171–180 of 281 posts
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Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.
What’s the financial motivation for the state then?
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> They are being punished for crimes they committed The punishment is being locked up in a cell. Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.
> Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery. Why is it not part of the punishment? I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on. I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.
Indeed it is part of the punishment. As an earlier comment in this thread points out from the 13th amendment:
> "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime" (emphasis added by me)
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> They are being punished for crimes they committed The punishment is being locked up in a cell. Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.
> Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery. Why is it not part of the punishment? I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on. I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.
They're not. That's why it's slavery. And slavery of prisoners is permitted by the Constitution, which is the main point here.
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If they pay her what she’s owed and the damages. She can get her place, hire people and pay them to care of her or help her.
If she hires people doesn't that just perpetuate the problem?
I’m new to HN. How does this relate to the theme of Hacker News?
The joke's on them; it likely erodes support for their causes.
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Why do you see inequality as the problem, instead of poverty?
Logically-speaking, poverty can't exist without inequality. It's a condition of "want" that requires others to "have". Practically-speaking, inequality is insidious because it enables violations of rights and unjust denial of opportunity even when poverty has been eradicated. Cold comfort, to the middle-class family of people mowed down by a rich motorist who faces negligible jail time because the money they can spen…
Inequality has no moral characteristics. It is not "insidious." The fact that disparate effort and disparate circumstance lead to disparate outcomes is just that; a simple cold fact.
That some people use their power or wealth to take advantage of others is a moral issue. But again, this is orthogonal to disparity of outcome. Or do you claim poor people never steal from other poor people, or that rich people never steal from other rich people?
Envy is not the basis of poverty, need is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.
What’s the financial motivation for the state then?
I’m new to HN. How does this relate to the theme of Hacker News?
This playing out across generations of the family that kept her, the woman 'rescued' but staying with them for the time being, the social context, income levels, how to keep a slave from leaving in today's ultra-connected world, the low $ damages mentioned, relation with other modern forms of slavery...
Plenty to go on there. Btw welcome to HN!
Its a common occurrence for families to take in poor girls to do house work in exchange for food and lodging. And with the insidious nature of Brazilian racism, they will pretend that she is part of the family. They might even take her on vacations (to work, of course). If you grow up with this mentality it might even be hard for you to see the injustice. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Amer…
I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.
The 13th amendment removed the legal concept of slavery (except for convicts) but it was still not a crime to do slavery. Slavery changed shape many times over the years since the civil war (usually involving convicting black people under sham crimes and then selling them as debt slaves or forcing them to sign contracts that rendered them slaves under threat of being convicted for said sham crimes) and can only reasonably be said to have actually ended in the US after Pearl Harbour when concerns that it would be used as enemy propaganda caused the Justice Department to properly prosecute slave owners (see Circular 3591[1]).
The last chattel slave in the US was Alfred Irving[2] and he was released in late 1942. He was kept in chains and was permanently disfigured due to constant physical abuse from his owners. He died in 1960.
[3] is a very comprehensive video essay about the topic.
[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
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I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.
This isn't very surprising. The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself . An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade , the second being t…