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I know you threw in the word 'virtual,' but that's just a way to weasel out of actually having said that we've been accustomed to slave wages for a long time, w

I know you threw in the word 'virtual,' but that's just a way to weasel out of actually having said that we've been accustomed to slave wages for a long time, while still trying to make an emotional equivocation between captive, forced, slave labor, and paltry factory wages.

runawaybottle 7y ago
Okay, so here is a question for you. What would virtual slave wages look like if it actually existed in this world (I’ll operate on the supposed fact it doesn’t exist)? And to follow up, what would a society reliant on that labor be like?
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  Not OP, but I just wanted to put in my $0.02 regarding the importance of understanding that the enslavement spectrum is orthogonal to the poverty spectrum. You can be a rich slave or a poor slave. Slavery is about freedom. Freedom even to choose a slightly poorer subsistence life compared to a crappy factory is still a freedom. Just to give the conceptual example of a relatively rich slave, a worker in a fully centrally planned communist/socialist state is a slave to the state, even though such a worker might have a clean/safe place to live and modern luxuries. They don't have the freedom to choose their job, negotiate wages, choose where they live, etc.
  - runawaybottle 7y ago
    And I’ll add, to be poetic about it, we Westerners are slaves to this supply chain. Of course, I can just choose not to buy that 10 dollar t-shirt from H&M, but it’s mostly hard in our economy. We can’t even vote with our wallet because everything is literally made there. Decades of compliance with this system. The comedy of it all is that got to actual slavery in these Uyghur camps.
    - echelon 7y ago
      We're fighting it now. With every new bit of leaked evidence about the plight of the Uighurs, conversations are sparked. The electorate isn't happy about the CCP. Change isn't as fast as I'd like, but it is happening. Coronavirus is a reckoning for our supply chain as well.

runawaybottle 7y ago

Okay, so here is a question for you. What would virtual slave wages look like if it actually existed in this world (I’ll operate on the supposed fact it doesn’t exist)? And to follow up, what would a society reliant on that labor be like?

Consultant32452 7y ago
Not OP, but I just wanted to put in my $0.02 regarding the importance of understanding that the enslavement spectrum is orthogonal to the poverty spectrum. You can be a rich slave or a poor slave. Slavery is about freedom. Freedom even to choose a slightly poorer subsistence life compared to a crappy factory is still a freedom. Just to give the conceptual example of a relatively rich slave, a worker in a fully centrally planned communist/socialist state is a slave to the state, even though such a worker might have a clean/safe place to live and modern luxuries. They don't have the freedom to choose their job, negotiate wages, choose where they live, etc.
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  And I’ll add, to be poetic about it, we Westerners are slaves to this supply chain. Of course, I can just choose not to buy that 10 dollar t-shirt from H&M, but it’s mostly hard in our economy. We can’t even vote with our wallet because everything is literally made there. Decades of compliance with this system. The comedy of it all is that got to actual slavery in these Uyghur camps.
  - echelon 7y ago
    We're fighting it now. With every new bit of leaked evidence about the plight of the Uighurs, conversations are sparked. The electorate isn't happy about the CCP. Change isn't as fast as I'd like, but it is happening. Coronavirus is a reckoning for our supply chain as well.