Biblical Roman Slavery differed from modern Southern Slavery - Roman slaves were not racialized, nor forbidden to read by law. One particularly interesting line of thought to me is the idea that Roman slavery and Hebrew slavery, since it was not based on race, and often came from debt implied that if what Americans in 1860 were doing was Biblical Slavery, then White Slavery must be legal. Obviously, this was refused by White Americans, so something must be different. This wasn't picked up by many Whites, but one of the few who did was John Gregg Fee a really interesting preacher in Kentucky who argued that slavery must be ended, lest eventually the majority must be slaves. 4) Catholics and European protestants had a wide variety of views, which honestly I don't remember well enough to summarize here. In general though, outside of America the issue wasn't as pressing, only Brazil legally had kept around Slavery in this period.

It's a good book, and definitely well worth reading. Not that long either.

It is absolutely forbidden for any Christian to own slaves or excessive debts, or to help slavery practices in any way.

That's not what the Catholic church taught as late as 1866: https://suchanek.name/texts/atheism/slavery.html

This document seems to be a clarification of what is essentially Roman law.

It starts by stating the official position of the Catholic church. Even that translation is wrong (it should read that the Church, Christians and the Popes, past and present, pride themselves on having stamped out slavery everywhere they went). But litarally "Although the Roman Pontiffs have left nothing untried by which servitude be everywhere abolished among the nations, and although it is especially due to them that already for many ages no slaves are held among very many Christian peoples".

Then there is a sentence that should have made a world of difference in the translation of the rest of the document, which should be translated as "as long as we're NOT talking about slavery, here are clarifications about the laws concerning selling your labour/services to others in hopes of answering your questions". The word used is the same. That's because in Latin, as in the Roman empire, there is no concept of slavery. There are labour contracts and everyone providing their labour to someone else (always paid I might add, even in the cases we currently refer to as slavery). The point is, since there is no distinction in Latin between slave labor and non-slave labor, the text continues to use the word for laborer (servus, but keep in mind a slave is a servus, a cafe owner that serves you a drink is a servus, the guy you hire to redo your flooring is a servus).

Needless to say, a fair translation would have avoided the word slavery from that point forward. The English text doesn't. The text alludes to what makes something slave labor, and thus illegal : that the obligation of the laborer is either not limited in time, or wages are either not paid, or only paid in the sense that a debt is made whole (with the explicit exception of criminal debt).

It then states that one can sell one's labor, and that the resulting contract can be traded. It then keeps clarifying things about those contractual obligations, going on at length about the conditions that make labor relations non-slave labor. Firstly, there must be a time limit on the obligation (except in cases of conviction of a crime, ie. you can be convicted to serve for the rest of your life), and there must be payment, actual payment, "forgiving" a debt is not enough, although for instance valued instruction can be considered (partial) payment (in the Roman Republic and Empire it was common to train as a skilled profession (architect/doctor/lawyer/...) by training under someone, on the condition of serving as part of their company for a number of years. You still got paid, in addition to food, lodging, days off, ... but you could not start for yourself for the period specified. Initially this was limited by law to 2 years, eventually it became 20).

It then goes on that there are other conditions : no matter any contract, everyone has the right to marriage (and to not have the resulting family split up), the right to church and education (in the Christian faith, sure, but still), confession, humane treatment, ... And yes, such contracts can be enforced, even after selling/buying. There are strict conditions on the selling and buying of such labor contracts, and the penalty is always the same : if there is so much as reasonable suspicion that someone's being sold into slave labor, not only is the transaction null and void, but the labor contract itself (between the laborer and the boss) is null and void.

Did the American South abide by this letter ? Of course not.

Could you give some scriptural references please?

Leviticus 25:37-55 says that bibilical slavery is to be temporary (lasting only till the year of Jubilee which came every 50 years) but they may buy themselves or have a family member buy themselves out sooner. The fact that they could buy themselves out of slavery also strongly suggests that slaves got paid. . . these provisions make ancient slavery very different from the racialized and cruel slavery we see in modern forms of slavery.

1. The Old Testament generally approved and regulated slavery, but it was different than the chattel slavery we tend to think of

Which ignores the difference in rules applying to Hebrew slaves compared to foreign slaves. As far as foreigners are concerned, you could beat them severely as long as you don't outright beat them to death. You could give wives to your male slaves, and the children would be born enslaved. After your death, these slaves became part of your inheritance.

How is that substantially different from our modern understanding of the word?

That's not true, children born to slaves were treated as the master's children

> If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out alone. (Exodus 21:4)

further beating slaves had consequences of letting the slave go free if he is injured (Exodus 21:26-27)

>“When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth.

children born to slaves were treated as the master's children

That applies to Hebrew slaves. What happens to the children of foreign slaves is not clearly stated, but it's the logical consequence of the rules applicable to Hebrews and foreigners.

further beating slaves had consequences of letting the slave go free if he is injured

If they are permanently injured. Cf Exodus 21:20-21:

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

There are no repercussions for whipping them as severely as you like as long as they recover.

It is a common misunderstanding to assume that the laws of the old testament are applicable to all humanity.

A contemporary Jewish reader would have been amazed at an idea that "though shall not kill" for example, applies to gentiles.

Where does it say that "thou shalt not kill" does not apply to gentiles, in any Jewish religious text from any time? And by that of course I mean "does not apply to gentiles, period, kill them as you'd kill animals, no biggie" as opposed to laws about waging war etc. - which is the only non-weasely interpretation of "does not apply to gentiles"?

You should checkout the old testament. There is god sanctioned gentiles killing aplenty. See the story of Amalek for example

"From man unto woman, from infant unto suckling, from ox unto sheep, so that the name of Amalek not be mentioned even with reference to an animal by saying "This animal belonged to Amalek".

That is not correct.

The 10 commandments and the covenant of Noah apply to all.

The 513 "mitzvot" apply to Hebrews/Jews only.

While we're discussing aspects of widespread religions and how they relate to slavery, it might be useful to understand how slavery relates to Islam.

