Is slavery a good idea?

[Argus]

Now I know what you're thinking - he's bored again and looking for some kind of new topics to debate. Nawwwh.

So like, we have all these welfare types, including many healthy young men and women, and we've got a severe shortage of farm workers. So I'm thinking, what exactly is wrong with slavery anyway? Oh, I'm not talking about old fashioned slavery - but the modern, more humane kind. We'll provide our slaves with comfortable dorm rooms, and they can get a good day's work in picking cotton - or er, picking apples, as the case may be. We can tag them with electronic collars so they can't run away. Some of the more clever ones can work indoors as servants, or in big factories doing those mindless little jobs assembly work requires.

And I know you're thinking - what if they refuse to work. But you know, I've been surfing around the internet, and whipping isn't such a terrible thing. Some people pay to be whipped! So I think a little flogging or so would get our recalcitrant slaves back into the trees picking those apples, some of them doing constructive work for the first time in their lives and contributing to the economy. Hell, we could even take a lot of the lower level criminal types out of prison, especially the repeaters, and turn them into slaves. Their life spans would probably be greatly increased that way.

All in all, I don't know why no party has come up with this yet. Slavery would be an economic boon to Canada and help all the rest of us with reduced taxation.

[Bryan]

Sounds like something you could integrate into things like the penal system and enforcing work expectations for welfare recipients.

[Leafless]

Canada does not guarantee good jobs that provide a meaningful existence for all of its citizens. So why should those who have not been lucky enough, for one reason or another to gain substantial employment and forced to go on welfare be further humiliated?

Welfare recipients are not the primary cause of high taxes.

Greed and mismanagement is the reason.

I posted this elsewhere but let us not humiliate ourselves further as we have already by ignoring basic freedoms.

Putin rolling back civil rights, warns Amnesty· Russians

President Vladimir Putin has presided over a major "roll-back" of civil rights in Russia, which has seen freedom of expression, assembly and association seriously curtailed, Amnesty International warned yesterday

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/2...sia.humanrights

Edited July 13, 2008 by Leafless

[eyeball]

I'm reminded of the wistfulness I've seen when a bit of morality is injected into a justification for slavery. One ancient local story describes a time of hunger when everything seemed to be late, the fish, the whales, seals and other things the people needed. Times were hard although not desperate - the seals were there but the chiefs and elders knew better than to take a thing out of season and so they bided their time. One day a young man who was known for being lazy and was being given less food to help teach him the error of his ways, grew so hungry he secretly killed and ate a seal-pup, but he was soon found out. The people were furious and the chief who owned the seal's hunting grounds and organized the sealing families, arrested the young man. A council was held that found him gulty and as punishment he was turned into a slave and his head was shaved so everyone would know his new status.

So was his children's heads and probably their's too it seems.

So I'm thinking, what exactly is wrong with slavery anyway?

Well, I recall when I was organizing crews of field workers who were trying to restore salmon streams and I unwittingly put a fellow from a traditional slave family in charge of a hereditary chief. You would not believe the grief this caused. It took at least a couple or three meetings to sort out. Only in Canada eh?

Edited July 13, 2008 by eyeball

[BC_chick]

Well, the title of the thread was finally provocative enough for me to "un-ignore Argus" to view the post. I'm still trying to figure out whether this thread is purely meant to be a long-winded attempt at trolling - conjured to infuriate the "bleeding hearts" who care about "the poor" - or whether someone could be so truly morally-bankrupt to think it's okay to whip people in this day and age as long as you practice a modern "humane" type of slavery....

I don't know, I'm still undecided... but for the sake of humanity, I hope it's some sort of satire.

Edited July 13, 2008 by BC_chick

[Oleg Bach]

Well, the title of the thread was finally provocative enough for me to "un-ignore Argus" to view the post. I'm still trying to figure out whether this thread is purely meant to be a long-winded attempt at trolling - conjured to infuriate the "bleeding hearts" who care about "the poor" - or whether someone could be so truly morally-bankrupt to think it's okay to whip people in this day and age as long as you practice a modern "humane" type of slavery....

I don't know, I'm still undecided... but for the sake of humanity, I hope it's some sort of satire.

Slavert us the buying and selling of debts on mass..in other words the selling of humans and their futures - on mass...try to avoid or confront the modern corporate thrawlism that exists in the west today and you will find yourself being made an example of and maybe find yourself cruxified and sleeping on a heating grate...we have the finest slave quarters on the planet.. it's slick and comfortable but still slavery..and there is no escape.

