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Is slavery a matter of perspective?

Is slavery a matter of perspective?

  • Total voters
    29
reefedjib said:
Here's another:

"slavery
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | Copyright
slavery institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services."

slavery Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about slavery
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That is one type of slavery. It has more than one definition as I have shown.

End of story.

You can search the Internet all night and it will not make any difference. You can read the posts here and most agree it is not some set in stone definition. It is most definitely perspective.
 
Blackdog said:
That is one type of slavery. It has more than one definition as I have shown.

End of story.

You can search the Internet all night and it will not make any difference. You can read the posts here and most agree it is not some set in stone definition. It is most definitely perspective.
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You have shown definitions that it is used as a figure of speech but that has little to do with the institution of slavery. You have not presented one counter-example of something that is slavery that does not include the concept of the ownership of people.
 
Here are more examples...

Forced Labor - This form of slavery often results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slaving conditions, working without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers and migrant workers.

Wage Slavery - s most common in underdeveloped areas, where employers can afford to employ people at low wages, knowing they can't afford to risk their employment. Most child laborers can be considered to be wage slaves.

Contract Slavery - These are generally poor and often illiterate people who have been tricked into signing contracts they do not understand and must be repaid through their labor.

Sex Slavery - Women and children forced into prostitution are often lured by false offers of a good job and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In other cases, victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to another country and are then forced into prostitution in pay off their own debts. In still others, women or children are kidnapped from their home countries. An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year.

Debt Bondage - Bonded labor, is the most widely practiced form of slavery around the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most prevalent, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The staggering poverty there forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is that the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.

All forms of slavery by definition and most require no ownership.

Different Forms of Slavery
 
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reefedjib said:
You have shown definitions that it is used as a figure of speech but that has little to do with the institution of slavery. You have not presented one counter-example of something that is slavery that does not include the concept of the ownership of people.
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See post above.
 
Are you guys still fighting over the definition of slavery?:D
 
Blackdog said:
Here are more examples...

Forced Labor - This form of slavery often results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slaving conditions, working without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers and migrant workers.

Wage Slavery - s most common in underdeveloped areas, where employers can afford to employ people at low wages, knowing they can't afford to risk their employment. Most child laborers can be considered to be wage slaves.

Contract Slavery - These are generally poor and often illiterate people who have been tricked into signing contracts they do not understand and must be repaid through their labor.

Sex Slavery - Women and children forced into prostitution are often lured by false offers of a good job and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In other cases, victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to another country and are then forced into prostitution in pay off their own debts. In still others, women or children are kidnapped from their home countries. An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year.

Debt Bondage - Bonded labor, is the most widely practiced form of slavery around the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most prevalent, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The staggering poverty there forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is that the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.

All forms of slavery by definition and most require no ownership.

Different Forms of Slavery
Click to expand...

if you wanna get technical, they are all indentured servitude more than slavery, a slave is someones property, they don't work for wages or anything, more akin to draught horses than people.
 
Blackdog said:
Here are more examples...

Forced Labor - This form of slavery often results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slaving conditions, working without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers and migrant workers.

Wage Slavery - s most common in underdeveloped areas, where employers can afford to employ people at low wages, knowing they can't afford to risk their employment. Most child laborers can be considered to be wage slaves.

Contract Slavery - These are generally poor and often illiterate people who have been tricked into signing contracts they do not understand and must be repaid through their labor.

Sex Slavery - Women and children forced into prostitution are often lured by false offers of a good job and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In other cases, victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to another country and are then forced into prostitution in pay off their own debts. In still others, women or children are kidnapped from their home countries. An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year.

Debt Bondage - Bonded labor, is the most widely practiced form of slavery around the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most prevalent, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The staggering poverty there forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is that the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.

All forms of slavery by definition and most require no ownership.

Different Forms of Slavery
Click to expand...

Exactly right - these are forms of indentured servitude and not slavery. The term is being misused.
 
spud_meister said:
if you wanna get technical, they are all indentured servitude more than slavery, a slave is someones property, they don't work for wages or anything, more akin to draught horses than people.
Click to expand...

They are considered a form of slavery. Ownership is a legal concept, you cannot own a slave legally in any of these conditions.
 
reefedjib said:
Exactly right - these are forms of indentured servitude and not slavery. The term is being misused.
Click to expand...

Explained above.

If this were true it is not possible to "own" an illegal slave.
 
