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Comment by snrplfth | Hacker News Reader

Did you even read the article? From the text:

"It is entirely clear that 21st century Americans have no interest in jailing runaway apprentices. A legislative proposal calling for the arrest and detention of individuals in breach of their apprenticeship contracts would rightly be met with jeers and guffaws."

The big reason they don't like the German approach is because it excludes from the trades those who don't have the "appropriate" licenses. This shuts those of little means out of these jobs. They proposed, as possible solutions, vouchers, loans, and possibly permitting non-compete agreements.

Your accusation of "re-introducing slavery, or at least indentured servitude", is deeply dishonest.

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"One partial solution might be to ensure that apprentices can borrow money (e.g., through student loans) to pay for their own instruction or to post a bond that would be forfeited if they left their stand-alone or school-sponsored apprenticeships before their employers had recouped their investment."

That's effectively indentured servitude.

The big difference between union-run apprenticeships and employer-run apprenticeships is that the union represents the employee's interest, not the employer. This results in a much more formal educational arrangement. It's not just "cheap workers with a little training now and then".[1]

[1] http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/article...

A forfeitable posted bond is not indentured servitude any more than student loans are. (EDIT: It's really just a way to prepay for training without falling afoul of wage laws.) Now, I would rather that such loans were harmonized with the bankruptcy law for other types of loans, but it's not servitude. (If it is, then there's a whole lot of people indentured to their bank for a house. Is that how far we want to expand this definition?)

Sure, the union-run apprenticeship represents the employee's interest - but only by excluding others from that position. If the only way you can get a license into a trade is to complete a union apprenticeship, then the union is effectively shutting out people from that trade. That's the complaint; not that it's bad for the apprentice, but rather that it's bad for those not permitted to be apprentices.

Wikipedia: "An indentured servant or indentured labor is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a contract (indenture) to work for a particular employer for a fixed period of time. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage."

Student loans aren't indentured servitude because they're not tied to a specific employer. H1-B visas are so tied, but there's the option to quit and go back to one's own country. But the Cato Institute proposal describes being "bound by a contract to work for a particular employer for a fixed period of time" enforced by a debt obligation. That's indentured servitude. Probably illegal in the US.

I think the problem of definition is that you opened with "slavery, or indentured servitude", and the article here referred to previously existing indenture systems where servants breaking their contracts would be jailed. Your wikipedia definition (which I find overly broad) doesn't include what is the salient part, which is what the consequences of breaking a debt bond are. (EDIT: I would say the caveat "within a system of unfree labor" would get the closest, but still leaves this unclear.)

A system where you take on a debt, and are jailed if you renege it, is very different than a system where you take on a debt, and can discharge it in bankruptcy. That's the crucial difference, and I think the text makes it clear that Cato are not advocating the former.

And I don't see how employment/training is so different from anything else for which you might take out a forfeitable loan. If you're saying that all debts payable to a single creditor are "indenture", then so are mortgages and car loans. The "servitude" part would come about solely as a consequence of it being a loan based on work, rather than anything else.

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