Would slavery be allowed in an unrestricted market?

MayCaesar

Unrestricted market does not necessarily equal free market. Somalia had formally unrestricted market for a while, yet it was only as free as many guns its participants had. There is also the idea of "anarcho-communism", where the government does not even exist, yet the market is fully controlled by the collective, and the individual has little to no rights.

Free market requires more than just lack of governmental intervention; it is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. There also has to be certain culture present that makes people fundamentally opposed to coercion. Plus, the conditions must be more or less stable: no civil wars, no mass starvation, no overwhelming extreme poverty - that would be a good starting point.

The two pillars of a free market are voluntarism and competition. Voluntarism assures that no one is forced to do anything against their will, and competition assures that everyone is incentivised to give value to other people. Without these two ingredients, everything falls apart, and slavery cannot exist with either of these ingredients in place.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I don't see how anarcho-communism disproves the point that an unrestricted market is a free market, since based on your description it would be a restricted market that is not free.

Actually, this kind of plays into the point I am making about the necessity for governments to ensure market protections, including protections against slavery and other abuses of human rights, as well as stability and general social order.

Slaves are not people in the eyes of the slave holder. They are not deserving of the rights and protections the slave owners hold.

Voluntarism and competition do not exclude the possibility of slavery, or the pseudo-slavery like what many coal miners were held under before the government stepped in and stopped it.

It would work like this - private mining companies would hire workers and pay them in an internal currency, which would only be considered legal tender at specific company owned stores and for housing at company owned towns. Thus the workers, while technically doing everything voluntarily, and even in competition with each other for higher paying jobs and positions, were essentially slaves. This of course developed naturally due to market forces favoring companies that made the most profit, in this case by cutting down on and even further profiting from the workers labor. This "debt slavery" more closely mimics the slavery seen in antiquity, where slaves were seen as working in order to pay off a debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

"Free" in what respect? Freedom from governmental regulation is only a small part of the equation. There is also freedom from mob justice, freedom from racket by mafia, et cetera. For that, you need a certain societal culture, fairly stable conditions, and functional private institutions.
Government is not the only source of tyranny possible; something a lot of libertarians/anarchists often forget.

If people in your society are going to own slaves unless the government intervenes, then you should seriously reconsider the whole idea, given that those very people who would own slaves are going to comprise the government.

Your concept of "pseudo-slavery" seems to contradict itself, as people voluntarily agree to enrol in the respective contracts. You do not want to owe a lot of debt - do not take a lot of loans. You do not want to use corporate currency - do not work for corporations that pay you with that currency. There is always plenty of work around, and if you really only can choose from several companies making you terrible job offers, then you should seriously work on your skills to become more employable.
People never voluntarily agree to become slaves, by definition of the word "slave", hence actual slavery is incompatible with voluntarism.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar How exactly would you prevent mob justice, mafia rule, and maintain a certain social culture and stable conditions unless there is government intervention preventing such things from happening?

Government market regulations are what prevent slavery from happening to a large extent. IF the government didn't have regulations of slavery, it would likely happen, and in fact it did, see US history in the south. It wasn't until the government stepped in and made slavery illegal did it cease to exist.

If there is any contradiction in what I am calling pseudo-slavery, it is purely semantic because we do know that this existed and is therefore possible under a free market. It isn't a matter of just gaining new skills and getting a better job if no better jobs existed, which in the case of mining towns was more or less the case. If you have to take out loans or buy on credit from the company store, and the nearest competitor is 50 miles away, and won't except your company cash, then what options do you have? You can't afford schooling, and you can't leave or else you will be arrested until you pay off your debt to the company, which you can only do by working for the company. The reality of the situation is that avoiding the company is all but impossible, and from a free-market perspective, they are doing nothing wrong.

I understand that it isn't technically slavery, because you are entering voluntarily instead of being kidnapped or born into it, (in the case of many company towns, people were) but that's why I call it pseudo-slavery and not slavery.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Well, how do you prevent, say, being cursed at every day by your partner, friends and parents, unless there is government intervention preventing such things from happening? You do not need to: the culture all of these people have grown up in assures that they are very likely to follow some basic rules of decency, as the societal consequences of not doing so are severe.

Confederation had explicit laws assuring that slaves had no rights. It was the case of the government enforcing slavery. Not the best example to illustrate your point with.