[RB]

I don't think modern day we would like to call it "slavery", some folks are hyper sensitive to political correctness...

but there is a fellow - Gareth Morgan in a flamboyant way expounds the idea of domination, a psychic prison - slavery if I may say in a metaphoric language for investigation. He really broadens what is exploitation that the imagination can really run wild.

The truth is business has always engage in slavery. I mean there is no other way to use single authority, to control resources, make or break the rules, to control all boundaries, to control what is uncertain (includes women) etc. I think those who "have" and wish to continue thriving must fully engage slavery.

[Wilber]

Great idea, I'm sick of yard work. Where do I get me one?

[Riverwind]

Great idea, I'm sick of yard work. Where do I get me one?

How about here

There is an online order form here

Edited July 14, 2008 by Riverwind

[Wilber]

How about here

There is an online order form here

Cool but it doesn't say anything about mowing the lawn or pulling weeds. 60 grand would pay for a lot of that.

[August1991]

Great idea, I'm sick of yard work. Where do I get me one?

I suggest you send a PM to Argus. I nominate him as the first slave to see whether this scheme will work or not.

[xul]

Great idea, I'm sick of yard work. Where do I get me one?

If you really want that I think there are a lot of places you can got one---for there are a lot of people who are starving to die all around the world, we can see that on TV all the day.

But you will not get a slave even if the laws would allow you to do that and you would lower your moral criterian to have one. Keeping a slave in your home, I mean keeping a modern one by a merciful way just as Argus has suggested, not the stone aged one by brutal way, is more expensive than Argus thinks. You need have a room for him; you need afford him food and clothes; if he get ill, you must pay him doctor for you can not throw him out on the street; if he drives a car to buy something from a supermarket for you and hits someone, you need to pay all bill for him because he is your property; and someday he may have kids, you can not deny he has the rights even if he is the old fashion one 200 years ago, so you have to feed and sell his kids, that is not easy for there are a lot of guys like you are also trying to do the same thing.

If you run a farm, you have to sustain all your slaves in winter though they have no works to do and if you run a business, you cannot cut down cost by dismiss them even recession happened.

Though eventually you will find to employ a $8/h part-time worker is better to cut the cost---I think this is the main cause of that slavery system has died all around the world even in the poorest third world country.

So there will not be a merciful slavery system can be existed by a affordable way. The stone aged one is "up" than the incumbent system from slaveholders' point of view. But if anyone wants this one, the problem will go back your original question: "Where do I get me such one?"

Edited July 14, 2008 by xul

[xul]

With regard to the topic of " Is slavery a good idea?, Could Slavery be an economic boon to Canada? ", I think slavery is not a good idea to Canada and it can not be an economic boon to Canada, now .

And I don't think to encourage cheap labour workers is the way which can lead Canada to a splendid future though it may be still useful today. Globalization is a good scheme which was designed by western intellectuals and economists to benefit western people, not only capitalists. The essential of this scheme is to move most of low profit business to developing countries meanwhile keep the high profit part to maintain the high standard of living of western people. But it seems the scheme does not work perfectly because there are too many guys rather like to fight any changes than to make some effort shifting themselves to fit the new system.

Edited July 14, 2008 by xul

[Argus]

I suggest you send a PM to Argus. I nominate him as the first slave to see whether this scheme will work or not.

I already have a guy who does my lawn, thanks. And all my schemes would work, including this one.

Not only would it provide people to do yard work, but it would help with the problem of low demographic replacements. All those slave women would be having a lot more children since they'd have no economic disincentives to deal with.

[Argus]

With regard to the topic of " Is slavery a good idea?, Could Slavery be an economic boon to Canada? ", I think slavery is not a good idea to Canada and it can not be an economic boon to Canada, now .

You are aware, I'm sure, that China operates vast slave labour camps, right, Xul? Some of those cheap teddy bears and toys Canadians are buying for their kids come from them.

By the way, for those of you opposed to slavery - is it okay to buy cheap goods that come from a country which makes use of slavery to produce those goods?

Edited July 14, 2008 by Argus

[Argus]

Great idea, I'm sick of yard work. Where do I get me one?

Well, I don't know where you live, but I can pretty much guarantee there are many, many healthy young people in your city on welfare doing pretty much nothing but drinking, doing drugs and fornicating. Perhaps we could find a way to have one of them do your yard work.

