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Comment by nycticorax | Hacker News Reader

> No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid.

Do you have a citation for this claim?

> > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that.

> Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk.

What if the adult in the scenario happens to know that the prisoners are not being paid? Then you think the correct answer to the child's question is "Yes, those are slaves"? With no further qualification necessary?

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https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/219/219/

> The words involuntary servitude have a "larger meaning than slavery." "It was very well understood that, in the form of apprenticeship for long terms, as it had been practiced in the West India Islands, on the abolition of slavery by the English government, or by reducing the slaves to the condition of serfs attached to the plantation, the purpose of the article might have been evaded if only the word 'slavery' had been used."

If there wasn't a distinction between the two, the Amendment wouldn't need to mention both.

If I see forced unpaid laborers, I'm entirely comfortable deeming them slaves. (They'll probably learn about similar forms of slavery in history class; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome, for example. In current affairs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century)

Your original claim was that "slavery" means forced work without compensation, whereas "involuntary servitude" means forced work with or without compensation. Your citation doesn't justify this claim. It not just that there's a distinction, it's the nature of the distinction that I'm disputing.

> If I see forced unpaid laborers, I'm entirely comfortable deeming them slaves.

Yeah, you're comfortable with it because you've redefined "slavery" to mean whatever you want it to mean. But if you did a survey of native English speakers, and asked them if unpaid workers on a chain gang were slaves, how many do you think would say "yes", without qualification? I would be shocked if the answer were more than 20%.

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