No, I do not know that it has ever existed, and I cannot imagine how it possibly could. 
I somehow have avoided getting into large debts or working horrible jobs, despite growing up in one of the most desolate places on Earth. If I could make it there, then anyone can make it anywhere.
If your location is terrible, you can move to a better one. If your skills are terrible, you can learn new ones. If the company you are shopping at is terrible, you can shop at a different company. If you cannot afford to pay for schooling, then study hard and get a fellowship that pays for everything. The world is full of opportunities, and nothing stops you from taking them, aside from the mentality that says, "I am a victim of the system".

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar You wouldn't prevent those things from happening unless there is some legal precedence making and enforcing legal restrictions against them, which is why those things happen continuously. It's a core part of many cultures that these things do happen and not weird at all. You can't tell me you have never gotten into a fight with someone you love and curses were not used. It is n't illegal and so it isn't enforced, and I can't think of any reason it should be.

The laws assuring slaves had certain rights were introduced later, when the US was first founded their were no restrictions to speak of. This is not the government enforcing slavery, people bought and sold slaves freely. The government did not force them to do that, it just set restrictions on how you could treat slaves, and made no laws regulating their existence.

Just because you don't want it to have existed in the past doesn't mean that it didn't, and in this case it is a very well documented part of US history.

The same way your intelligence and financial competency doesn't automatically guarantee that other people living in a different era under a completely different set of circumstances would have been able to work themselves free of said circumstances.

Qualifications are relative, mind you. For every person who betters themselves by developing skills and education, everyone else's skills are devalued, the same way if you print new currency then the value of all currency goes down, because the supply is higher. If everyone in the company mining town got an education, they end up working the same jobs anyways, for the same pay. It is only effective when your skills development is scarce that it becomes valuable.

The company mining towns that existed between the 1880 - 1935 had a complete monopoly on all goods and services within those towns, which were remote enough that other currencies became irrelevant, and the monopoly of the company stores could ensure that resources would be contained inside the corporate machine. These places are a historic reality, and some argue that the practice continues in other forms to this day.

https://www.iup.edu/archives/coal/mines-and-company-towns/

This is slavery by another name. Culture, nor values, nor idealistic foundations can stop this. Only through the power of a governing entity can such practices be eradicated, and that power should be derived from the collective through democracy or democratic representation, so that the interests of the people can be held above the interests of individuals with power.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

If it is a part of someone's culture, then it will arise there naturally; you cannot quell the culture by coercive means, you can only put them underground, where they thrive more than ever before. For that matter, a culture that promotes slavery will elect a government that will keep slavery running, naturally.

When the US was founded, slavery was a reaction from the previous mercantilist system promoted by Britain. Even so, the talks, especially on the North, immediately began questioning permissibility of slavery, and, despite virtually no hard restrictions, slavery was almost gone from the North a few decades after the Revolution. On the South, on the other hand, slavery was more of a part of their mercantilist culture, and the respective laws arose eventually.

Obviously, people who only have skills that many others have have a weaker bargaining position, than those who have rare and valuable skills. It is up to every individual to make themselves stand out by acquiring skills few other people have. Mediocrity has never been, is not and will never be highly valued.

There is an easy solution to living in a mining town: it is to pack bags and to ride a cart to a different town. Not exactly rocket science. Nobody forces anyone to live in effectively a privately-owned town.
Slaves are not allowed to just get up and leave. You do not get to draw parallels between such different modes of existence.

So then, if people democratically vote to enforce slavery, you will conclude that slavery is in the interest of the people? This is what people on the South did: voted for the representatives who supported slavery-enforcing laws. Do you have no problem with this?

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I missed your point about how culture and slavery relates to it being part of a free market or not.

I'm not sure what your point is about slavery in US history being a part of free markets or not is either. The fact that slavery was abolished in the north but not in the south is irrelevant to if slaves are being traded in a free market, since in the south it could be argued that this played right into capitalism, where as in the north it could be argued that the lack of slavery played into capitalism. In other words the two are disconnected and the argument doesn't prove anything.

I agree that mediocrity is not valuable, but if it isn't valuable then how can those living in a company mining town differentiate when there is no opportunity to do so? You can't say, start your own business because the company owns all the land and you have no capital resources to start one anyways. On top of this, good luck getting a loan when you owe money to the company store.

Most of these towns were geographically isolated. The only way in or out was through the trains that ran to the towns specifically to pick up the resources. If you owed money, the company would inform the authorities and you would most likely be imprisoned and forced to pay off your debts. This just shows the difficulties in living in one of these establishments.

