Hello, I'm acting as the devil lawyer and tend to take an extreme situation willingly. In antique societies, it was possible to sell yourself as slave, to get rid of your debt, to get rid of the debts of your family or because you're homeless. Many people think that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, as long they are willing. So should be people allowed to sell themselves as slave ?
Well, if you are doing it just to pay off a debt, then you aren't actually a slave. In fact, that would be called a "job" in most places.
I think there should be some definite limits on this. By extending people a "choice", it's possible this choice can be used to exploit them. (same type of logic why there is a minimum wage, just a side comment here) In this case you're going to have to use government coercion to enforce this choice. Is that really a good thing, even if the individual originally agreed to it at some prior point in time? Look in the Bible. It sets a 7-year limit if you sell yourself into slavery. You can't sell yourself into slavery for more than 7 years. Maybe that's how debt should work too. Anyway, right now people are effectively allowed to sell themselves into debt slavery. The financial companies and credit card companies are making too much money to want the situation to change and stop sending their lobbyists.
Slave is a status, you're considered on many point as an object, can be sold, bought and don't make choice by yourself.
What is the difference between this scenario and working for a big corporation? You can be bought and sold by a big corporation as an employee as well!
Yes they make the status to loose all choice. I'm refering to a status that really existed in the roman empire for instance if I remember well. That's effectively a paradox, some people chose to loose all their entire freedom.
But that is what they chose. They had a choice to begin with and chose unwisely apparently. Slavery is illegal anyhow in this country. You cannot keep someone as a literal slave.
Apparently. Most people who sold themselves as slave didn't did that for pleasure, they did that to pay their debt or the debt of their family, or simply because they were homeless. I know slavery is illegal, my post is about to say : if people should be allowed to do whatever they want, if freedom should be unlimited, so should people be allowed to sell themselves as slaves ? Isn't a limitation to freedom to prevent people to sell themselves as slave ?
Well, since most people nowadays aren't selling themselves into slavery (which is illegal), then this really isn't an important life or death issue. ??? Besides that, the laws against wouldn't be so much preventing another person from selling him or herself but more about "controlling" the ones who would take advantage of such people.
Perhaps that is because we aren't truly free. Perhaps if we all had true freedom, more people would make that choice...........
That's insightful. There's a difference between "individual rights" and "economic rights", for lack of better terminology. ( "property rights" are a whole other classification... ) Individual rights are the right to do as you please and go wherever you want... sort of. You can see all these different types of rights are not completely separate, there is some overlap and areas where these different types of rights can be discordant with one another.
