aeonicentity Posted April 24, 2015 Posted April 24, 2015 http://www.iraqinews.com/features/exclusive-isis-document-sets-prices-christian-yazidi-slaves/ My favorite argument against free markets: "We can't let the free market determine the price of X because X is so important to the economy!" Well, ISIS just declared X to be women. The real irony here is that if the free market had been allowed to rule here, ISIS might have even slowed or stopped selling slaves, since they glutted the market with a commodity that has no market outside of cookoostan. Obviously the Free Market is too dangerous to apply to the slave trade because it might end human suffering and oppression, so government regulation is needed. I think that its interesting to watch the rise of ISIS, because here we have a classic and unmasked version of how a state arises, and the real motivations behind state control. 2
Donnadogsoth Posted April 26, 2015 Posted April 26, 2015 Why wouldn't an increasingly free market society allow slavery? You're presuming the existence of culture of anti-slavery that parallels the free market, forestalling a free market in slaves. 1
Blackout Posted April 26, 2015 Posted April 26, 2015 Aren't free markets predicated on voluntary transactions? Forced associations would seem to violate this, thus the acquisition of slaves would not be supported by free market principles.
Lens Posted April 27, 2015 Posted April 27, 2015 For most of these so called fighters they once have been the slaves of their own parents as defenceless babies now they do the same to others what has been done to them in infancy without knowing. And no one wants to know why they are so angry and why they want to kill everyone. I can only sympathise deeply with those who have become slaves of these brutal sociopaths.
Agalloch Posted April 27, 2015 Posted April 27, 2015 Why wouldn't an increasingly free market society allow slavery? You're presuming the existence of culture of anti-slavery that parallels the free market, forestalling a free market in slaves. 1) If there's involuntary slavery, it isn't a free market. 2) Keeping slaves is really expensive, the Government tends to enforce it and subsidise the costs of things like policing slaves. 3) The free market breeds ingenuity, ingenuity favours intelligence, intelligence tends to come with morality, slave keeping isn't moral. Or more simply, humans want to be better, and slavery isn't better. 4) Without the State making it illegal, there's a relatively limitless (how much would you pay to return family members, or even unknown children/women from slavery?) market in the prevention of and destruciton of slave traders and slave markets. 5) Organised crime, like slavery, often comes from Government regulation. Just as there is little crime in alcohol today, I imagine less crime in areas that use slavery, like prostitution and labour, where those things aren't crimes.
aeonicentity Posted April 28, 2015 Author Posted April 28, 2015 Donnadogsoth: I think the only kind of "slavery" you'd see in a free market would be voulntary indentured servitude as an option for repayment of debts, or invoulentary indentured servitude as a punishment for a crime as enforced by some kind of court system. Either way, Indentured servitude differs from slavery in several ways: 1) Indenture is for some term. Its defined through contract, and must expire at some point, usually when the debt is considered repaid through labor. 2) Indenture implies some level of care for the servant. If the servant dies while under contract, repayment is impossible. While chattle slavery death is meaningless because you were never going to release the slave in the first place. In either case, it is unnecessary to treat the servant poorly because their servitude is a voluntary decision reached in compromise for their poor behavior. That being said, I would not live in a voulentary community which supported Indentured servitude as a punitive or voluntary measure. It degrades the dignity of a human being as being solely responsible for their own poor decisions, and you don't fix those problems by selling yourself into bondage. I don't think that any honest objectivist, or even anyone who really believes in individual liberty would agree that indentured servitude is a good or moral relationship, since it generally teaches learned helplessness. Slavery, of the varriety ISIS is practicing, or that was practiced in anti-bellum America is entirely the product of a state run economic system. You cannot enforce slavery without the assistance of the state.
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