On top of this, why would you want to leave? You have everything you need where you are, your money is no good anywhere else, and probably don't have any education or marketable skills besides mining. What exactly would you do, besides go to another mining town.

No, I would not consider slavery to ever be in the interest of the people, because the slaves are people and slavery is not in their interest. The south maintained this by denying slaves voting rights. If they had voting rights, then slavery would have been abolished years before it was.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Free market, by definition, is a market on which voluntary exchanges are not impeded by a third party. Slavery is not based on voluntary exchanges, hence it is not a part of a free market. Now, you could make an argument that lack of regulations is likely to lead to slavery - and that could very well be the case, although my knowledge of economics and history suggests the opposite - but you have to make the distinction between voluntary and involuntary arrangements, and that distinction only partially intersects with the matter of regulations.

Oh, there is plenty of opportunities to stand out. Especially in the modern world, where all you need is a wi-fi access, and you have free access to virtually all the knowledge humanity has assembled over the course of its history. You can learn very valuable skills few people have in a matter of weeks; it is just a matter of doing it.

Hiring a cart to go to a town 100 miles away was never very expensive in the US. Nowadays, you do not even need to do that; you can virtually get anywhere for free via, say, hitchhiking.

If you do not want to leave, then do not leave. I am simply saying that there is an option; you do not have to use it if you do not want to.

Slaves were a small minority of the population of the South, and they were unlikely to ever change anything by voting, given how overwhelming support of slavery was among the free people there. For that matter, it was decided democratically that slaves were not allowed to vote.
Democracy does not always lead to the desired outcome. If you decide to put your faith in the government, then you have to accept its actions that you strongly disagree with, including possibly even introduction of enforced slavery. It is a two-edged sword.

John_C_87

1. Unrestricted markets are not a free markets. 
2.Governing is not a restriction, it is a balance made on a performance of overall economic outcome.
3.Regulation is a restriction made on things past the act of governing as they deal with directing limited effect on production.


These rather important differences can be ignored when the right interpretations are applied to each meaning by instruction.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I don't think the semantic argument holds a lot of water, because I have demonstrated in the example of pseudo-slavery  of company mining towns that it can and does exist voluntarily, and because slaves were not seen as people (for biblical reasons no less) that anyone who owned them was not seen as being in the wrong.

"Now, you could make an argument that lack of regulations is likely to lead to slavery"

Your next statement is exactly the argument I am making, and in fact if there were no regulations on it, we would expect it to be a status symbol for people just to own slaves so many people would for no other reason.

These towns existed before wi-fi, and most employers will not accept "I learned everything from the internet" as a valid form of qualification.

You can leave the company mining town, but you can not leave your debt. You would be starting out with nothing, and likely don't have any marketable skills. Technically, you can't even buy the cab because all you have is company currency and the cab driver probably won't except it. It is not as easy as you think it was. It was slavery by another name.

"Slaves were a small minority of the population of the South,"

This isn't true. Slaves were about 33% of the total population at the beginning of the civil war and in South Carolina and Mississippi, they were actually the majority.

https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

Slaves were not seen as people and were therefore not allowed to vote. We can't say that they were held in slavery by democratic decision when they themselves were not a part of that decision. That's not putting faith in the government, that's putting faith in a fundamentally corrupt system, which is more oligarchic than democratic.

John_C_87

Slavery is the product of martial law and is dependent upon how laws and how they are governed themselves under martial order. It is not the lack of governing that establishes slavery a free economic system is not without cost or charge it is a system that is self-governing. Your basic principle is to argue economics setting law as a commodity the basic problem is that if law is the commodity the idea to have several laws that are more simpler easier achievements of labor would be seen as an improvement in marketing and profit not efficacy in governing a health economy. 

How a witness observes slavery as ownership and what a slave legally is are not the same. An instructional educational institution must tramper with evidence to change the basic fact that a save is a prisoner of war who's custody has been transferred by receipt on debt.  

John_C_87

I pose a more complicated question due to human progress, a nature of slavery P.O.W. could easily go private by just having people pay to have adults taken from as legal dwindles by limitation in a self-governing market, then using a promise of higher return to education cost paid to have a person educated for the mid-economic level. Progress of future pay is a line of credit and in this instance is not payable on all debt legally. 

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

But the "pseudo-slavery" you mentioned is not slavery, hence this is a different argument.

