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Aswad -> Was: Slaves for 8500$ (10/6/2012 1:57:11 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Alecta
On the one hand, you're being much too serious. On the other...
Too much of a good thing can be good fun.
See also: Ha, ha, only serious.
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An average 8500 USD buys an arbitrary "slave"
Yes. But if you're forking over 8500 USD, you're paying way too much, IMO.
And probably financing organized crime, rather than lifting some family out of poverty. It's not like they sell their own offspring for fun. Just like a lot of the prostitution in the world, it is because it's the lesser evil for them. If one isn't going to give the money to charity, it seems the next best thing to pay the money for something that doesn't leave anyone worse off than they started out, but rather leaves every party better off.
This, of course, with the caveat that the ethics fly out the window if one does something which will leave someone worse off, or if the slave to be has not been consulted in private about the prospect of the arrangement on offer. An ethically minded person bent on such exploitation should pick someone from a background wherefrom the slave would have a worse fate by default. It would depend on their individual ethics what constitutes an acceptable outcome, but the blanket ban on such arrangements seems to me to be letting people suffer and die out of an unwillingness to compromise.
Some young woman dying of starvation in Somalia would probably be happier blowing Mr. Trump than getting on with the dying part, for instance. We may both think he could stand to part with the money with no such expectations, of course, but we have no means to force him to give it away. We do, however, have a way to permit the beneficial (in the sense of improving things) transaction to take place, by legislating appropriately, and to use the legislation to discourage abusing the arrangements made possible. Incentivizing good behavior is likely to make such a thing a net win for everyone.
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The situation you describe is very commonplace, but nonetheless considered by our first world governments as slavery because the person was bought and paid for.
If the person agrees to that, I fail to see the problem. It's a cruel world. The first world refusing to deal with that will not make anything better. Like prohibition, the current arrangement leaves everything in the hands of criminals, instead of figuring out how to best deal with the realities. I would personally prefer for there to be some sort of expiration of the contractual obligations of such an arrangement (e.g. seven years), as well as conditions where the arrangement is nullified (e.g. pregnancy, at least when carried to term), and rules about what the arrangement can entail (e.g. no blank check contracts, some basic rights, etc.). But this is another area where I do not have any representation, and one which doesn't matter much to me.
It's not like I'm looking to buy anyone myself.
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Mail Order Bride agencies from certain parts of the world are also being hotly debated as to whether what they do is technically slavery.
I'm not surprised. Up here, the welfare system sort of makes it a moot point. We just make sure they know the score and have a decent network they can get in touch with if they want to scrap whatever arrangement they made. We mostly clamp down on legitimate couples, not the pseudoslavery ones. Hard to (not literally) shackle someone that knows they can go to the nearest public office and say "I have no home and no money" with a reasonable expectation that this will not be the case at the end of that day.
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Interestingly, recent years have seen an increase in slave scams whereby the "legally sold" blackmail their buyers into paying even more money or letting them leave (with whatever money had been previously paid), or perpetuating the scam for residency status in other countries for themselves and their extended families.
Dog eat dog. Hard to feel sorry for the people that exploited by someone they themselves tried to exploit.
Interesting topic, though probably better to put it in a seperate thread.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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