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Comment by ghufran_syed | Hacker News Reader

This starts to redefine slavery as "being forced to do something I would prefer not to do" (given a better alternative). But what drives us to work is the basic human needs for food, shelter as well as higher order needs once the basic ones are satisfied. So should we therefore take the next step and conclude we are all slaves of ourselves and our physiology? I think it's true, but then why do most people who believe that "employment is slavery" not also take this next step? Could it be because it's more psychologically satisfying to some people to be able to blame their unhappiness with work etc on someone else, rather than accepting a fundamental reality of the human condition? :)

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That’s an entirely separate philosophical discussion about the meaning of “slavery.” I’m speaking to the historical and material reality that the structuring and maintenance of wage labor was informed and defined by the existence of slavery in the U.S.

And of course it still is - slavery is legal as a form of punishment in this country and we have prisoners working at pay and conditions below those of other forms of wage labor. Is it your hypothesis that the two don’t interact with each other? How could they not in a market context where forced labor persists in competition with other low wage labor?

> Could it be because it's more psychologically satisfying to some people to be able to blame their unhappiness with work etc on someone else, rather than accepting a fundamental reality of the human condition?

It's only a fundamental reality of the human condition if you're not born into wealth. So, not really fundamental at all. A fundamental component of slavery is there being a master. You're sort of ignoring that wage-slaves are in fact, creating wealth for someone else.

And how did their parents get their wealth by means fair or foul? No matter how many generations back of inheritance it still comes back to the same root cause.

The "exception of born into wealth" sounds a lot like the ancient Greek nonsense of philsophers and aristocrats justifying slavery ironically. While they themselves were willfully ignorant of actual means of wealth generation and thought it had to be stolen by conquest and holding traders in contempt.

And this sickness was modeled into the Antebellum US South combined with the projection of accusing the North of wanting to enslave everyone.

Modern work is as much a fundamental part of the human condition as much as hunting and gathering was before.

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