The 9-5 is just modern day slavery.

>>20159
no, it isnt. and the fact that there are still people living in actual slavery situations makes your post offensive.

>>20161
"working for a wage not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma or status diminution."
How is it not?

>>20162
If working to not starve is slavery, then nearly every person on the planet is and forever has been enslaved, and those who have not been enslaved are the few beneficiaries of slavery (ie. you).

How do you think people could survive without somebody working? Many of us here might be spoiled brats and worthless NEETs, but you at least have to recognize that you're just that; there's nothing noble or special about refusing to or being incapable of work.

>>20164
>If working to not starve is slavery, then nearly every person on the planet is and forever has been enslaved, and those who have not been enslaved are the few beneficiaries of slavery (ie. you).
Pretty much

>>20166
I appreciate your thoughtful response.

>>20164
I'm not him, but I'll make a similar point. We're all forced without any say into a system that exploits us for our labor, and we don't have any real control over that system individually while we reinforce it collectively. Even if all you do is collect checks from the government, you're still preserving the system. Not because you're contributing labor to it (though the money you spend does reinforce it), but because you're showing that the methods it has for controlling the margins of society are effective, creating dependency in those most likely to hate the system as it is. You can call the system "capitalism" or "wage slavery" or "slavery" more generically, but slavery's just another system of labor exploitation.

That does make me wonder what we'd call "slavery" if, instead of free clothing and housing, the slave-owner gave his slaves tokens to spend at his shop on the plantation. "You can buy food and a place to stay here with those tokens," he tells them, "but try to leave and all you'll have are useless tokens, no good outside the plantation. Not only that, but we're surrounded by swampy no-man's-land. If you run away, you'll never find the way out. Still, you can do whatever you want, so long as you obey my rules." I wonder how many of them would leave, if any. And I also wonder, are they now employees of the (ex-)slave-owner, or are they still slaves?

>>20170
>Even if all you do is collect checks from the government, you're still preserving the system. Not because you're contributing labor to it (though the money you spend does reinforce it), but because you're showing that the methods it has for controlling the margins of society are effective, creating dependency in those most likely to hate the system as it is.
Welfare conspiracy? Welfare isn't there to control the population, it's there to keep the most pathetic fuckers among us from looting and living on the streets.

It's not slavery because you have the choice to stand up and leave; even if you, for whatever reason, don't feel like you have that option, your right to quit is still there. You can do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that maybe it's easier or more preferable to just keep working, or keep collecting your welfare check, but if you want you can always leave the country or become a hunter-gatherer on a plot of land somewhere.

>>20172
>It's not slavery because you have the choice to stand up and leave;
This

Comparing slavery and working is actually pretty insulting towards people who live in real slavery.

Post edited on 20th Jan 2013, 11:35am

regardless of your circumstances
someone somewhere has to expend effort in order to get food in your mouth.

>It's not slavery because you have the choice to stand up and leave.
Locking your slaves up in chains and whipping them bloody isn't a necessary component of slavery; as I understand it, the core concept in slavery is the practice of owning humans as property to be used for labor. You can treat your slaves fairly and even allow them to leave if they wish without contradicting the essence of slavery.

If you must play the semantic game, please use the following dictionary definitions rather than one-liners cited in Wikipedia:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/slave
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave

>>20175
>as I understand it, the core concept in slavery is the practice of owning humans as property to be used for labor
And that's exactly what he said. When nobody owns you, you have freedom to do what ever you want, like leave. Many people use their freedom and they choose to work. In slavery, like you said, you are allowed leave only if owner sets you free, and it means you aren't slave any more.

>>20173
>>20176
Tell that to people living pay check to pay check who hate their job but can't leave becuase employment is hard to get and they have families to take care of.
Work, or die homeless starvation isn't much of a choice. If a slave master told his slaves they're free to leave whenever they want, but they had a high probability of dying should they leave, would you not still call it slavery?

Post edited on 20th Jan 2013, 12:46pm

>>20175
I didn't even look at wikipedia, there are no "one-liners" here that I've used that weren't my own words.

From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/slave :
>1. a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant.
You are never wholly subject to another as long as you retain your basic, fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
>2. a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person: a slave to a drug.
If you want to call all people slaves to their appetite, then fine. This isn't about that, though; it's about calling modern work, where you agree to sacrifice your time for your employer's money (or some other simple variation of this idea) slavery.