[xul]

You are aware, I'm sure, that China operates vast slave labour camps, right, Xul? Some of those cheap teddy bears and toys Canadians are buying for their kids come from them.

This is entirely a lie. Where is the slave labour camps located? Considering China export hundreds billion dollars goods annually, this camp must be as huge as Quebec, but where is it?

[bush_cheney2004]

This is entirely a lie. Where is the slave labour camps located? Considering China export hundreds billion dollars goods annually, this camp must be as huge as Quebec, but where is it?

Perhaps he means the Laodong Gaizao detailed by Harry Wu. Products from prison labour are notoriously of low quality; the issue has more to do with the conditions/reasons for detention than any products of "slave" labour. China also has a different read on child labour compared to development of protections in the west.

[Argus]

This is entirely a lie. Where is the slave labour camps located? Considering China export hundreds billion dollars goods annually, this camp must be as huge as Quebec, but where is it?

China's labour camps are populated by prisoners, often including political prisoners forced to work in large prison factories which produce goods for export.

[myata]

China's labour camps are populated by prisoners, often including political prisoners forced to work in large prison factories which produce goods for export.

And, inspired by their advances, we may just consider borrowing some of their ideas? Of course we won't be doing it on the grounds of their, authoritarian, undemocratic, laws and morals; but in the the name of freedom, liberty and democracy.

[AngusThermopyle]

And, inspired by their advances, we may just consider borrowing some of their ideas? Of course we won't be doing it on the grounds of their, authoritarian, undemocratic, laws and morals; but in the the name of freedom, liberty and democracy.

Care to provide a cite or some kind of link to back that up? Or is it just more juvenile ranting and hot air?

The simple fact is that no western democracy can come anywhere even close to China when it comes to human rights abuses and environmental destruction. If you believe otherwise then you are so severely deluded as to be laughable.

[myata]

Care to provide a cite or some kind of link to back that up? Or is it just more juvenile ranting and hot air?

No need to get inflated. The post was addressed specifically to Argus's rightful indignation with foreign practices, while his own proposal hardly amounted to less.

You raise good questions, but they'd have to be addressed in another discussion.

[madmax]

China's labour camps are populated by prisoners, often including political prisoners forced to work in large prison factories which produce goods for export.

Well Argus. Much as I hate your party. And this thread, you hit on some stuff. They are not all prisoners either, in the crime committing sense. Just some poor suckers in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And children too.

Here is something to back you up from the ArgusNOTs.

http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/news/china130801.htm

and some of this

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/15/news/china.php

Child slave labor revelations sweeping China

By Howard W. French Published: June 15, 2007

and this link

http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy_pow...ve_labour_china

Another shocking news story broke in China in June 2007. It was discovered that in Hongtong county, Shanxi province, people kidnapped from rural areas were being forced to work as slaves in a brick kiln. Horrifying television footage showed them after their chance rescue - they were filthy and emaciated, with their clothes in tatters and blank expressions on their faces. It was impossible not to think of the images of holocaust survivors rescued from concentration camps at the end of the Second World War.

And we have that incident in Alberta. Not quite slave labour, but with 2 dead china men and wages for an engineer and electrician averaging $2.47cents/hour in Fort McMurray.

The Chinese are still being used as cheap foreign labour and as National Slaves.

[xul]

Products from prison labour are notoriously of low quality; the issue has more to do with the conditions/reasons for detention than any products of "slave" labour.

I think your comprehension is right. Even if prisoners can make good products, I think every countries certainly only have very low percertage of its population in prison, so its most products can not come from prison factories.

Perhaps he means the Laodong Gaizao detailed by Harry Wu.

About Laodong Gaizo, its Chinese meaning is "turning (a criminal or a lazy guy) to good by let him doing labour work", is Mao and his first generation communist leaders' "invention". If someone wants to know why Mao do some weirdo things, from western or even common Chinese piont of view, he must try to learn Mao's personal history.

Mao was born in a mountainous town of a poor China province named Hu Nan(though it is not the poorest province). But his family are rich in his hometown and he was educated by Confucianism that means he didn't know western and its idea a lot. I once went there for some business and, of course, the main tour the host offered me was to vist Mao's father's bungalow. The building has a lot of rooms meanwhile I noticed there is a small room which have a independent gate from the main gate of the building though it is a part of the building just likes a semi-detached house but one part is too small. For curiosity I asked the tour guide what was its function. She simply told me it's a neighbour. It dazed me for a minute just as if you saw such kind of weird semi-detached house in your country you would also daze, then I understood that it was not a simple neighbour, it must be a servant's room...and the one who alleged struggling for poor people was actually came from a landlord family.