> In the early 20th century (post World War I), slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France. For example, Saudi Arabia and Yemen only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman followed suit in 1970, and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007. However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the predominantly Islamic countries of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Sudan.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery

From TFA:

> Instead of evil villains, we find husbands, fathers, mothers and neighbours working with the cultural materials available to them, surviving as best they can.

I think it's an illuminating way of looking at Bad Stuff Normal People Do. We're truly very adaptable animals and can rationalise our actions, which often derive from cultural baggage.

I actually think it's quite hard to break free of that baggage, our values, our education, things we received as given when young and did not bother ever questioning.

> The lecture also noted that there was no writing from Roman times that questioned the morality of slavery.

Not much writing out there questioning Soviet leadership or Singapore's for that matter, and yet nobody would consider that unanimous tacit acceptance. Except of course the historians in the year 3017.

Your understanding of slavery in Ancient Rome is quite different to mine. I'd really appreciate knowing your sources as you seem to have a wealth of knowledge.

Slaves could lead very productive and meaningful lives. It was not uncommon for slaves to be freed and made a citizen. Some slaves also held high positions (eg. Dentists, accountants, etc). I also understand that the word slave was interchangeably used with the word family.

Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome

And Mary Beard's Meet the Romans (an exceptionally good documentary from BBC. Mary is one of my favourites).

Mary talked about a wealthy Roman woman (a business owner) who freed her slave and married him. Depending on who you ask, her slave would have been considered a sex slave before they married. The truth is always a matter of perspective!

Having said that, the Spanish and Italians used boys as young as 6 as slaves for mining silver and malachite. The boys that survived were significantly physically deformed by the time they reached adulthood. There is also significant discussion about little girls who were forced to play with dolls to be good slave housewives (the girls were described as having terrible lives).

Source: Mary Beard's other Roman documentaries and the history of Sicilian mines (can't remember the link, but easily found on Google).

Trivia: the silver was mined for coins!

> And Mary Beard's Meet the Romans (an exceptionally good documentary from BBC. Mary is one of my favourites).

i finished watching this an hour ago, what a coincidence. i strongly recommend it as well, she discusses the role of slavery in roman society at length -- though it's spread throughout the whole series

SPQR by the same is a good book for gaining an understanding of what Rome was. One of my takeaways from it is that mapping a contemporary term to something similar from the past is a tricky thing and can lead to poor interpretations.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0108U7IHO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

I believe my info on Roman slavery was from this lecture series, chapter 38:

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-ancient-ro...

This article is conflating debt bondage with slavery. This is a huge error. Some debt bondage, like what is described in the article, is abusive and harmful.

But much of it is quite beneficial to both parties. My sister was debt bonded for a while; Crossfit paid for her personal trainer certification, but she had to pay them back if she quit her job in a year. A girl I dated is getting a Masters from Columbia, but she has to continue working for the Diplomatic Corps in her country for 3 years after graduation. In fact, many valley engineers meet the definition of bonded labor: you need to give back the signing bonus if you quit in < 1 year.

Economically, bonded labor with transparent contracts is a way to allow employers to pay to improve the human capital of their workers. On HN we often lament the fact that employers don't invest in employees, and the main reason for this is that they can't recoup their costs if the employee leaves.

In India and the US there is a lot of bonded labor and it ranges across the spectrum. Quite a bit of it - particularly among professionals - is not remotely exploitative and is economically beneficial. An informed discussion should acknowledge this.

It's not a huge error. It's slavery, disguised as debt bondage.

Did you even read the article? Did crossfit call your sister's contract "debt bondage"? Is what these slaveowners are calling "debt bondage" closer to slavery or to a tech worker's contract?

"Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labor, is a person's pledge of labor or services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined.[2] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation." [0]

Your sister surely could not be forced to work for Crossfit. Neither are Valley engineers there to pay a debt. Their signing bonus is not a loan in exchange for labor.

Claiming bonded labor is a way to "improve the human capital of" workers means you see these people as inferior than yourself. It also means you do not believe they are entitled to basic human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage [1] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights

Slavery by any other name is still slavery. What's described in the article is slavery. Debt is just the excuse used to justify it and give it a veneer of legality.

From the article: Around half of the world’s slaves are held in debt bondage in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

My point is that some significant fraction of this debt bondage is not remotely comparable to what is described in the article.

This article is conflating slavery with abusive human disempowerment. Some slavery, like what is described in the article, is abusive and harmful.

But much of it is quite beneficial to both parties. My cousin by marriage was a slave for a while; his master paid for his financial certification and gave him a small allowance, but he had to save up sufficient funds before he could buy his way to freedom. A girl I used to date used to be a slave, but she chose to remain with the family who owned her even after she bought her freedom, and remains an integral and happy member of the household. In fact, many successful members of our community, particularly business owners and managers, are slaves or former slaves!

Economically, slavery with proper laws and regulations is a way for families and moneyed individuals to improve the quality of their household or business, while giving an otherwise hopeless individual the chance to enter into Roman society. Here at the Tinkerers' Forum we often lament the fact that slave owners don't invest in their slaves, and the main reason for this is that they can't recoup their costs if the slave dies or escapes.

In Rome and its provinces there is a lot of slavery and it ranges across the spectrum. Quite a bit of it - particularly in the educated and enlightened centre of the Empire - is not remotely exploitative and is economically beneficial. An informed discussion should acknowledge this.

Whether he's right or wrong, your analogy is so stretched and ill-fitting as to be useless.

My sister chose to enter into this arrangement with crossfit. She could have done something else if she preferred. She made an informed choice that being a crossfit instructor was worthwhile.

Your imagined cousin did not have this option. That's the fundamental distinction.

However, it is very much worth discussing slavery in the Greek/Roman context - it did differ very much from American slavery. And even American slavery is known to us these days mainly from works of propaganda (e.g. Uncle Tom's Cabin, or modern propaganda like Django Unchained), so our perception of it may not be accurate either.

One group of people forced another group of people to labor for them under threat of physical violence. These people were systematically denied freedoms. Their owners were, naturally, extremely racist.

