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> We call it slavery, but is it? Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave. Slave owners may feed/house their slave

> We call it slavery, but is it? Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave. Slave owners may feed/house their slaves, and even pay them slave wages but none of those things make the slave any less of a slave. > What's the real objection to this? It's rare that someone asks what possible objection someone might have to slavery. Even if you thought that exploiting, abusing, and degrading enslaved human beings for profit wasn't morally abhorrent, there are purely economic reasons why slavery is a terrible idea. There are also purely selfish reasons to oppose it because if we allow it to happen to others it could just as easily be allowed to happen to you. It's not even terrible unlikely that it will. The US locks up more of their own population behind bars than any other nation on Earth. There are plenty of entirely innocent people in prisons too. The best way to protect yourself against slavery is to make sure that enslavement isn't even an option on the table. That said, there's no reason why that should mean that prisoners can't be employed by choice. If they were free to decide what type of work they wanted, and they were free to decline employment they wanted no part of, and they were provided the same pay for their labor as anyone else would be, and they were afforded the same protections against exploitation and hazardous working conditions as anyone else, then there'd be no harm in letting them make money and it'd be very helpful if they could put some money aside for the many expenses they'll be on the hook for after their release.

jstarfish 3y ago
> Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave. No. If there were forced-work programs, we wouldn't be arguing about slavery-not-slavery, we would be calling them concentration camps. Unlike the lies of Auschwitz, work will actually set you free. Work is optional in prison. If anything, it's a privilege, since if you're enough of a problem it isn't even on the table for you. You are allowed to quit your job. Black American slaves did not earn wages. Their sentence was indefinite. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. Auschwitz victims did not earn wages. Their sentence was terminal. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. American prisoners earn wages. Working reduces their sentence. They are eventually released from confinement regardless of output. Prison conditions are unpleasant, but that's not the argument. American prisoners are not slaves. I'm forced to work or I suffer "punishments" like starvation and homelessness, and I've had wages skimmed by an employer. We can all identify as slaves if we try hard enough.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  > Black American slaves did not earn wages. Not usually, no. >Their sentence was indefinite. Or even infinite, as far as they were concerned. >As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. Whoa, hang on. I'm not a slavery apologist, but... are you sure? As in, routinely, not as a bizarre, rare event? Not events like lynchings, but just "well Old Tom here ain't producing anymore, time to string him up"? I have read some of the work of actual slavery apologists, and one of the points often made is that laws prohibiting manumission of slaves were originally written in response to owners who would free their slaves when they were too old to do the work - and promptly dump them out with no money, no education, no place to live, and no skills beyond basic agricultural labor, to die. I could imagine that was an issue. The wrongness of slavery is often talked about strictly in terms out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, though a point often made in early abolitionism was that the creation of an entire inheritable status of sub-citizens was evil in itself, regardless of how well or poorly the sub-citizens were treated. Also treated interestingly in Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker (which are not great books, but sure do give you some insight into Card's Mormonism), where the South remained royalist in the American Revolution. It certainly could have, if George III had better positioned his treatment of the colonies. The basic organization of the early South as an agricultural region centered on individual properties owned by some noble (who might or might not live there) and organized like medieval village life. Roads to get to neighbors were relatively unimportant, as water transport was the norm for both people and cargo. The entire coastal and tidewater area from the Sea Islands of Georgia to the Chesapeake worked like that, at least until colonists started trying to push past the limit of navigation (which made large plantations more difficult until you got south of the foothills of the Appalachians).

jstarfish 3y ago

> Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave. No. If there were forced-work programs, we wouldn't be arguing about slavery-not-slavery, we would be calling them concentration camps. Unlike the lies of Auschwitz, work will actually set you free. Work is optional in prison. If anything, it's a privilege, since if you're enough of a problem it isn't even on the table for you. You are allowed to quit your job. Black American slaves did not earn wages. Their sentence was indefinite. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. Auschwitz victims did not earn wages. Their sentence was terminal. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. American prisoners earn wages. Working reduces their sentence. They are eventually released from confinement regardless of output. Prison conditions are unpleasant, but that's not the argument. American prisoners are not slaves. I'm forced to work or I suffer "punishments" like starvation and homelessness, and I've had wages skimmed by an employer. We can all identify as slaves if we try hard enough.

devilbunny 3y ago
> Black American slaves did not earn wages. Not usually, no. >Their sentence was indefinite. Or even infinite, as far as they were concerned. >As soon as they stopped working, they were executed. Whoa, hang on. I'm not a slavery apologist, but... are you sure? As in, routinely, not as a bizarre, rare event? Not events like lynchings, but just "well Old Tom here ain't producing anymore, time to string him up"? I have read some of the work of actual slavery apologists, and one of the points often made is that laws prohibiting manumission of slaves were originally written in response to owners who would free their slaves when they were too old to do the work - and promptly dump them out with no money, no education, no place to live, and no skills beyond basic agricultural labor, to die. I could imagine that was an issue. The wrongness of slavery is often talked about strictly in terms out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, though a point often made in early abolitionism was that the creation of an entire inheritable status of sub-citizens was evil in itself, regardless of how well or poorly the sub-citizens were treated. Also treated interestingly in Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker (which are not great books, but sure do give you some insight into Card's Mormonism), where the South remained royalist in the American Revolution. It certainly could have, if George III had better positioned his treatment of the colonies. The basic organization of the early South as an agricultural region centered on individual properties owned by some noble (who might or might not live there) and organized like medieval village life. Roads to get to neighbors were relatively unimportant, as water transport was the norm for both people and cargo. The entire coastal and tidewater area from the Sea Islands of Georgia to the Chesapeake worked like that, at least until colonists started trying to push past the limit of navigation (which made large plantations more difficult until you got south of the foothills of the Appalachians).