But when Mao came to Beijing as a young man and hired by Peking University as a humble assistant of librarians, his little fortune in his home town meant nothing in this huge city and his self-pride of a village landlord childe fell into frustration. This was the point he began turning to Communism---becasuse he thought the "system" was unfair to people like him, I meant the peasants, and he would have to fought for a fair system.

This is why Mao invented the Laodong Gaizao system. He though those Chinese who worked in an cosy office building at that time were some kind of dudes--contrasted with those peasants who worked under scorchy sun and produce corn like his father, he thought these dudes only producing tax bill on peasants for government to exploit them . So he thought that sending these guys to do some labour work was a good idea to lecture them how hard the live that our peasants had and it might turn these intellectuals into serving poor peasants and workers heartfully. This was his initial scheme.

But of course, just like all "political-correct" things, it turned far different from it was originally supposed to be.

The first variation was a merciful one. People only did some labour work just as common labour workers. My mother's father got one for several months since he was a former KMT government official, and then he was sent back to his original job to assist his illiterate communist new boss who was a retired peasant army officer and squated on the Sofa in his office to command them , just as he ever did to assist his former corrupt KMT boss who bought the sofa probably by grafting soldiers' salary.

The second variation is also a merciful one. In the Great Culture Revolution almost all intellectuals worked in government department had to be in this one for no reason just because they were intellectures and Mao think they needed to taste the hardness of working classs. My uncle was a architect who was hired by army as a civilian specialist. He was sent to a one for a year and his job was making Mao's head portrait emblems. He gave me a lot of them and the bigest one, which had a blue plastic frame and scarlet crapy foil with about 4 inches diameter, my mother liked it and took it away. Several month later I found it in a drawer of a wardrobe but Mao's photo had been in stead of her photo--I think it was very offensive to such a holy thing at that time but she was also a woman so she did what a woman always does.

The third variation is what Mr.Harry Wu got. But I thik he knows this more rather than I for there is not anyone around me who did as same as he did at that time.

And the fourth variation, after Deng's market economic reform happened. The corrupt police officers has turned prisons into factories. In China, such activity is legal thouh torture, overwork and without pay are illegal but most Chinese believe such things happens in prisons though I think CPC are really tring to limited the illegal parts for it is not good for their reputation. Usually prisoners only can make simple goods. Several years ago, I bought a bag of fried peanuts from a supermarket, when I shared it with my colleagues after lunch, someone told me this brand might come from prison. I think he got such information from Harry Wu's website. But such thing did not bother any of us at all, for we all were fully aware that Mr Wu were safe now when he got a American passport, but if we all stoped to buy his fellow prisoners fried peanuts as his request, those corrupt police officers would not let those personer went back their jailhouse to sit around. They probably would be sent to a coal mine as miners--it would be more worse than to be fried peanuts makers.

This is what I know. But in any case, just as you have figured out, such things are not relative with Chinese economy but human rights. If any country wants to boom their economy by prisoner workers, they have to throw most of its population into jail at first, that's impossible.

China also has a different read on child labour compared to development of protections in the west.

In China, child labour is illegal. But there did have some criminal cases. The criminals run a samll factory in poor villages usually far away from cities and they use child, mostly were kidnaped, as their labour force. And in these areas, even if they have several policemen, they are just some local peasants who wear police uniforms, so they are easily to be greased to blind.

But such cases are really rare, for even if the poorest peasants also have some kind of moral criterian.

Other cases mostly due to the peasant parents have dead and the kids was adopted by a poor peasant relative who also has a lot of kids, or the peasant parents are very poor and have had too many kids, so they let their older child to do some work to help them to sustain family. But I also don't think there are a lot of such case. Most Chinese peasants are no longer very poor these years and most of them are also no longer have twelve kids in their home, so they can afford their kids to go to school. And I also don't think there are a lot of businessmen who want to hire illegal child workers for hiring adult peasant labour workers are not expensive in China and if they did such things, the cost of greasing police to blind may be far higher than the cost they could save from hiring child workers.

Edited July 15, 2008 by xul

[Rue]

Slavery would be an economic boon to Canada and help all the rest of us with reduced taxation.

Move to China then.

Only someone who takes his freedom for granted would make the comments you did.