What exactly about Django is meant to be propaganda? How does it misrepresent slavery other than the exaggerated comedic situations? Do you truly believe Quentin Tarantino was attempting to brainwash people about what slavery was like?

Django Unchained was meant to make the viewer enjoy violence against certain people. To do this, they needed to make those people as awful and unsympathetic as possible.

If you had ever done any reading about american slavery, you'd know that Django sugarcoated it. Rape was common, most new families were separated, mandingo fighting existed as a hobby, corporal punishment was handed out with slight provocation.

To be honest, I'm shocked that you're willing to make these sorts of comments with your name attached to your account. You don't think this would make your employer uncomfortable?

Well, it's a Tarantino movie! That's what he does!

But it doesn't mean that slavery isn't evil.

I didn't say it wasn't evil. I said that our perceptions of how it actually worked might not be accurate.

I get what you say about debt bondage, and how it can be voluntary. And the right to bankruptcy more or less guarantees that.

What I don't get is what about our perceptions of how slavery worked in the US might not be accurate. Except maybe in negligible ways. I mean, people were born into slavery. They could be given freedom. But they typically had no way to earn it. What am I missing?

Actually, what's arguably missing is how widespread debt bondage was. Poor white immigrants were sold just like black slaves, and typically worked ten years to pay for their passage. And children who came with them had to work until 18, and could be sold separately.

Edit: typo

What you are missing is that the sadistic behavior seen in Django Unchained was uncommon. Slaves were expensive. People don't usually destroy a $40k Lexus for entertainment - they usually take good care of their expensive capital investments, and they treat their own car far better than a rental.

In fact, slaves were often treated comparably or better than freeman laborers. Here is a modern treatment: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/slavery/JLE-1977.pdf

Or you can read a contemporary treatment, from a northern unitarian abolitionist who visited the south: http://www.authorama.com/full/pdf/A-Southside-View-of-Slaver...

Note: none of what I've said here should remotely be interpreted as a defense of slavery. Just an acknowledgement that my modern mental picture of American slavery is likely not that accurate.

You've fell into a trap. That's a narrative that was pushed by the slave proponents and has lived on in many circles. it has a veneer of reasonableness that sounds very logical. That argument was used to both justify slavery and to ensure that the people on the second to last rung on the ladder (the Irish) hated the blacks and would failure to see their common ground.

In fact people abuse their cars and slaveowners abused slaves. Both by ignoring human needs, committing acts of brutality, including rape, beating and execution. Following your car analogy, slaves were also leased out, and their renters treated them like rental cars -- even worse.

Like every business decision, chattel life had ROI. Eventually old milking cows are sent off to slaughter. In the case of chattel slavery, read about the Caribbean slave economy, you'll read of high "turnover" among slaves in the sugarcane. I'll assure you they weren't going to school and getting better slave gigs -- "turnover" was mostly from death.

There are good, first person accounts of this world. Read them. The first link is from interviews with former slaves in the 1930s. The second is the tale of a slave auction and the third is the related, very readable acccount of the wife of a plantation owner.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/n...

The Weeping Time https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-wee...

Fanny Kemble diaries: https://archive.org/details/journalofresidenceongeorgianplan...

However, if $40k Lexus attempts to flee or disrespect owner multiple times, owner will happily throw away the car or in case of slave violently punish him or her. The "cared about them well due to cost" narrative conveniently ignores situations where ability to be violent toward "property" matters the most.

Especially if it would help keep the other Lexuses in line.

What do you presume Tarantino's motive would be for such a thing?

He says:

> In 2007, Tarantino discussed an idea for a type of Spaghetti Western set in the United States' pre-Civil War Deep South. He called this type of film "a southern", stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to."[3] Tarantino later explained the genesis of the idea: "I was writing a book about Sergio Corbucci when I came up with a way to tell the story. ... I was writing about how his movies have this evil Wild West, a horrible Wild West. It was surreal, it dealt a lot with fascism. So I'm writing this whole piece on this, and I'm thinking: 'I don't really know if Sergio was thinking [this] while he was doing this. But I know I'm thinking it now. And I can do it!' "[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Unchained

So you're talking about those exaggerated comedic situations, then? The ones that were obviously unrealistic and meant for cinematic purposes?

An educated mind does not interpret Django as a trustworthy source for information about slavery in early America and knows it shouldn't be cited in any essay on the subject except to make a comparison to actual events. If people are taking Django into account in their view of American slavery then that is an issue of education and not propaganda on behalf of Tarantino.

I have Indian heritage. My parents are incredibly religious. A large part of India is quite religious and Hinduism is the main religion.

The brahmin, shudra (castes) stems from the ancient scriptures which a lot of people staunchly believe in.

From modern point of view a lot of the scriptures are quite racist and sexist to be honest. I have arguments with my family all the time regarding this. I know quite a number of people who legit believe in untouchables.

I strongly believe that as India becomes less religious, it will prosper and the people will become happier.

If I were to speculate, I'd say that we're in an atmosphere where cultural innovation is akin to a technological advantage. The free society is stronger.

In The Splendid Exchange, William Bernstein argues that a tremendous technological advantage that the Dutch had over the British at one period when both countries competed in trade for spices was that the Dutch financial markets were far more sophisticated. They had voyage derivatives, the ability to buy into a 1/128th share of the voyage's earnings, payments to zielverkoopers (recruiters - sometimes of a predatory sort) that entitled them to a cut of the men's wages as they were earned, derivatives on the zielverkooper contract (the transportbrief), and so on. These financial devices were just as effective as actual technological devices to present an advantage over British trade, a contributing factor to the VOC's success at the time.

Analogously, I'd speculate that societies with a high adherence to tradition keeping women at home, or where a person's increased ability cannot increase the likelihood of career success because of a caste or similar system, have built-in limiters on their economy. The free society has a cultural device just as strong as its technological devices: one is closer to allowing one's ability to determine one's success than ever before.

