5 ms·

If the combined cost of housing, education, retirement, childcare and healthcare amounts to more than any average person can earn during a lifetime, these advan

If the combined cost of housing, education, retirement, childcare and healthcare amounts to more than any average person can earn during a lifetime, these advantages are in other words never comparative to your investment of time and labor, you could argue that the free market has instituted a form of slavery even if we call it reality. You are after all working under the threat of physical harm if your healthcare depends on employment and we call that violence. Except of course in America where we call it freedom.

bluGill 5y ago
None of those expenses are fixed. When people earn more money they spend it on more expensive houses, better education, high quality childcare (read education), and better healthcare. The amount of money you make at minimum wage would fund a nice lifestyle in 1700 - inflation adjusted. The "bathroom" would be an outhouse and a bucked of water you heat on a fire. You wouldn't have even a beat up old car to drive. There is no visible end in sight to this trend.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages say otherwise. Read Smith. Book I, Chapter 8, beginning "There are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers an advantage" and through to "The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_8 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The subject does have a lot of complexity that doesn't fit in a comment box. My point stands in general, but it gets complex.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Among the reasons I threw the book at you.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        I know, I've read the book, my comment is right out of it.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Calling what the modern day American poor have as 'a form of slavery' is disingenuous. Not being able to afford all of those things is a result of being poor, not of them being subject to 'a form of slavery'.
- wiredearp 5y ago
  Well I wasn't referring to the poor specifically. [We can't afford to live anymore](https://aninjusticemag.com/we-cant-afford-to-live-anymore-and-the-rich-are-gaslighting-us-ac8e5bc9b455 https://aninjusticemag.com/we-cant-afford-to-live-anymore-an...) and there are [good reasons](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...) for that. If you have zero savings by working three honest jobs and is otherwise left to die, you are if not a slave then at least a serf.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
slibhb 5y ago
Housing, food, water, healthcare and so on are scarce because of nature. If you want to argue that the laws of physics, human physiology and metabolism have conspired to make us all slaves, fine. But you're pushing the word "slave" into territory where it makes no sense.
- triceratops 5y ago
  I thought the whole point of capitalism was to make things cheaper.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    I'm not sure if capitalism has a "point" but it almost incontestably has "made things cheaper". It hasn't altered the fabric of reality to abrograte the laws of physics or human physiology.
- courtf 5y ago
  They are scarce, and capitalism makes them more abundant at the cost of subjugation. Humans work endlessly to have access to things that, while scarce, were available in nature for free, often in superior forms. The world no longer supports the lifestyle of our ancestors, so there really is no choice but grind for currency in order to survive. There is evidence that nomadic hunter-gatherers had better nutrition, less disease, less violence, fewer children and "worked" far fewer hours per year than those in the agricultural and industrial eras. By comparison, it's not hard to think of those more modern lifestyles as a form of wage slavery. Work will set you free and all that.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    First, comparing capitalism to Auschwitz is obscene. Second, nothing in nature is free. It isn't free for animals today: all of their energy is expended just staying alive. The Rousseauian view of hunter-gathers as living in Eden is nonsense. The death rate for children and mothers was horrifically high until fairly recently. Entire diseases, once deadly or debilitating, have been cured. If you want to go work on a farm, you can (and I know people who do). You can join some collective living arrangement, you can become Amish, you can live on a kibbutz. You can travel around the country picking up odd jobs and surviving perfectly well because food is so cheap. You're free to do what you like but what you choose to do is whine on the internet because you dislike freedom. There's plenty of room for improvement in the world. It's sad that people instead babble about "slavery" and "sugjugation," things they know nothing about.

bluGill 5y ago

None of those expenses are fixed. When people earn more money they spend it on more expensive houses, better education, high quality childcare (read education), and better healthcare. The amount of money you make at minimum wage would fund a nice lifestyle in 1700 - inflation adjusted. The "bathroom" would be an outhouse and a bucked of water you heat on a fire. You wouldn't have even a beat up old car to drive. There is no visible end in sight to this trend.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages say otherwise. Read Smith. Book I, Chapter 8, beginning "There are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers an advantage" and through to "The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_8 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...
- bluGill 5y ago
  The subject does have a lot of complexity that doesn't fit in a comment box. My point stands in general, but it gets complex.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Among the reasons I threw the book at you.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I know, I've read the book, my comment is right out of it.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

Calling what the modern day American poor have as 'a form of slavery' is disingenuous. Not being able to afford all of those things is a result of being poor, not of them being subject to 'a form of slavery'.

wiredearp 5y ago
Well I wasn't referring to the poor specifically. [We can't afford to live anymore](https://aninjusticemag.com/we-cant-afford-to-live-anymore-and-the-rich-are-gaslighting-us-ac8e5bc9b455 https://aninjusticemag.com/we-cant-afford-to-live-anymore-an...) and there are [good reasons](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...) for that. If you have zero savings by working three honest jobs and is otherwise left to die, you are if not a slave then at least a serf.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

slibhb 5y ago

Housing, food, water, healthcare and so on are scarce because of nature. If you want to argue that the laws of physics, human physiology and metabolism have conspired to make us all slaves, fine. But you're pushing the word "slave" into territory where it makes no sense.

triceratops 5y ago
I thought the whole point of capitalism was to make things cheaper.
- slibhb 5y ago
  I'm not sure if capitalism has a "point" but it almost incontestably has "made things cheaper". It hasn't altered the fabric of reality to abrograte the laws of physics or human physiology.
courtf 5y ago
They are scarce, and capitalism makes them more abundant at the cost of subjugation. Humans work endlessly to have access to things that, while scarce, were available in nature for free, often in superior forms. The world no longer supports the lifestyle of our ancestors, so there really is no choice but grind for currency in order to survive. There is evidence that nomadic hunter-gatherers had better nutrition, less disease, less violence, fewer children and "worked" far fewer hours per year than those in the agricultural and industrial eras. By comparison, it's not hard to think of those more modern lifestyles as a form of wage slavery. Work will set you free and all that.
- slibhb 5y ago
  First, comparing capitalism to Auschwitz is obscene. Second, nothing in nature is free. It isn't free for animals today: all of their energy is expended just staying alive. The Rousseauian view of hunter-gathers as living in Eden is nonsense. The death rate for children and mothers was horrifically high until fairly recently. Entire diseases, once deadly or debilitating, have been cured. If you want to go work on a farm, you can (and I know people who do). You can join some collective living arrangement, you can become Amish, you can live on a kibbutz. You can travel around the country picking up odd jobs and surviving perfectly well because food is so cheap. You're free to do what you like but what you choose to do is whine on the internet because you dislike freedom. There's plenty of room for improvement in the world. It's sad that people instead babble about "slavery" and "sugjugation," things they know nothing about.