From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave :
>1 : a person held in servitude as the chattel of another
Servitude is a state in which you lack liberty. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/servitude
Working for an employer does not strip you of your liberty, at least in America and most other first-world countries.
2 : one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence
You are a slave to your appetite, but you do not have to work for an employer or anybody but yourself in order to feed your appetite.

>You can treat your slaves fairly and even allow them to leave if they wish without contradicting the essence of slavery.
If they are not denied their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then they have not been enslaved. They are slaves when they're treated as property and not enabled to stand up and leave at their own free will. The situations where professional athletes, like baseball players as an example, whose contracts are traded from team to team are similar, but because they, the athletes, agreed to the contract of their own volition, they are not truly enslaved, especially because they still retain the right to stand up and quit, though there may be financial repercussions.

Haruhi damn it

Why do all the most active threads have to be about the most banal stupid shit possible. I suppose it's because certain posters (or maybe just that one guy) are attracted to them like flies on shit and if this didn't happen at least once a week they would die

>>20180
Why would you begin a sentence as though it were a question, but end it as a statement.

>>20181
Now we are really cooking!!!!!

>>20180
Make better threads if you don't like it.

>>20183
I could make a thread about pizza, but after a few posts it would be the same 2 or 3 people arguing about how pizza is the jews way of controlling minimum wage, or how certain toppings relate to race relations in the united states, or some other garbage. Whimsical discussion is almost impossible anymore

Never forget the fallen heroes of our revolution

>>20177
I see the comparison you are making and there may be grey areas, but the word 'slavery' loses all meaning if you equate it to any 9-5 employment. We have labour laws that guarantee rights for employees, e.g. minimum wage, maximum workday, holidays. And before you say "there were laws regarding slaves as well", the difference is that our laws apply to all of society.

>>20193
>our laws apply to all of society.
unless you're rich and powerful you mean?

>>20172
>Welfare conspiracy? Welfare isn't there to control the population, it's there to keep the most pathetic fuckers among us from looting and living on the streets.
Thus preserving the system. You even admit it's control in the same sentence you deny it: how is "keep[ing] the most pathetic fuckers among us from looting and living on the streets" not control? Imagine if all the people on welfare were taken off of it and began looting and rioting in the streets: the system as it is would fall apart. It's not a conspiracy since there's no cabal behind it. We collectively enforce it ourselves by doing as little as we can to change it dramatically and everything we can to maintain it as it is. That's why I said it was a system, not a special group of people.

>It's not slavery because you have the choice to stand up and leave; even if you, for whatever reason, don't feel like you have that option, your right to quit is still there.
I didn't say it was slavery (although someone else can call it that if they want) since slavery is a specific form of labor exploitation, and I think it muddies the issue since you then have people going "OMG HE COMPARED SOMETHING TO SLAVERY!! SO OFFENSIVE!11!!" and the thread devolves into a huge waste of time over dumb semantic issues. Getting offended for the sake of other people over things that don't matter a whit to the people in question is Tumblr level bullshit.

My second paragraph was just a thought experiment. What is that system? Are the (former) slaves really free to leave? What's the real difference between slavery and their current condition? They can "quit", of course, and chose to lay down and die, but what's the difference between being hanged for running off the plantation and dying slowly of starvation besides time? Does the concept of ownership really matter if they're not truly free to associate themselves with another system? That's what I was wondering about, not about the exact definition of slavery.

>>20194
Well, that's a different story and I hear you, but we're not supposed to get into politics here.

>>20198
Well, to be fair, I (the person you're responding to) wasn't the one saying that it was offensive. I agree that it detracts from the discussion.

On your welfare point, I agree. Sorry for making you type that out.

>Does the concept of ownership really matter if they're not truly free to associate themselves with another system? That's what I was wondering about, not about the exact definition of slavery.
You want to talk about the thread devolving; did you really want to discuss communism v. capitalism here? To quote rms, from what I feel was his defense of capitalism and freedom, "There are things that you and I will never be able to afford, but that doesn't mean we've been enslaved."

>>20199
>Well, to be fair, I (the person you're responding to) wasn't the one saying that it was offensive. I agree that it detracts from the discussion.
No, I didn't assume you were. You were saying the current system isn't technically slavery which, I agree, it isn't.