I believe the evidence shows that richer, well-fed children grow into smarter people. But while it does that, it only shifts the bell curve to the right. Even the poor can have those with the ingredients to be very smart. And when one discards those people, or condemns half one's population to work at below capacity, one's economy operates below capacity. And that economy will be less able to support the population. The free society will out-compete that economy.

> A large part of India is quite religious and Hinduism is the main religion

The article mentions:

Ahmed, a middle-class slaveholder in Uttar Pradesh in India, was eager to show me around the village where he was a member of the ruling elite. While I was grateful for the warm reception, I was visiting Ahmed’s community because of gross human-rights violations – bonded labour, child exploitation, and outbound human trafficking.

My understanding is that Ahmed is an Arabic name and I had been told that Arab people enslaved Indians and that this practice still goes on today. So I'm confused now. Are Hindus enslaving other Hindus?

Further, I'm wondering how this all relates to the article. The article doesn't mention religion at all so it is unclear to me whether you're saying Hinduism encourages slavery. I have Hindu friends who told me there is no such thing as "scripture" in Hinduism because there is no "god given" book like Torah, Bible or Quran. So I'm having difficulty understanding what's going on in India.

> I have Hindu friends who told me there is no such thing as "scripture" in Hinduism because there is no "god given" book like Torah, Bible or Quran. So I'm having difficulty understanding what's going on in India.

There's no short answer to your question. The real "answer" is that Hinduism is a multifaceted religion which encompasses a massive range of different beliefs and practices, which cannot all be neatly classified with a single stroke.

To give you some perspective, it's arguably easier to make statements about Abrahamic faiths as a whole (encompassing everything from Satmars to Salafists to Mormons) than it is to make statements about Hinduism as a whole.

> To give you some perspective, it's arguably easier to make statements about Abrahamic faiths as a whole (encompassing everything from Satmars to Salafists to Mormons) than it is to make statements about Hinduism as a whole.

I'm not disagreeing, just to be clear, but fascinated by this statement. Could you provide some evidence for it?

I agree that many Hindus believe in, and practice the caste system. However, this belief is grounded in culture, and not the Hindu religion itself. The following paper provides a lot of evidence for this. Equating the caste system with Hinduism, would be like equating slavery with Christianity. It would be a shame if we abandoned the world's great religions, simply because of the barbaric things that their followers have done.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4414252?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a book by anthropologist David Graeber published in 2011. It explores the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government; in short, much of the fabric of human life in society. It draws on the history and anthropology of a number of civilizations, large and small, from the first known records of debt from Sumer in 3500 BC until the present.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how attitudes in the American South toward slavery evolved over time and what we can learn from that evolution about the role culture plays in our lives: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/08/munger_on_slave.htm...

I wish this article went into more of the philosophies of the slaveholders. Slavery is bad no doubt, but I can see how someone would rationalize it as providing security and peace of mind. If you give up your freedom and personal responsibility in return for guaranteed food and shelter, I can see it sounding okay, especially if the other option is to question where your next meal comes from. The problem is the power imbalance that leaves you at the whims of your master.

The techniques listed here, especially emotional manipulation, aren't too dissimilar from what low-wage employers in developed countries do.

Curious what your experience in working low-wage jobs is?

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/sports-direct-invest...

Slavery is a subject I find fairly interesting, but sadly, it only 'appears' to be discussed, frank discussions of slavery have the problem that most people or assume that anyone with any slight impression of defending slavery in any for is 100% evil, or they assume others expect that behaviour, and 'pretend' they have it, stifling discussion and research.

For example research into the african slavery, and the result of slavery on the lives of africans transported to the Americas (not only US), frequently just result in researchers dismissed as being 'revisionists', and no real discussion show up, the few people that end having courage to discuss it for real, frequently are actual bigoted racists, that don't care about the wider public opinion of them, on both sides of the coin (I saw blatant racists both anti-white and anti-black).

It feels like you're saying: "I have something valuable to say about [x], but because of political correctness I'm not allowed to say it. If only we could have a frank discussion about [x], then I could tell you!"

I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored.

No need for vitriol. "A concrete example would strengthen your argument" would make the same point without putting them on the defense.

I didn't infer that he himself had something valuable to say on the subject, only that he suspects someone does, and laments their apparent reluctance to say it.

I think part of the source of this suspicion is that the abolition of slavery was a result of the Enlightenment and the rise of natural law as a source of ethics, and virtually every aspect of the West has abandoned natural law as a source of ethics or principle, leaving modern ethics in a drunkard's walk around the positions last reasoned to before that jettisoning.

I agree heartily with your point about the state of modern (well, postmodern) ethics, but "virtually every aspect of the West" is overstating how much the original principles have been abandoned. There are certainly people in the West that never bought into postmodern thinking and would prefer natural law or imago dei to... well, the mess we have now.

>I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored.

It's common on the right because it accurately describes the state of political discourse today. One small example is immigration policy. I've found it impossible to have a frank and honest discussion, based on facts and logic and opinions, with anyone on the political left. Typically, within two minutes, they'll get angry and call me a racist.

I have no doubt being taken to America was beneficial to some African slaves. I also do not doubt it would have been far more beneficial for far more of them if they had been able to do it as freemen and were treated like human beings.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but are you talking about debating the merits of slavery? Forgive me if I'm incredulous, but what kind of results are there to debate? Are you implying that there were good results to come from slavery? I am genuinely interested in what there is to know, as I'm horribly ignorant of it myself.

I was reading on slavery today, and came across an interesting couple of quotes by Engels:

>The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.

and

>The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

I'd say myself it's a greater shame that wage slavery is discussed as sparsely as it is.

Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function. "Requires" means that without a coordinated effort the enterprise won't be possible. Such enterprises are more productive than single workers and the gain is not linear, i.e. an enterprise that has two workers is more productive than two separate workers put together. This is why slavery (= coordinated team effort) is beneficial: it increases the wealth of the society more than when everyone is free and works on its own.

