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Comment by readymade | Hacker News Reader

Slavery wasn't about racism, it was about cheap, unregulated labor. Pure economics. It doesn't absolve the moral dilemma inherent to it, or negate the racism that frequently underpinned public support for it. For what it's worth I'm sure people defended human slavery by saying "that's just the way the world works" then as well. You're not ethically tantamount to a slave owner by glibly justifying using women as ornaments or pawns in your little networking game, but it's a bit troubling that "treating women with the same respect you'd expect from your peers" doesn't factor into your assessment.

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If you treat them and see them like pawns, then shame on you. (though odds are if you see them like pawns, you see everybody as a pawn, female or not. An equal-opportunity exploiter, if you will).

Still, I'd observe this is tied to basic human nature & sexuality. Unlike slavery, as best I can tell it cannot be done away with, short of making it illegal for a man to have a hot woman/entourage of women present (totally not a sexist law, btw)

Fair enough, but one can justify racism and ethnocentrism by appealing to our animal instincts as well – we may very well be predisposed to seeking power over others and reserving trust for those we perceive to be our own kind. Now granted, I have no way of proving that there isn't some kind of misogyny gene. But legally, slavery was done away with by passing a constitutional amendment that makes no direct reference to race. Culturally, there was a large precedent of underground and increasingly popular outrage against the practice, founded in principles of human equality that had to be actively argued for.

I bring up the parallel, again, not because it's an equivalent situation, but to illustrate what I think is a common ethical trap we can fall into: what good is it to see an injustice and wave our hands, saying that it's just the way the things are?

You suggested that the grandposter is blindly optimistic for wanting to change the way men relate to women in the workplace (or something like that), but think about how much has changed culturally, that we can have this conversation in 2010 and have it be basically a given that human bondage is morally wrong? It took a law in 1865, and it was controversial at the time. Today you have to be on the fringe of society in order to believe that it was ever morally defensible, presumably. That's not a triumph of law, it's a triumph of active social change.

I had typed out a long and careful argument, but I think I'll just leave it at this:

I believe this issue is fundamentally rooted in sexuality, and I am deeply, deeply fearful of the day we attempt to legislate the nature of sexuality.

On the latter point I agree with you, and I'm certainly not advocating that, merely suggesting we can do a lot more on our own to be agents of social change with the force of our moral convictions than would otherwise seem possible.

As for the question of our fundamental nature, we'll just have to leave it up to the philosophers. I appreciate your good natured debate, nonetheless.

Slavery wasn't about pure economics. In fact, it is not that obvious that slave labour is more efficient from the purely economical point. There're problems with incentives, with hiring staff willing to manage the slaves, controlling abuse etc. Such critique was known at least since Adam Smith.

To take a more modern example, the same is true about compulsory military service. Many people once believed and many still believe that conscription is simply way cheaper than voluntary military service. However, the people that are drafted into the military service could instead have been involved in the productive work in the regular economy, and paying taxes that may be used to pay volunteers.

In short, "pure economics" doesn't automatically go in favour of slavery.

Slavery was a sustainable institution not just because it was perceived as cost-efficient. It required general acceptance of the idea that it's OK to deny certain classes of people -- e.g., according to their origin -- their basic rights. And that is pretty much about racism.

I don't think a million years of sexual selection is going to be overcome by clever arguments. Any sensible, workable path forward just has to include accepting that men and women have strong urges to treat one another differently.

Strawman argument is straw-like.

Elaborate.

Me: "This is how the world works."

You: "Slavery is a terrible thing."

Yes, I agree with your statement, but it went way beyond anything we're actually talking with in order to elicit agreement from readers. You characterized the previous comment as being pro-slavery, hence creating a strawman argument.

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