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Comment by asciilifeform | Hacker News Reader

> how brutally he is being raped by the alimony system

What I don't understand is how we almost never hear of such people packing up and moving to some country which is hostile to US interests, or simply has weak record-keeping and is thus friendly to those who want to leave their past behind. Are all such countries mournful hellholes to live in? Surely not.

Seriously, if I were ever sentenced to the perpetual confiscation of over half of my income, I would run off - doesn't matter much where to. Perhaps the Somalian pirates - or North Korea - are hiring? I also recall once reading that France will not extradite a French citizen - perhaps you can become one? (They might still allow American debt collectors to find you, however. Does anyone know?) Seriously, just about any life is better than being a part-time slave, which is what such extortion amounts to.

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> What I don't understand is how we almost never hear of such people packing up and moving to some country which is hostile to US interests

http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/hero/

What part of "don't come back and vacation in the country which screwed up your life" didn't this man understand?

The middle part.

Also, the beginning and end.

A) You're thinking of the Foreign Legion. Go look it up. A few years of military service and you're in.

B) When you get married you're making a very serious promise to share everything and build a life together. The state provided default contract for a marriage is very clear about the separation terms up front. If you don't like them, then negotiate a pre-nup with your spouse.

Good luck.

A) The Foreign Legion has much tighter regulations now, and is no longer suitable for its traditional purpose of providing new identities for those with something to run from.

B) US courts routinely and capriciously invalidate pre-nups.

I would argue that he is a full-time slave. Part of his time goes to pay for his previous marriage, the other part for taxes, and the final part to the banking system.

The difference is, except for taxes, he chose to make those decisions. Slaves did not choose to be slaves.

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.

What's the solution then? To not let people make decisions that could potentially be bad?

That sounds like it's slavery too.

No. De-incentivize the lender. Create better exit situations for the borrower there by making such activity extremely unattractive for the lender.

Spend tax dollars educating and discouraging the borrower. This is valid because such conditions hurt the nation in the long run.

> What's the solution then?

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.

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.

> You are suggesting that available of opportunity and future outcome make slavery ok.

No, he's suggesting that consent makes a situation that looks like slavery not slavery at all.

Ooops... availability* My bad...

Anyway, what has

> 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.

It isn't "opportunity" without 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.

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.

> Slaves did not choose to be slaves.

Quite often false, in the ancient world. Debt slavery is probably as old as mankind.

Funny how the notion of simply paying back your debt becomes "enslavement" by the "banking system" in the minds of people these days. t's as ridiculous as a fat person blaming the food companies to make it easy to overeat. The author of the article is commendable for avoiding these loaded terms and blaming himself rather than circumstances or even other people. It's a trite phrase but still true that responsibility and prudence is the flipside of freedom and risk-taking.

> Funny how the notion of simply paying back your debt becomes "enslavement"

Yeah, let's bring back Victorian work-houses. I sincerely hope that you and your family end up in one.

Oh, but if you get a loan at 10% or 15% interest and are late on a different loan you can get a universal default where your rate is doubled to 20 or 30%. Also the credit card companies have successfully lobbied the government to make it harder for consumers to erase these debts with bankruptcy.

Guys who seriously consider moving to somalia or north korea to avoid alimony payments usually don't have to worry about getting married in the first place. It's hard to meet a spouse in your parents' basement.

I'm sure those two wouldn't be first on his list..

well, they are the only two places he mentioned in his comment...

Well, then, I guess the question is whether those two are the only places he could have mentioned (fitting his criteria of not being particularly friendly with the US).

They are the two most absurdly obvious ones. Finding foreign havens which are of practical, rather than rhetorical use requires research: laws change, treaties are signed, armies invade, etc.

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