Of course, slavery is a very crude form of coordinated team effort. Private enterprise is much better and much more flexible; in fact, this is the best form so far. Best practical form, that is. I can imagine maybe a more attractive setup on a smaller scale, something like a community where the team effort is coordinated by the leader and everyone obeys because the leader is wise and knowledgeable or out of tradition; a monastery would be a good real-life example here. But I fail to imagine that this would scale.

Now, I believe that coordinated team effort in any form has to strip team members out of some of their liberties. E.g. if your enterprise is to work around the clock (and it may have to due to technical reasons), then some people will have to work nights. Yet coordinated work is so much more productive than single-person efforts that it's beneficial to accept these limits. Remember a DIY hamburger experiment where a guy wanted to make a plain hamburger all by himself and ended up with around $5,000 in costs and even that wasn't cheat-free?

>Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function.

I'm not arguing against coordination of efforts; rather I am talking about coordinating efforts on a small and preferably ad-hoc basis as a form of project management. Abolishing the class which appropriates surplus is by no means abolishing project managers and engineers. People partake voluntarily, and how much work is done is decided by direct democracy beforehand, either with delegates subject to instant recall or in person.

Yes, some people may need to work nights, though working nights is usually an effect of the fact that a product needs to be finished by a certain point in time in order to meet profit expectations. However even when there is a deadline, working nights need not be something involuntary as it almost is nowadays.

Businesses collaborate on projects at a small scale, and many projects can be put into 'monastery-size' collaborative teams. My main point is that the participation has to be voluntary, and that no surplus should be appropriated at any stage.

I would not equate those two things.

Even today, or, 200, 2000 or 4000 years ago, I would suggest slaves (as we understand the word) would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property. There would certainly be a few who would suffer from something akin to Stockholm syndrome, but by and large...

>would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property.

I very much agree and I do not contest this. There are also feudal serfs who would love to live like workers today. However there are workers now who would love to live like truly free men who are not forced to sell their time to survive.

I think that those slaves 4000 years ago would like that too. Probably more than the feudal or even capitalist mode of production.

Yes, comparing the horrors of slavery to the current situation is hyperbolic - but the same format of exploitation is still happpening. That is, the format of selling labour-time to others in order to be afforded the luxury of life within the system. I think that Engels missed out that there is greater mobility nowadays. Even though it is very unlikely, a proletarian who has amassed enough capital can become a capitalist himself. But this does not do away with the exploitation of others.

The base state is not that we do nothing (I don't think).

The base state is that people (pre-agriculturally, pre-societally) have to scavenge, forage, hunt. If they did not put their bodies to work, or someone else didn't offer to lend them work, people would have to toil and "work". The hunter-gatherers, of say, South Africa, I don't think, is a lifestyle most people engaged in wage-for labor economies would prefer to go back to.

We just have to visit rural China where people opt away from subsistence living to work in these factories. Same for your Oaksakan indigenous who migrates to MDF.

I am not proposing a hunter-gatherer society; rather, I am proposing that the automation and materials needed to make socially necessary goods be collectively owned. This way, automation can be used in favour of the people, not for profit. Automation is used to massively reduce the required number of hours of work. Those who work receive the product of their labour. Democratic voluntary institutions are set up in which the workers collectively decide what to do with surplus product - whether to give it to those who are unwilling or unable to work, for example.

I'm no anarcho-primitivist. Abolishing the class system does not revert us to primitive times; rather it moves us beyond the need for profit and into the need of uses for products. We make things to be used, not exchanged.

Abolishing the class of people who hold capital does not revert us to a base state of survival, at least not in my judgement. Sorry if you weren't making that point.

The fact that modern capitalist society is extraordinarily good at getting people to participate in it isn't good evidence that it makes people better off. It's merely evidence that it has a highly effective police, military, and individual economic incentives. Like, if thousands of settlers shoot all the buffalo and forcibly move the native hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, and the natives later decide to migrate to a city and engage in menial labor, that doesn't mean that they're now better off. It just means that nation-states are really good at controlling territories and people.

Even in Soviet times, people, if they could would migrate to the city, internal passport withstanding. People may despise the tedium of modern work, but the toil of pre-agriculture and subsistence living is somewhat worse --it does not provide marginal benefit. It's subsistence. Weather, plagues and general unpredictability is not usually sought, if you have alternatives.

The Soviet example is the state making lives on farms significantly worse, rather than city life better. Like, they're notorious for forcibly reorganizing peasant life in a way that made them easier to control and tax and incidentally more susceptible to famine.

Plus, not a hunter-gatherer example. Better would be interactions in America between settlers and natives. Kidnapped settlers would refuse later repatriation, or escape from being "rescued" back to the community that abducted them.

Most Americans could if they chose scrape together enough money to purchase land in a rural area and set up a subsistence farm, thus living as "truly free men". But that lifestyle sucks and very few people want it. "Exploited" workers have a better quality of life.

>"Exploited" workers have a better quality of life.

Why does that mean that it's the best quality of life that could be had? I do not disagree that capitalism is better than the feudalism and slavery that preceeded it.

However there are workers now who would love to live like truly free men who are not forced to sell their time to survive.

There are workers now who would love to have others provide for their needs, but not have to do anything in return?

How is this different from a desire to be a slaveowner?

>There are workers now who would love to have others provide for their needs, but not have to do anything in return?

Where did I talk about others providing for your needs? My point was that you work for yourself, you don't have to sell your time to someone else. It may be decided, as a form of charity, to give to those who do not wish to work or especially those who are unable to. But it is by far not what I am advocating for; I advocate that each worker receives the full value of their labour.

I can't really see a way around being forced to work for oneself. I wish there were a way which would mean that work is not unevenly distributed, but there isn't in my knowledge. So in my opinion the best move is to work to massively reduce with automation the number of hours required to work, and to reward people with the products they make rather than wages. How this applies to service jobs, I'm not so sure.

No different, if you conflate taxes with slavery. That's preposterous though, for obvious reasons. If you don't like paying taxes, you can always quit your job: no income, no taxes. If you're a slave, on the other hand, quitting means torture and/or death.

So yeah, the desire to have others provide for your needs through tax dollars is worlds away from the desire to own slaves.

