1148
How indeed (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Being physically owned is functionally different from struggling to afford your choice of housing and cuisine. I am really not sure how you would like me to elaborate the complete lack of bodily autonomy and freedom. Being provided bare necessities does not functionally negate the inability to get educated, to choose a profession, to leave a property, to not get physically abused, to be separated from your family, to be denied thr right to marry, to be sold.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    But you can't leave the property because you cannot afford rent anywhere else. You can't get a different job, because there is no different job available in the area. You can't get a better education because you cannot pay for it or even if it is free you cannot pay for your survival without the full time job, or multiple part time jobs. You get abused by the police or now also the ICE. You can't afford to marry anyways...

    Of course from the formal rights it is a huge difference, however from the practical result, modern wage work for working class people creates similarly unfree conditions. And it is no surprise that the ardent Neoliberals want to go further and establish slavery, by allowing contracts where people sell themselves "voluntarily" into permanent ownership of somebody else. This is the ultimate freedom according to these kind of Capitalists and they work to create such a society.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    When slavery was abolished in the United States, all of the former slaves immediately moved to the desolately impoverished category. By the time that they died, would you say that the quality of their lives, and that of their descendants, on average, improved, stayed the same, or was worse than before?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Did it improve? Yes. Did it improve more than the general improvement through advances in technology, medicine etc.? That is at least questionable.

    If we look further at unethical experiments done on primarily black communities or prison inmates, again primarily black, such as testing biological warfare agents and pharmaceutics on them, regular lynching and other acts of deadly violence, the whole forced labour in the prison system... It becomes clear, that the government still very much considered the former slaves and their descendants as property, they could largely do with as they pleased.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Wonderful perspective. Now, let's compare that to the white population in poverty during the same time span.

    • Can all key differences be attributed to money? The acts of violence and unethical experiments were the result of being seen as property, as you said, which someone in poverty would not have to deal with by default. We can't ignore the non-economical impacts of slavery.

    • What percentage of white and black children from impoverished homes went on to get an education or move to a different area? This comparison eliminates the bias from technological advances. If that number is greater than 0, then it proves people in poverty have the oppurtunity for growth, which is not possible under slavery.

    If we want to snapshot a single moment by a single metric, yes, not having enough money to move may be comparable to not being allowed to move by your owner. But I don't think the overall situation is close enough to say they are the functionally the same.

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