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My understanding is that economically it was usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, and servants often ended up better off than a normal immigrant. The seco
by jkhdigital 6y ago
My understanding is that economically it was usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, and servants often ended up better off than a normal immigrant. The second-class status of servants is somewhat hard to stomach by modern standards, but honestly it is not much different than the way members of the military are treated (source: I served five years enlisted in the US Navy).
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoYes, but then you should apply political pressure to better the US army, not go "welp, let's give everybody that experience". I am not sure why that needs spelling out, but social issues are actually not resolved by making them a suffering contest.
- jkhdigital 6y agoCan you point to where I said “welp let’s give everybody that experience”? I was attempting to give a nuanced view but I guess nobody in this thread has any interest in nuance. My mistake.
- paultopia 6y agoThe problem is that you can't separate the economic from the social---even a mutually beneficial transaction can have negative social externalities like undermining the political (and then the economic) power of a whole class of workers or potentially even undermining the individual capacity for independence of the individual involved on a psychological level. The philosopher Debra Satz's book "Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale" has a great section on bonded labor that captures some of these consequences. (I think the military isn't a good analogy because the public at large affords military personnel a special kind of respect that counteracts these social externalities.)