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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, the definition of enslavement is coercion through direct and actual threat of physical violence and does not include other forms of exploitation.

i.e. "Slaves can be held from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

If you have a mortgage you can still refuse to work and just become homeless. Company men will not drag you kicking and screaming to your cubicle and force you back to you home in the evening to watch X-Factor until you vomit and pass out.

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It's not that I want to understate the gravity of slavery, but to set the bar lower to what can be seen as slavery (which makes the common definition of slavery an even worse crime). You can get people to work without compensation in more deceitful ways than brute force.

"You can get people to work without compensation in more deceitful ways than brute force."

I think the term exploitation would cover this?

Even if there is some form of semi-institutionalized gouging, it's still not slavery.

So, what should we call common slavery? Super-slavery?

middle class degree educated white males on HN complaining about a mortgage being slavery...

Let's instead say 2x a person's annual income in credit card debt at 20% annual interest, a debt which was brought on by a number of short-term necessary but bad decisions, then left to grow for a couple of years due to unfortunate circumstances. That's the modern form of debt slavery, with no easy way of refinancing the debt or increasing the income. Such a scenario usually comes along with some other serious challenges, such as major health issues.

In the US, personal bankruptcy is an option. But not all Western countries have this luxury. In Norway, for instance, personal bankruptcy basically amounts to entering a 5-year contract of indentured servitude (you by law have to earn as much as you can, and get to use only the smallest possible amount of it to feed and clothe yourself - the debtors take the rest).

Please take your racism somewhere else.

They are though.

Interest leaves people impoverished and destroys families. But I'm sure you can see that from your mountain of moral superiority.

I think the difference is that you get to choose whether to enter into the loan agreement, you're provided all the terms up front, and you have access to legal counseling prior to accepting the agreement.

If you have to make a mental association between your mortgage and institutionalized human suffering, maybe indentured servitude would be a better (but still ridiculous) fit.

Then it's a good thing 30 year mortgage interest APRs are lower than average YoY returns for mutual funds, so you can make more money investing your cash than you can save by paying off your mortgage.

Usurious interest can leave people impoverished and destroys families, sure. But we're talking about mortgages, here, and in the general case interest leaves the price of homeownership about the same price as renting, provides additional stability and helps build families.

The real thing that leaves families impoverished and destroys them is when they have borrow half a million for a house to live in, only to find out that's only really worth about a quarter million a few years later during the economic crash, thus precluding them from actually selling it and moving somewhere that has an economy where they can work. That's principal, not interest.

So your definition doesn't include people who are effectively held hostage in a foreign country by having their passport taken away and forced to work in order to pay ridiculous fees to get it back?

Oh, that sort of interest. There is interest owed to established financial institutions and the there is interest "owed" to shady con men. The financial obligations might be a form of coercion in this instance?

Yes, shady con men, albeit ones operating with a great deal of organization and structure. There is a ton of this going on in places like the UAE[0] and Qatar[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Ara...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Qatar#Immigran...

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