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Comment by escape_goat | Hacker News Reader

I see no difference. Surely your slaves may refuse to work if they decide that it's in their own interest; refuse to eat, perhaps, and spurn threats of torture and death, until you have no choice but to be done with them. I think it merely a matter of the strength of their conviction, that their interest lies not in survival, but in the refusal of subjugation.

By your logic, the employee is only ever free when possessed of the freedom to serve some other, instead, at their own discretion; insofar as doubt, a paucity of jobs, the risk of losing health coverage and the like might erode their confidence in this ability, you would regard them as being in chains. Thus it must be that it is with the risks presented by the unknown, that they find their interest lies; elsewise, none of them would ever be free without a job offer in hand.

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You had to stretch so far for that it's meaningless. You can't equate physical restraint, corporal punishment, and complete lack of self determination in your personal life with... the risk of losing your health coverage.

That's not a difference in degree at all. It's a difference in kind, and the distinction isn't even close.

The risk of losing one's health coverage is a burden of varying severity. For a person with an chronic disease, it seems insurmountable. For a person whose child has an incurable illness, who hopes at least that that child will not die untreated and in pain, it is worse. Do not weigh it lightly in such cases. Few people, after all, are slaves. We do not therefore dismiss their lack of freedom.

I feel that you have let me down somewhat with your previous explanation of the difference between the employee and the slave, because it is clear then that you do not at all abide by the difference you set out. It is not, after all, the employee's ability to pursue his own self-interest that makes him free rather than a slave.

>It is not, after all, the employee's ability to pursue his own self-interest that makes him free rather than a slave.

Actually, yes it is. I'm sorry you feel let down, but your side of this discussion is frankly indefensible.

Perhaps so. It's difficult to argue from the contrary, and I lacked the skill to follow on convincingly from my starting point. I had meant to highlight the deficiencies of your assurance that the ability to (in theory) choose alternate employment meant that employees were free of coercion.

I think that when you introduce the supplemental notion of the qualitative difference, you take some steps back from a stock libertarian talking point that you might or might not have intended to support. At least, a proper response would require some elaboration of the notion of employee liberty.

I can sympathize if you don't have time or energy for that, and I'm happy to let the matter rest inconclusively. For what its worth, I'd actually be rather interested in whatever ideas you developed to articulate your position, as they would be a more useful reference point than I currently possess the next time I encounter someone making a reference to employee liberty I feel deserves to be tested.

There's lots of examples of historical slavery in quite decent conditions compared to your worst-case scenario, and likewise many examples of employment that looks OK on the surface but is actually awful. There is a qualitative difference, but also a considerable degree of practical overlap.

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