Hacker News Reader

Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

I find the subject of slavery interesting so I upmodded this. But I found myself drifting off towards the end. (Traditionally, towards the end of an article, even the most supremely unqualified journalist is supposed to make recommendations to improving the world--unsurprisingly, these always fall short).

In fact, within human relations, there is an economic force that is beyond defiance: Cost/benefits. If the benefits of slavery exceed its costs, slavery will exist. Period.

Period.

There is no fighting it, if that dismal formula says otherwise. This is something I have said to people in real life: We will have slavery again the very instant the laws of economics require it. In Haiti it is already so. In Eastern Europe it has been off-and-on (mail-order brides). In America, we will see it yet....

View on HN

Law tries to increase the cost of the practice by penalizing those who participate. Slavery is impossible to eradicate in a society that is beyond the rule of law.

Slavery would probably be very profitable if allowed in America today. The productivity of labor is much higher than it used to be in the 19th century, and the cost of subsistence maintenance of a human being probably hasn't increased very much. However, our laws and cultural biases are effective at preventing it.

Slavery is a side-effect of poverty and the weakness of law. Do-gooders will not be able to end slavery until prosperity and the rule of law become common place.

Rule of law is a myth. A leaky abstraction. Laws can't rule people because laws don't have minds. People, on the other hand, do have minds, and they use them to create deceptive abstractions like Rule of Law.

If you look behind the abstraction, all Rule of Law means is that those who have the most authority tell you what to do by writing laws, instead of by shouting at you. It then becomes obvious that Rule of Law can't stop slavery, because the rulers can simply tell some people to be slaves by passing a law (which has actually happened before).

>Slavery would probably be very profitable if allowed in America today.

I completely disagree. The problem with slaves is you have to feed them if you want them to work. While Americans (afaik) spend the smaller percentage of their income on food than any other country in the world, the food isn't the cheapest. That is, you can pay some other country for weeks of work for what it would cost to feed a slave for one day (and I think I'm being conservative in this estimation).

I think the flaw in your statement is "the cost of subsistence ... hasn't increased very much". I think it's vastly more expensive then it was.

Just as a quick data point: How large is a standard farm in America today and how much does the farmer make from it? Enough to live on for a year, right (and he's probably in debt for the equipment)? And he's in fact being paid for the food he produces. In middle ages and you had that same land, you lived like royalty no? And that's while producing much less and feeding all the people who work for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com