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> Slavery is where you have no choice but to work. If the food reward is substantial enough to be worth a crow's while, then it confers a competitive advantage

> Slavery is where you have no choice but to work. If the food reward is substantial enough to be worth a crow's while, then it confers a competitive advantage and crows that refrain from this behaviour will face pressure on their food sources from the offspring of the well-fed crows; essentially you've artificially raised the carrying capacity of the ecosystem, for those crows that agree to your "bargain". Effectively, for the crows, the choice becomes "pick up cigarettes or starve". This definition of slavery sounds a lot like capitalism.

adventured 9y ago
You have a choice to not work under Capitalism. What you don't have a choice to do, is to enslave someone else to meet your needs or desires by using the State as a violence proxy that handles the racket for your benefit (while the cartel that runs the State takes a big cut of the action). Socialism: where other people have to work for your benefit because you don't want to. It is in fact Socialism that meets the perfect definition of slavery. Not only are you a slave of your neighbor's whims or wants or laziness, you're a slave of the State which holds absolute power over the means of production and all property (ie all means of keeping yourself alive, thus your existence; the State owns you, thus slavery).
- Mtinie 9y ago
  Yo have the perceived choice not to work, but that doesn’t mean you’ll survive. A hallmark of capitalism is smoke and mirrors.
jaggederest 9y ago
It turns out, in an economic sense anyway, that paying people wages can be qualitatively worse than slavery. To delve into the macabre, you can pay people less than the cost of maintaining a slave to do the same work, and those people are not a capital expenditure but an operational one, i.e. you don't take a loss if they happen to starve, get sick, or quit, you just hire someone else.

adventured 9y ago

You have a choice to not work under Capitalism. What you don't have a choice to do, is to enslave someone else to meet your needs or desires by using the State as a violence proxy that handles the racket for your benefit (while the cartel that runs the State takes a big cut of the action). Socialism: where other people have to work for your benefit because you don't want to. It is in fact Socialism that meets the perfect definition of slavery. Not only are you a slave of your neighbor's whims or wants or laziness, you're a slave of the State which holds absolute power over the means of production and all property (ie all means of keeping yourself alive, thus your existence; the State owns you, thus slavery).

Mtinie 9y ago
Yo have the perceived choice not to work, but that doesn’t mean you’ll survive. A hallmark of capitalism is smoke and mirrors.

jaggederest 9y ago

It turns out, in an economic sense anyway, that paying people wages can be qualitatively worse than slavery. To delve into the macabre, you can pay people less than the cost of maintaining a slave to do the same work, and those people are not a capital expenditure but an operational one, i.e. you don't take a loss if they happen to starve, get sick, or quit, you just hire someone else.