I agree with you that capitalists should not become disproportionally rich from the labour of their workers. But even if they did not, you still had to work to support your life. Capitalists become rich by taking a bit from many, you would not get rich if you got your bit back. Nonetheless, especially for the poorest it would still make a huge difference even if they would not become rich in the traditional sense.

I can't relate to the fashion of describing freemen as slaves.

Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort. These people you're "selling yourself" to are in fact selling your fragile life to you, for the cost of you selling them some of theirs. You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve.

>Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort.

I agree. But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way, especially for those who cannot take the effort to survive, or live on the brink of death despite taking the effort.

> are in fact selling your fragile life to you

I don't think people should have to buy their lives from other people. How did these people get my life anyway? Why do they have the right to sell it to me? This seems to be starting with a default position of them having my life. I demand it back.

Edit:

>You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve.

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. My point is that you shouldn't have to work for anyone but yourself, and you shouldn't let others make a profit from your work while they apply almost no work at all. Are you implying that the bourgeoisie specialise in relieving suffering?

> But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way.

If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order.

> I demand it back.

They want theirs back too! Society is an open question as to how this can be done decently.

>If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order.

Please excuse me, but are you trying to be obscurantist and vague with this? I just don't understand what point you're trying to make here. Why must we have suffering at all, when it can be avoided? Why must there be exploitation? I'm talking in concrete cases here - people are being exploited for their labour.

There is no "golden middle" for suffering. The idea that there must be, or that a middle solution is best, is a logical fallacy.

>They want theirs back too!

Who does? The capitalists? I'm not taking their life; rather, I am selling my labour-time as a worker to them, in order to survive, reproduce, and replenish the worker force. I start with the fundamental idea: nobody should have to sell their time to someone else in order to survive for themselves.

> Who does? The capitalists?

It sounds like you've set yourself up in a dichotomy between yourself and "the capitalists", if you keep this up, you'll be constantly baffled.

The slave, by definition, is being denied alternatives by the master. If there were a master which had better housing, and less violent staff, the slave can not apply for that job.

You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness. You are free, but that doesn't mean the world itself is pleasant to anyone. Your employer works for somebody too.

> I'm not taking their life

They aren't taking yours either. But if you give your effort to them, they can help save you from suffering the world on your own. I doubt you would prefer to live alone in a prairie, forest, or bog. I doubt you could survive even a week in such conditions. Furthermore, what would it be worth to live alone in the prairie, forest, or bog? Nothing you discover, say, or think will ever mean anything if you refuse to serve others.

You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness.

Theoretically yes, but in practice you might quickly end up against all kinds of constraints, especially if you got a bad start.

But if you give your effort to them, they can help save you from suffering the world on your own.

This of course works both ways, the workers are saving the capitalist from suffering by giving them shares of the goods they produce. There is no reason the capitalist should profit from this arrangement more than the workers.

If the capitalist does not offer compensation at a profit, then there is no reason for the capital. If you take it by force, he no longer has any reason to operate it.

Why should the capitalist suffer for free, and the worker destroy the capitalist's work for no gain?

>If the capitalist does not offer compensation at a profit, then there is no reason for the capital.

Altruism is a reason.

There's no reason founded on greed; and the rich person would then need to provide productive labour.

I am probably misunderstanding what you want to say, but I never said that the capitalist should not be compensated for his work or the workers should destroy any work.

>It sounds like you've set yourself up in a dichotomy between yourself and "the capitalists"

It is between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. This turns out to be quite a useful distinction, applicable in most cases, to the current mode of production.

>You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness.

I disagree with this. Generally the options for most workers is that they must serve an employer. These employers are by definition capitalists. Most people don't have enough capital or are unable to amass enough capital to become capitalists themselves, and usually even then cannot out-compete large businesses with many more employees and advanced automation.

Foraging in the wilderness is quite a sad state to be in, especially when the alternative is selling your labour time for wages. With the amount of capital able to serve humanity, it is quite a shame that the solution is to forage in the wilderness rather than have it available for all. On top of this, most of the wilderness is private property or people have, thanks to the State, limited rights to do as they please on that land.

Bear in mind that a lot of people don't even have that choice. Sweatshop workers are an example.

>Your employer works for somebody too.

What labour does the employer apply? Where is it applied? And how many hours? Does it justify the amount he is paid, if wages are in proportion to labour?

To resign ourselves to individual hunting-gathering as an alternative to wage slavery is, as I'm sure you would agree, a poor way of living when so much more could be accomplished.

The author of the linked post is associated with Free the Slaves, a highly rated charity [1] that I'd recommend supporting to anyone troubled by modern slavery. He has a follow-on article up on their website. [2]

[1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

[2] http://www.freetheslaves.net/why-i-chose-to-research-what-sl...

This is an amazing article. Writings about slave holders all seem to fall into two sorts. One defends them and says they are the finest of people, and the very foundation of civilization. The other sort says they are evil through and through.

This article instead gets at the actual reality of their psychology, which turns out to be a lot more complicated.

Let me add one point, which is that slavery seems to largely be a function of economics and the level of technology of a society. In nomadic foraging societies, from what I have read, slavery is unknown because it is impractical and has no economic value.

But with agriculture slavery becomes possible and can produce great wealth and many other sorts of value, and so it becomes wide-spread. But then with industrialization it again becomes uneconomic, and so is abolished. What the article describes quite clearly is a country moving from a largely agrarian economy to an industrial one, and how slavery is being slowly eliminated in the process.

How do its beneficiaries justify it?

Because they can get away with it. Or more precisely: because we let them get away with it.

Granted, the remedy (in so many words: rigorous supply-chain screening + a homeopathic dose of consciousness raising among the general public) is far from trivial. But doable. Yet so far we're only taking baby steps at cracking it.

Just as a flower grows from rot and decayed matter, the unpleasant things in human history and unpleasant things in human nature have provided what was needed for that which we have which is beautiful and life giving and good right now.

We look at a little slice of time and moralize. Which is all we can practically do. But morality changes and it doesn't come out of nothing either.

>What do slaveholders think?

