That difference is mostly irrelevant. Slavery entered into with consent is still slavery. The key part of slavery is not the path of entry, but the path of exit, in that you don't get to exit.
There is very little functional difference between this guy and a bonded laborer from pre-independence India.
Would the laborer have been transported, on such a long voyage, without the reasonable assurance of payback? If they'd been left behind, stranded far away from the "land of opportunity," would they have been better off? I'd guess no on both. There's a reason immigrants flocked to America, event with a pledge of service.
So quit with this slavery nonsense. Slavery is not slavery when opted for, in full knowledge. Likewise, honest mortgages are no more slavery than education loans.
You are suggesting that available of opportunity and future outcome make slavery ok. I do not believe that. I guess we just have fundamentally different world views.
Honest mortgages and education loans are not slavery. Intentionally ignoring checks to economically subjugate someone... I am not gonna call that slavery but it's really not that far from it or at least thats how I see it.
> If they'd been left behind, stranded far away from the "land of opportunity," would they have been better off?
got to do with consent?
That apart, informed consent cannot nullify a crime. That is a well accepted principle. You cannot give informed consent for murder and such stuff. There is a libertarian school of thought that wants to change that but I don't subscribe to that school of thought. Slavery under consent is just as much a violation of human dignity and just as much a crime as far as my views are concerned.
That apart, informed consent cannot nullify a crime. That is a well accepted principle. You cannot give informed consent for murder and such stuff.
If there's consent, there's no crime, though. You can't give informed consent for murder because if you gave informed consent, it's not murder, but "assisted suicide" or some such. Current law has lots of victimless and presumed-victim crimes, it's true, but I don't subscribe to that school of thought. :)
On the other hand, the Libertarian definition of "consent" is repulsive to me. From their point of view, I "consent" to spend my prime waking hours working on things other than my own (non-monetizable) inventions. Bullshit. It isn't consent unless I have entirely unconstrained choice, and the need to pay for food and shelter is every bit as much of a constraint as the laws of a brutal dictatorship. And I simply don't care if basic goods are expensive because an evil central planner priced them nearly out of my reach, or whether the market had bid them up. The net effect on my life is entirely the same.
Screw Libertarian "consent." Screw their "non-coercion." They are Orwellian concepts: their in-practice meanings in that ideology allow for the exact opposites of what those words mean in everyday language to slide through and flourish.
The need for food and shelter are not things that other people impose on you; you'd have those needs even if you were the only person around. Just sayin'.
> you'd have those needs even if you were the only person around
This is only partially true. Food (and, due to the existence of land ownership, shelter) is more scarce today (in the sense of requiring more effort to obtain) than in the age of hunter-gatherers.
Not to mention, the need for "shelter" in a heavily populated world implies as much the need for protection from other people as for protection from the elements. Thus, in a very real sense, it is a need imposed on me by other people. Even the need for protection from the elements falls into this category. If there were few enough people, everyone could (theoretically) live comfortably in those parts of the world which have a temperate climate year-round.
One solution would be to put an end to usury. Houses, cars, etc. will have to become far more modest, but in the end they will be affordable without debt slavery.
I live in a house without having debt. I could also pay cash for a car.
People should have the choice to borrow money from other people, and the people lending it should be able to make enough money to make up for the risk of the people they lend it to not paying it back. I don't think society needs to change, though.
