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Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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...

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

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.

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.

Please take your racism somewhere else.

They are though.

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).

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