4 ms·

Perhaps the master/slave relationship isn't the best metaphor for voluntary employment...

Nextgrid 3y ago
It's not voluntary unless/until you can find me a place where housing/land is free. Sure, the slavery is "distributed" across multiple actors such as landlords & profit off the whole concept of property as an asset, but ultimately the net result is the same - you have to work just to be afforded shelter. The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
- seti0Cha 3y ago
  > It's not voluntary unless/until you can find me a place where housing/land is free. Prison. > The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days? Sounds like your definition of slavery is nobody taking care of you.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    In much of the US you actually have to either work or pay rent in prison, so no.
    - seti0Cha 3y ago
      Really? I've never heard this and a quick google doesn't bear this out. Also, it's not clear to me what they would actually do to you if you didn't...put you in prison? Release you as punishment?
      - nebula8804 3y ago
        13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Which leads to this: https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-slavery-alive-perspectives-from-the-prison-where-slavery-never-ended/ https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-sla...
        seti0Cha 3y ago
        Wow, til. Thanks for the serious response to an admittedly flippant remark.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    > Prison. If people start using prison as this "one weird trick they don't want you to know" to not pay rent, this problem will be solved pretty quickly too (if it isn't already, as the other commenter suggests forced prison labor is a thing in some places).
    - seti0Cha 3y ago
      You only addressed the lighthearted part of my response. I'd be much more interested in your reaction to my main point - you appear to be defining slavery as having to care for yourself. Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you?
      - Nextgrid 3y ago
        > Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you? I believe shelter and basic necessities should be a human right. So many problems would be solved/improved if people didn't have to spend half (or more, for the lower classes) of their earnings on perpetually renting.
        argiopetech 3y ago
        You may believe that, but there has to be a means to that end (preferably one that doesn't require the oppression of others). Shelter has to be built on a property and maintained indefinitely, food has to be painstakingly extracted from the land, etc. People have to do that, because there is no extant alternative. Ignoring land ownership for now, are the maintainers and farmers not to be compensated? That would be actual slavery.
- frakt0x90 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure slaves from any era would kill to have my job where I work from home, have various insurances and investments through my employer, make a lot of money that I can spend on whatever I want and more. When you abstract concepts enough, everything becomes similar but current employment in developed countries is nowhere near slavery.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Slaves from the previous era would sure kill for your job... but you might very well kill for this job 20 years down the line when all your perks have evaporated and inflation/property prices/taxes have reduced your currently-high-salary to what is effectively minimum wage? Keep in mind that no employer/business is providing these perks out of the goodness of their heart - they do so because the market is (was?) extremely competitive, but it's not a given that the market will stay competitive.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The conspicuous difference is that you can choose who to work for and in consequences employers have to compete for labor, which is why the overwhelming majority of people make more than minimum wage. You're also setting up a catch 22 where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist, are a prerequisite to not having slavery, but if no one has to do labor to construct housing then where does it come from?
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar. > where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. Even if you hypothetically wanted to just put a tent somewhere and not require on any external labor, you'd still need to buy/rent the land first.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar. Irrelevant. The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor. > That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. But this is really not any different -- depending on how you define it land is either a scare resource you can't get any more of at all or something that requires labor to create more of, e.g. by building sea platforms or similar. And people don't actually need any particular amount of land in order to have shelter. You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter on a given piece of land by building an arbitrarily tall building. In theory there is a limit on how tall a building you could make, but in practice if we built buildings of the largest size we know how to build on the amount of land that actually exists we would have dramatically more housing than is needed for everyone. So the limiting factor is not actually land, it's construction, which somebody has to do in order for you to have shelter.
- seadan83 3y ago
  In slavery, the enslaved is property. Their spouse and children can be sold off, you can be used as a breeder of more slaves, you eat what you can forage or what is handed to you, if you don't work harder you and your family are physically beaten. Some slaves had their achilles tendon's ruptured so they couldn't run but still could work in fields. That is just getting started and I'm not an expert in the matter (just took a few history classes). So.. there are some really stark differences. "Wage slavery" does have similarities to an extent, but it is still a world apart.
- itishappy 3y ago
  Plantations aren't free either. Slaves need to be managed else they will all leave and the owners starve (or worse). I guess slaves, slave owners, and software engineers are all pretty much the same when you think about it.
  - argiopetech 3y ago
    One might say that we're all subject to "the human condition".
- Veserv 3y ago
  The qualitative difference between slavery and a job is that a slave is not allowed to choose a better option if one is available. A slave is barred from taking higher paid work, work with better conditions, etc. Even if it would be beneficial for their master (e.g. they do higher value work and all of the money goes to their master) they do not have the freedom to choose. A slave does not have the freedom to improve their circumstances even if it is a win-win situation. That is the qualitative difference between slavery and a job.

