Financial Slavery

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 22:07:11 +0000


Peter wrote:

> No full-time employee can be paid less than it costs to live off
> for too long.

Yes they could. The only requirement is someone to grant credit for long enough that the accumulated debt will cost the employee some kind of freedom. It's the general accusation against hardliner capitalism, really, and can create a stable process from comparably free workers to company slaves. In the case of farmers on rented land it took several centuries of gradual process, or a few decrees of new overlords (e.g. in Ditmarsia, southwestern Schleswig Holstein, an independent farmer republic until the Danish kingdom fought a fifty year campaign of warfare as well as economical and spiritual pressure - this long only because the first massed armed advance had been beaten back by a motley warband of free farmers, some real world Battle of the Falling Hills without an earthquake but lots of muddy soil).

> And the advantage of having your food, clothes and
> houses provided by your master does not seem all that much if they
> were (as often was the case) complete crap.

Said underpaid full-time employee will live off this complete crap as well if he wants to avoid the debt-slavery angle. And have less of that.

Thus, a society with a weak social net may well be considered more repressive than a dictatorship by some standards. In most ancient republics (including Germanic farmers' republics which seem to be the base for much of the "Report on the Heortlings" in KoS) possession made the freedom.


Powered by hypermail