>You want to talk about the thread devolving; did you really want to discuss communism v. capitalism here? To quote rms, from what I feel was his defense of capitalism and freedom, "There are things that you and I will never be able to afford, but that doesn't mean we've been enslaved."
Not necessarily, but I'm curious as to what a better system would be, though I didn't really bring it up in my original post. I'm sympathetic to communism's concerns insofar as they're legitimate, although I'm not a communist per se. Maybe part of the problem is that we're thinking about systems in terms of a Cold War-ish "capitalism vs. communism" because we're conditioned to think about it as such when discussing what a better system might be. I can think of other systems, but I'm not sure if they would be better or worse.

The questions about the plantation scenario were only to point out that slavery and the current system may be of the same type. "Freedom", in the case of the plantation, didn't actually mean very much beyond not being considered property under law (which makes little practical difference to them). Sure they can buy things now instead of having them doled out by the slavemaster, but being able to buy stuff, especially the same stuff which you used to be given for free, isn't really freedom.

You brought up the right to quit the work force earlier, but the right to quit the work force is kind of like the right not to pay taxes. It's a choice, but not really. You can't escape enforcement of the system in place. Also, just as a side note, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be rather difficult since most land is owned and you would still run into the state's mechanisms for enforcing the system first (namely laws and police officers) and then the cultural enforcers of the system with the news headline Crazy Modern Cro-Magnon Arrested for Trespassing.

Society + Economy = human interdependence.

Capitalism is humans targeting and taking advantage of each other's weaknesses for personal gain. Some are better at it than others, so naturally some break out of the lower ranks to become the slave drivers, taking advantage of other peoples' work for personal gain.

Communism is people becoming so interdependent on each other that they become slaves of the society.

Socialism is slavery of the masses to keep the disabled alive, and to keep the society equal, forcing outstanding individuals into the background.

Tribalism is slavery to an inbred family.

Peaceful anarchism is slavery to nature and oneself.

Honestly the only thing I can think of that is far enough away from straight out slavery is socialism, but even then, if everyone gets smart, nobody will work, and nobody will be fed.

I feel like the only way to snuff out slavery to stay alive is if we automate food production and end the concept of land ownership to private citizens and companies. If you want to leave that system and work to stay alive, you can. I call this technological socialism.

>>20216
I think you're overgeneralizing a bit too much.

>Communism is people becoming so interdependent on each other that they become slaves of the society.
And this doesn't happen in capitalism? As a matter of the fact, this isn't really pure communism at all, though it's similar to maybe Stalinism or Maoism.

>Socialism is slavery of the masses to keep the disabled alive, and to keep the society equal, forcing outstanding individuals into the background.
The first sentence is also true of most capitalist societies (thus special education, rights for the disabled, etc.). Also, outstanding individuals = having lots of money? I don't think so. I think doing excellent things makes someone an outstanding individual, and money has nothing to do with it. They may earn money for it, but it's not like most people who do excellent things typically have a lot of money. They may have money, but they're not typically wealthy in terms of millions or billions of dollars.

>Tribalism is slavery to an inbred family.
You mean to the community, right? So long as you live among people, you'll generally be bound with them. This is true for any society.

>Peaceful anarchism is slavery to nature and oneself.
This is where you completely go off the rails. You're always subject to nature. For example, try not breathing. "Slavery to oneself"? If you're trying to say a person is always subject to their own attitudes and judgments, then I agree, but this is true of an individual in any system. I'm not sure how "peaceful anarchism" is different in that regard. Or in either regard for that matter.

There's a reason I restrict myself to the exploitation of one's labor by others. If you go on with "x is slavery, y is slavery, z is slavery" you get sloppy, and you eventually conclude "nothing matters, it's all basically the same". Though you didn't exactly come to that conclusion (instead you gave a utopia), you came close.

>>20217
I certainly think its not neccesary for outstanding individuals to have billions upon billions of dollars. Reward should be proportional to how good you are and I refuse to believe these people are 10 000x more awesome than your typical.

Meh. For me it's easier to just ignore the big picture and instead focus on what impacts me and maybe a small circle of close people. I'm big on waifu+afterlife, so I guess that's the main thing allowing me to tolerate the current system.

>>20170
>>
That does make me wonder what we'd call "slavery" if, instead of free clothing and housing, the slave-owner gave his slaves tokens to spend at his shop on the plantation. "You can buy food and a place to stay here with those tokens," he tells them, "but try to leave and all you'll have are useless tokens, no good outside the plantation. Not only that, but we're surrounded by swampy no-man's-land. If you run away, you'll never find the way out. Still, you can do whatever you want, so long as you obey my rules."

That's like Pullman's City near Chicago and some old mining towns where everything was controlled by the company. Still ya could theoretically leave