It's not voluntary unless/until you can find me a place where housing/land is free. Sure, the slavery is "distributed" across multiple actors such as landlords & profit off the whole concept of property as an asset, but ultimately the net result is the same - you have to work just to be afforded shelter. The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?

seti0Cha 3y ago
> It's not voluntary unless/until you can find me a place where housing/land is free. Prison. > The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days? Sounds like your definition of slavery is nobody taking care of you.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  In much of the US you actually have to either work or pay rent in prison, so no.
  - seti0Cha 3y ago
    Really? I've never heard this and a quick google doesn't bear this out. Also, it's not clear to me what they would actually do to you if you didn't...put you in prison? Release you as punishment?
    - nebula8804 3y ago
      13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Which leads to this: https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-slavery-alive-perspectives-from-the-prison-where-slavery-never-ended/ https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-sla...
      - seti0Cha 3y ago
        Wow, til. Thanks for the serious response to an admittedly flippant remark.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > Prison. If people start using prison as this "one weird trick they don't want you to know" to not pay rent, this problem will be solved pretty quickly too (if it isn't already, as the other commenter suggests forced prison labor is a thing in some places).
  - seti0Cha 3y ago
    You only addressed the lighthearted part of my response. I'd be much more interested in your reaction to my main point - you appear to be defining slavery as having to care for yourself. Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you?
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      > Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you? I believe shelter and basic necessities should be a human right. So many problems would be solved/improved if people didn't have to spend half (or more, for the lower classes) of their earnings on perpetually renting.
      - argiopetech 3y ago
        You may believe that, but there has to be a means to that end (preferably one that doesn't require the oppression of others). Shelter has to be built on a property and maintained indefinitely, food has to be painstakingly extracted from the land, etc. People have to do that, because there is no extant alternative. Ignoring land ownership for now, are the maintainers and farmers not to be compensated? That would be actual slavery.
frakt0x90 3y ago
I'm pretty sure slaves from any era would kill to have my job where I work from home, have various insurances and investments through my employer, make a lot of money that I can spend on whatever I want and more. When you abstract concepts enough, everything becomes similar but current employment in developed countries is nowhere near slavery.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Slaves from the previous era would sure kill for your job... but you might very well kill for this job 20 years down the line when all your perks have evaporated and inflation/property prices/taxes have reduced your currently-high-salary to what is effectively minimum wage? Keep in mind that no employer/business is providing these perks out of the goodness of their heart - they do so because the market is (was?) extremely competitive, but it's not a given that the market will stay competitive.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The conspicuous difference is that you can choose who to work for and in consequences employers have to compete for labor, which is why the overwhelming majority of people make more than minimum wage. You're also setting up a catch 22 where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist, are a prerequisite to not having slavery, but if no one has to do labor to construct housing then where does it come from?
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar. > where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. Even if you hypothetically wanted to just put a tent somewhere and not require on any external labor, you'd still need to buy/rent the land first.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar. Irrelevant. The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor. > That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. But this is really not any different -- depending on how you define it land is either a scare resource you can't get any more of at all or something that requires labor to create more of, e.g. by building sea platforms or similar. And people don't actually need any particular amount of land in order to have shelter. You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter on a given piece of land by building an arbitrarily tall building. In theory there is a limit on how tall a building you could make, but in practice if we built buildings of the largest size we know how to build on the amount of land that actually exists we would have dramatically more housing than is needed for everyone. So the limiting factor is not actually land, it's construction, which somebody has to do in order for you to have shelter.
seadan83 3y ago
In slavery, the enslaved is property. Their spouse and children can be sold off, you can be used as a breeder of more slaves, you eat what you can forage or what is handed to you, if you don't work harder you and your family are physically beaten. Some slaves had their achilles tendon's ruptured so they couldn't run but still could work in fields. That is just getting started and I'm not an expert in the matter (just took a few history classes). So.. there are some really stark differences. "Wage slavery" does have similarities to an extent, but it is still a world apart.
itishappy 3y ago
Plantations aren't free either. Slaves need to be managed else they will all leave and the owners starve (or worse). I guess slaves, slave owners, and software engineers are all pretty much the same when you think about it.
- argiopetech 3y ago
  One might say that we're all subject to "the human condition".
Veserv 3y ago
The qualitative difference between slavery and a job is that a slave is not allowed to choose a better option if one is available. A slave is barred from taking higher paid work, work with better conditions, etc. Even if it would be beneficial for their master (e.g. they do higher value work and all of the money goes to their master) they do not have the freedom to choose. A slave does not have the freedom to improve their circumstances even if it is a win-win situation. That is the qualitative difference between slavery and a job.