Blackdog said:
They are considered a form of slavery. Ownership is a legal concept, you cannot own a slave legally in any of these conditions.
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thats pretty much my point, slavery is owning a person, from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia through to modern times, slavery is ownership, a legal concept, they were considered property.
In the examples you provided, all are examples of indentured servitude, like the serfs of feudal Europe, or the 'Blackbirding' carried out in pre-federation Australia.
The only one that is close to slavery is forced labour, but as the people are not owned, they are not slaves, any more than prisoners made to do hard labour are.
 
spud_meister said:
thats pretty much my point, slavery is owning a person, from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia through to modern times, slavery is ownership, a legal concept, they were considered property.
In the examples you provided, all are examples of indentured servitude, like the serfs of feudal Europe, or the 'Blackbirding' carried out in pre-federation Australia.
The only one that is close to slavery is forced labour, but as the people are not owned, they are not slaves, any more than prisoners made to do hard labour are.
Click to expand...

The term slavery like other words have changed over the years. Do I need to pull out a dictionary again, or are you going to say the dictionary is wrong as well?

Again, the term is subjective and amounts to perspective. Simple as that.

Slavery -

1.the condition of a slave; bondage.
2.the keeping of slaves as a practice or institution.
3.a state of subjection like that of a slave: He was kept in slavery by drugs.
4.severe toil; drudgery.

Slave -

1.a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant.
2.a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person: a slave to a drug.
3.a drudge: a housekeeping slave.
4.a slave ant.
5.Photography. a subsidiary flash lamp actuated through its photoelectric cell when the principal flash lamp is discharged.
6.Machinery. a mechanism under control of and repeating the actions of a similar mechanism.Compare master (def. 19).
 
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Blackdog said:
The term slavery like other words have changed over the years. Do I need to pull out a dictionary again, or are you going to say the dictionary is wrong as well?

Again, the term is subjective and amounts to perspective. Simple as that.
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dictionaries? you've been spending too much time with Chuz:2razz:


but i'll agree that my perspective differs from yours.
 
spud_meister said:
dictionaries? you've been spending too much time with Chuz:2razz:

but i'll agree that my perspective differs from yours.
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hehehe no way.

Reefedjib is under the impression if he disagrees with the dictionary, he must be right.
 
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megaprogman said:
Positive and negative response to something is still a change in action, which inhibits freedom. Since the action is still changed, I don't think it is a good distinction to make.
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Yes but here we are going to the making someone not disturb your natural state.
As long as he does not murder you, you would keep moving in the same general direction.

That is where the social contract comes in, where we create a minimal set of rules for restraining not only people but government.
It's basically supposed to be a NAP/MDP.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Yes but here we are going to the making someone not disturb your natural state.
As long as he does not murder you, you would keep moving in the same general direction.

That is where the social contract comes in, where we create a minimal set of rules for restraining not only people but government.
It's basically supposed to be a NAP/MDP.
Click to expand...

I still don't think that matters for this discussion. Freedom is about what you can and cannot do.
 
Skateguy said:
If you wake up to the sound of an alarm clock, rather than when you choose to wake up---You are a slave. face it.
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Not if you choose to use the alarm clock. You can always shut it off and go back to sleep. :lol:
 
reefedjib said:
Slavery is owning people as property for the purposes of getting work out of them. Period.
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I'm afraid you are unaware of the definition and nature of slavery.
 
Korimyr the Rat said:
You're fortunate to live in a time and a place where you can't tell the difference between honest labor and slavery. For the majority of human history, you would have learned the difference at the end of a whip.
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Unfortunately, you live in a time and place where the meaning of a word depends on the position you decide to take. Skateguy is wrong but so are you. His example is oppression, not slavery.
 
Gipper said:
Conscription is not slavery. Slavery ultimately boils down to a lack of choice at any level.

Indigenous West African people were kidnapped, shackled, and forced to work upon threat of death. They had no choice in the matter. Nobody is in the Armed Forces (draft is over with) because they were not given a choice. Warren Sapp wasn't a slave, neither was Prince, no matter what they said.
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Yes, conscription is slavery. It is forced labor for another's profit.
So no, slavery is not a "matter of perspective". It's a case of whether or not they had any control in the matter.[/QUOTE]
You're missing his point.
 
digsbe said:
Slaves are human property. If you can be bought and sold and registered as someone's property then you are a slave. Paying taxes and having people in authority over you is not slavery. Now, I do think slavery is a matter of perspective as well. If someone sells themselves into a slave contract to pay off debts is he a "slave?" Is the definition of slavery dependent on if it is your will or another's will forcing you into it? Honestly I don't know, but I would say that slavery is a matter of perspective.
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I'm afraid you are ignorant of the definition and/or nature of slavery.
 
Gipper said:
Draft = no choice. Draft = slavery.

Conscription does not include a draft. Conscripts are willing soldiers.
Click to expand...

con·scrip·tion
   /kənˈskrɪpʃən/ Show Spelled[kuhn-skrip-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1.
compulsory enrollment of persons for military or naval service; draft.
2.
a compulsory contribution of money to a government during a time of war.


FAIL
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
In it's most simplistic form slavery is, being forced to work for the benefit of another.

If there is no force, there is no slavery.
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You are correct as long as you recognize that "force" is not just through threat of violence.
 
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