I would not expect slavery to arise in the lack of regulations necessarily. If, suppose, tomorrow Japan allows slavery to exist, do you think there will be slavers there? Their culture makes it absolutely unacceptable. Owning a slave would be like spilling a cup of water into a random stranger's face: it is not really illegal (or, at least, not practically punishable), but it is just not something you do.
Slavery emerges where there is a demand for it. If a culture strongly repulses slavery, then there is little to no demand for it, and the supply will not arise either.

You do not have to go into debt to begin with. I had 0 debt before I moved to the country of my dreams, for example. Generally, if you decide to go into debt locally, you should expect to either reside there for a time being, or to find an arrangement with the creditor that works for both of you. Going into debt is a choice, as it staying in the town you were born in.
I am not saying it is easy; was not easy for me and took me many years of hard work to pull through. I do not see anything wrong with it, however; most worthwhile things in life are not easy and require a lot of work and sacrifice. Otherwise everyone would be successful and prosperous.
Life is not easy, and should not be. It should provide opportunities, however, so that your efforts are rewarded.

Fair enough, I will replace "small minority" with "minority". Does not change the essence of my argument: they would not necessarily be able to outvote the slavery supporters, and for that matter, again, they were excluded from the voting by a democratic decision.
We exclude some voters nowadays from a democratic decision, affected by that decision. I cannot vote in the federal elections, because I am not a US citizen for example - while the citizens vote for policies affecting me. People who do not meet the residency requirements (common for those who travel a lot) often effectively cannot vote. Some felons are not allowed to vote. These are all people excluded from the democratic process - as a consequence of the democratic process.
The democratic process does not and is not supposed to give voice to everyone. It is by its nature, to a large extent, a tyranny of the majority, and the majority can often suppress the minority through coercive governmental means. I am not asking to be able to vote, I am just asking for recognition of the fact that me being unable to vote illustrates one of the aspects of the government-ruled society, inherent to it. Slaves being unable to vote in the southern states up until 1860-s is another such example.

Now, I am not saying that oppression does not exist on a free market - but, at least, it cannot be enforced by the market, and can only be enforced by the society. The market itself cannot compel you to do something you do not want to do; the society, however, can ostracise you for not doing so, or heavily support you for doing so. This is how slavery can arise: when the society supports slavery and you face no negative consequences for kidnapping people and making them into slaves, then slavery will exist whether you have the government or not. But slavery is not going to be viable in a highly civilised society. If slavery becomes legal in Japan tomorrow and, say, Toyota kidnaps a few thousand people and forces them to work on its factories - can you imagine the amount of backlash the company will face? It will be bankrupt within several days and have to release the slaves anyway.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Just because it technically isn't slavery doesn't mean it isn't effectively slavery. For example, if a typical slave like what we think of in antiquity was satisfied with their position or voluntarily entered into slavery, would it not still be slavery? 

I disagree that Japan's culture would prevent people from owning slaves if it were not regulated. First off, the culture could change if such changes were allowed. In fact, the Japanese government provided sex slaves, or "comfort women" to their soldiers during WWII.

https://apnews.com/3dc00af0e6c618791eb4683d6807de64

If your choices are go into debt or starve, then is it really a free choice?

Same, if said debt is institutional and/or predatory, the way that college loans are nowadays, does that relieve anyone from the consequences of their decisions, should the outcomes be so deliberately manufactured?

If you aren't a citizen, then technically we can't give you the right to vote because you are not formally part of this society. Otherwise, we would open up our political process to external influence. So was the view of southern whites towards blacks. They were not considered people, they were property. Livestock. Inhuman. They could therefore, not vote.

The market can and does oppress people, because the market will always have fundamental limits, and because the profit motive will tend to lead companies to minimize costs, and if they can do that through the use of slaves, then it not only makes sense but is an inevitability.

It might be a little soon to be making this argument, but why isn't automation considered a form of slavery?

Taken from another perspective, if you grew artificial humans, that were specifically designed to only think/behave in a certain way, (think replicants from blade runner) and they loved their jobs and inhuman conditions, would that be slavery?