Not anything that different from "sweatshop" employers or any shitty employer for that matter.

When Florida was under British control, Denys Rolle, British MP, brought settlers to his royally granted estate for the purpose of turning it into a capitalist plantation.

This was before the first (haha) American Revolution.

They took the closest thing resembling a flight from London to sunny Florida that there was back then. It was a sailing ship. -passage alone was 6 guineas (Pounds Sterling at the time)

Fundamentally the chattel slaves were treated as cargo and expensed, everyone else was paying in one way or another for the venture to improve "their share" of the estate "provided" them.

In this way the granted estate as a whole could be made "real" for the grantee (Rolle) after having first been nothing but decreed royal rights to not-yet-fully surveyed land.

Attempted Florida real estate in its infancy. Make it more real than it was, so those who come along next will pay more rent.

1766 terms of settlement -help turn wilderness into a foundation for building Rolle a productive multinational agricultural venture -these one-way bundles include passage -all get a small lot in "town" and 5 acres for farming -plus "no limits as to quantity" of additional heritable farmland for a fee -all for a low, low, "small quit-rent" (property tax)

indigent class - 4 years indentured sharecropping in lieu of 12 guineas -expected to achieve the wherewithal to "purchase nearly two negroes" of his own after 4 years

third class "bare necessaries" - 12 guineas -you get survival materials, farm tools and a pig

second class - 21 guineas -you also get craftsman's tools and more livestock -you still have to perform your own labor

first class - 51 guineas -"The remaining 30 guineas may be employed in the price and wages of indented servants, or a working negro may be purchased with it."

The sections in his own words do lend an idea about what the slaveholders of the traditional British aristocracy might have thought. The following document is worthwhile in its entirety but Rolle's account starts about halfway down the page:

https://books.google.nl/books?id=Z2ZZAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1...

Later, after the British lost the war they ended up ceding Florida to Spain in 1783, and Rolle relocated his downsized plantation to the neighboring British territory of the Bahama Islands, claiming great losses due to the political change of sovereignty.

This takes place a few years after the most recent American Revolution (same war as above) which had started in 1776. Florida was not one of the 13 North American colonies which had declared independence from Britain.

In the interim period Rolle had made the transition to pure slave labor going forward, instead of the original indentured arrangement.

The thoughts of this same gentleman 14 - 17 years later can be further hinted at by this next document from 1780 - 1783. The Rolle information again starts about halfway down the page:

http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/Plantations/plantati...

Detailed is the work output expected of the various slave types (considered to be probably exaggerated for the purpose of his bureaucratic claim for financial compensation).

Among pages of claims, chattel slaves were by then valued per head at:

100 Pounds Sterling for Trade workers 50 for Field workers 15 for "Rising Generation" children 0 for "Past Labour" kitchen workers no longer capable of Field performance

Quite a bit of inflation, if it can be believed.

Only the chattel slaves have been made illegal since then, but there are bound to be ruling classes over a period of centuries where when the prohibition of slavery came along, it was treated as a technicality. Depends on where the line is drawn. I believe this line is called labor law.

But it's not only a matter of where the line is drawn and what the terms are, but more importantly who draws the line and sets the terms.

Just ask ranchers and dairy farmers.

What about Free-Range establishments?

I think you'd be better off to ask the Factory owner who made the device you posted on.

Likely many people will downvote this, but I see your point.

Enlighten us?

I assume the point is that intelligent mammals like cows are being held and abused against their will for the benefit of their owners, and so dairy farmers and ranchers are the beneficiaries of this "slavery".

More generally, philosophers like Peter Singer talk about the connection between human rights and animal rights. Singer describes "the expanding circle" in which moral progress involves accepting more people into the circle of those we care about: first just the family, then the tribe, then a nation, then greater and greater groups (different races, religions, etc.), and so forth, and a further step is to include animals as well. [1]

Another perspective on the connection between human rights and animal rights is that it is no coincidence that sociopaths often abuse animals. Those that wish to harm humans often wish to harm animals and vice versa.

Likewise, most humans that see factory farming are horrified. We can't help but emphasize with them.

[1] http://animalethics.blogspot.com/2004/06/peter-singer-on-exp...

What was slavery like, for the slave? It depended on the quality of your master. What is government like for the governed?

Suppose I were to write "slavery is economically beneficial, ...a bunch of evidence goes here...". Do you believe an intellectual discussion would result?

I'd gamble at 3:1 odds that I'd be downvoted and called racist. Just look what happened to Yarvin for merely comparing slavery to government (a more longwinded version of this: http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/no... ).

Would you please stop provoking useless, degenerate subthreads? The word for that is 'trolling'. If you poke a stick into a machine and cause it to seize up, which is effectively what you did here, you're responsible for the effect.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953821 and marked it off-topic.

Can you tell me concretely what you'd like me to do? A meta topic was raised by others, and I became involved. What did I do above and beyond others to be singled out?

If the topic was useless, shouldn't you be detaching at the parent of the thread (which wasn't me)?

> Can you tell me concretely what you'd like me to do?

I'd like you to optimize for the quality of the thread as a whole. You've been here for years and have more than enough information to do that.

The only way I can see to do this is to not openly state unpopular opinions. Is that really what you are telling me to do? HN is no longer open to ideas that the hecklers wish to veto?

Or is there some alternate option you are aware of which I am not? How would you propose that I make my point without resulting in eastwestmath becoming hostile?

I'm happy to discuss this but I need an indication that you're asking it in good faith and not just stonewalling (and putting words in my mouth a la "HN is no longer open to ideas").

Good faith means being willing to take some of the responsibility for these outcomes instead of putting 100% on everybody else and 0% on yourself. Self-responsibility is a conservative value and you generally espouse those, so that shouldn't be too hard.

That's the same weird meta-argument as the grandparent called out! I mean, out with it: do you want to argue that slavery is economically beneficial? If so, do so. I'll even provide you the non-judgement question I'd ask in return: beneficial to whom? (i.e. "the economy" isn't a unitary entity).