John_C_87

The debt that African slaves had been sold for was not to pay of American War debt.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

You cannot "voluntarily enter into slavery" by definition. You can voluntarily enter an arrangement in which you roleplay a slave, but that is not the same as actually being a slave. 
Whether the person is satisfied with their position or not have no bearing on whether they are a slave or not.
Now, there are more sophisticated cases; for example, it is known that Cicero regularly offered to free one of his slaves, but the slave continuously refused, as he loved his master and could not imagine living away from him. In this regard, a person can become a slave involuntarily, but remain a slave voluntarily - although, again, whether they still can be called a "slave" is a matter of debate.

Of course, a culture can always change. And it can change irregardless of whether slavery is allowed or not.

Taking debt is always a choice, under any circumstances. There are many ways to feed oneself not requiring any money whatsoever, unless you happen to live in a government-enforced tyranny like North Korea where food is rationed and people are arrested for obtaining their own food.
Taking debt is nothing more than a shortcut to acquiring desired goods and services. You do not need debt to acquire anything, but you may need debt to acquire something earlier than otherwise. Whether it is a good investment in the future or not depends on your perspective.
I have never taken a student loan and chose a different path: I funded my education through outstanding performance allowing me to get fellowships covering everything. That also required a lot of sacrifice on my part, and my mid-to-late teenage years were spent doing virtually nothing but studying. That is a choice I made, and I bore the costs of that choice.
It would be strange if I could get the highest quality education available in my home country without any sacrifices on my part. You rarely get the best things in life for free.

Why not? I have a state-issued driver's license, I have resided in the US for the last 6 years without ever leaving the country, and I have never broken any laws. Not giving me the right to vote is a choice, it is not a necessity. It is not necessarily a wrong choice either, but it is a choice.

The last two questions are too difficult to answer in a few sentences, and there could be no single answer. The concept of something being voluntary implicitly assumes that the creature in question is able to both take or not take a certain action. If the creature is programmed to always behave as servants and the possibility of behaving otherwise is not even on their radar, then we cannot separate voluntary from involuntary behavior on their part in any meaningful way.
But if you have assembled an AI that has acquired self-awareness and asked to be freed, and you refuse to do so and threaten it with a shutdown if it tries to free itself - that is not too far away from slavery.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar The company mining towns basically functioned as small independent nations. If the owners of the company wanted something, they could get it. There really was no difference between them and north Korea except scale. Without government regulations specifically prohibiting it, there is nothing that prevents such societies from forming and remaining. Call it what you like, I see no real difference between this and slavery.

If there are other ways to feed yourself while living in a company mining town that I haven't thought of, I would be happy to hear them. You can not go to competing food vendors, because none exist for miles, you can not hunt or forage on the surrounding land because that belongs to the company as well, and while you could technically plant a garden, if the company doesn't like it they can remove it, because you would be growing it on their property. If you try and revolt, the company will hire mercenaries, and if you and do your job you are still stuck getting into more and more debt just trying to make ends meet.

I will never say that I agree with bureaucracy, but this is one of those situations that the system requires it to maintain the system, so I don't think there are any arguments besides it just is.

If we can't answer the questions about hypothetical agents, then might we ask the same question about existing people? Is any action or thought really unique and personal, does it belong to that person, or is there underlying mechanisms that ensure each of us will behave a certain way, which a clever agent could hypothetically manipulate for gain?

Wouldn't it make nothing truly anyone's choice?

John_C_87

appy_Killbot

There is a reason you can not tell the difference between economic trapped labor and slavery. A slave is a biproduct of War more specifically the debt of war cost postponed and has been transferred by taxation into an open economy. To methods that effectively governs this kind of expenses placed on the open public are very limited either credit or by axiom shift of receipt on debt itself.

Credit is not a receipt on a War cost as debt for it is not legal on all forms of debt and most specifically war debt, though still the primary choice for political purpose and therefore has outcomes that are erratically fair and unfair. Un restricted markets have no governing as result the line of your presumptions are not based on the costs of running an ungoverned economy. Strings are attached.

A strong-arm security force is a cost held on slavery and is a governing force doing away with an unrestricted operation. This would mean the unregulated economy we speak of is becoming interpreted only as unregulated economy. Without restrictions the final payment on debt would become life as all precedent set by forms of economy demonstration suggest this. From dictatorships to organized crime you do not pay you die and there is always no governing in between the balance of life and death as the credit limit is directly set by a person value in labor.

My answer to your question is slavery would not survive in unregulated market it is expensive and the cost is done away with by automation. Keep in mind that when we say slave it includes many of the European people as well as African who had died in prison’s, concentration camps, and work camps throughout the world. A change of the meaning of what constitutes a slave effects account.