But you don't want to. You want to smear the rest of us without actually getting your hands dirty.

One of the problems with the meta-argument is you never expose your views to critical scrutiny by people with other views, and so never find out if they are mistaken.

>I'd gamble at 3:1 odds that I'd be downvoted and called racist.

Yeah, you would, so you would need to argue back. Is that so painful? And note there might be others who are not certain which side is correct, and might be persuaded by your arguments. Or they might be persuaded they are wrong. That is what open discussion is about, and it is the best system we have.

I do think you have one good point. That is that calling someone "racist" because they disagree with you on something is usually not helpful. It is better to just state points of disagreement.

Downvoting and calling someone racist is not an argument.

And note there might be others who are not certain which side is correct, and might be persuaded by your arguments.

I'm aware. I actually receive a consistent flow of emails of the form "I'd never say this in public, but you made me rethink what I previously believed." That's because I'm willing to be called racist or whatever.

Most people aren't. It significantly hinders rational discussion.

> Suppose I were to write "slavery is economically beneficial, ...a bunch of evidence goes here...". Do you believe an intellectual discussion would result?

The problem is that the distortion of your ethics and values would have to be so extreme to arrive at such a conclusion that anyone who read that sentence would know that you have an extremely "different" way of looking at the world, and not in a good way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

   distortion of your ethics

It's interesting to reflect on the fact that there were many slave revolts in antiquity, but the revolting slaves did not seek to abolish slavery, they merely wanted to stop being slaves and have their own slaves. In other words, even slaves had no problem with slavery as an institution.

We also should always be aware that every serious discussion of slavery must begin with the question: what do you mean by "slavery", for the term is used in wildly different ways.

Could you give examples of this. Of the slave revolts I can remember in recent history none of them wanted to replace their masters. They just wanted out.

But pondering further. If you have a successful revolt what do you believe the punishment for the perpetrators should be. Would death be a just punishment? What if the empowered slaves offered enslavement of their former masters as an alternative?

   Could you give examples of this.

Example of what? The standard text on the subject [1] says there are no known instances of slave revolts in antiquity that sought to abolish slavery as an institution. If you know counterexamples, I'd be interested to learn about them.

   Would death be a just punishment?
   What if ...

I can't see either being particularly productive. It's really very simple -- albeit unpleasant: there is a reason why some small group of people manage to enslave a large number of people: slavers are better than slaves. Better at cooperation, better at conflict avoidance, better at socially organising violence, better at dividing-and-conquering their enemies, better at science, better at engineering, better at teaching their children, better at forming and maintaining society. Slaves should learn from slavers, not kill them. But learning is hard, and not immediately emotionally gratifying.

The Haitian slave revolution of the late 18th, early 19th century lead to immediate genocide of the remaining whites and and mixed race inhabitants [2]. Haiti, which was once the wealthiest Caribbean island has been a basket case ever since.

Coincidentally, after the successful revolution, the black leadership reinstituted slavery, albeit symbolically abolishing the whip [3].

The Haitian slave rebellion teaches us a large number of lessons about humanity, most not very palatable.

[1] Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realencyclop%C3%A4die_der_clas...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution#Free_republ...

I think you're rather making their point. Something could be both evil and economically beneficial, and while the statement only mentioned the economy you assume that they have a bad way of looking at the world.

We should be able to have a reasoned, intellectual discussion about the economic side of slavery whilst still agreeing it shouldn't be done.

I think the point made in this sketch is pretty relevant: https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg

It is everywhere illegal yet slavery persists in many corners of the global economy. How do its beneficiaries justify it?

This piece was written by a professor, isn't there an error in the subtitle in the proper use of the English language ?

The subtitle would be corrected by stating: It is illegal everywhere, yet slavery . . . . .

(switch everywhere and illegal)

As a native speaker of American English, I'd say that neither ordering is incorrect. Your suggestion ("illegal everywhere") is indeed more common, and would usually be better choice in conversational speech and popular writing. The subtitle ("everywhere illegal") isn't wrong, though, just stilted. Presuming the author is a native speaker, it's almost certainly not an error, but a conscious choice to employ "hyperbaton".

Overused, this sort of inverted word order can leave you sounding like a mishmash of Monty Python, Yoda, and a bad fantasy novel, but applied selectively, it acts as a defamiliarization that adds emphasis. Here, the inverted ordering conveys a sense of being legalistic, Biblical, and archaic. Presumably this is intended to hint to the reader that piece will argue that the practice of slavery is similarly out-of-place in the modern world.

I also think this added emphasis. I liked the way the author phrased it, i.e. "...everywhere illegal". To me, it gave the impression of focusing on the word "everywhere". (I'm not a native speaker.)

> it gave the impression of focusing on the word "everywhere"

That's precisely my understanding of it. I am a native English speaker (British English).

HN comments debating the merits of slavery. Yikes. Besides being a head scratcher it's kind of a disgusting, albeit fascinating, look into some people's minds. Maybe it's the weekend crowd.

Also somewhat related: 5th-Grader ‘Sold’ in Mock Slave Auction at New Jersey School - http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58d1d687e4b02d33b746c2cf

The poor job of propaganda in this article made me laugh. You can tell it has more to do with "modern politics" than any dive into what slaveholders think. My favorite quote.

"It’s only now that we are waking up to ask new questions about Right-wing movements such as the Ku Klux Klan and Al-Qaeda. A fresh generation of scholars are writing books about the Tea Party and those who protest on behalf of the rich"

The same that capitalists think. Those mongrel are so much better of due to my hard work. They have food, shelter and something to do with there lives. Else they would vandalize on the street.

What if a slaveholder is a slave? Can dependancy hell apply to a owned person?

The problem with word changing, which seems all the rage, is intelligent, logical people see through it and get put off.

And to make it worse the dumb dumbs start saying stuff like there are more slaves today than ever.

Not understanding comparing real slaves numbers in the old days to indentured servitude today, leaves out the fact most people were in indentured servitude for most of history.

But the dumb dumbs have the numbers, I guess playing them might be the best tactic to eradicate this awful practice.

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