"Put it another way. Imagine you simply magically eliminated all forms of chattel slavery, but then immediately put all those magically freed ex-slaves in deep debt to their ex-owners (with heavy interest), and left them just as socially isolated as they are right now, and then gave them a chance to either take their chances and try to find a job somewhere else, or let them work off their debts to their ex-owners. Are they in a better position than they were before? Yes. Are they in anything remotely close to a good position? No.
"
I don't think you understand the difference between voluntarily entering debt, and being forced into a situation against your will. Whether they are in a "good position" or not is irrelevant so long as they weren't forced into it. We all make stupid mistakes, and we have to live with them. Sometimes those mistakes are huge, and we will spend the rest of our lives "repaying" or fixing the damage.
Though, it's different with the mentally handicapped. They're not able to make informed decisions for themselves, and could quite easily (and voluntarily) get into huge debt. That is why they need to be protected by their family, which we are sorely neglecting by increasingly injecting the state as a surrogate parental figure when the parents(or family) are available and it is not necessary.
Wage slavery is usually used to describe the situation where a person's wage only just pays their living expense, so they are forced to keep the job because if they lose it they will be unable to survive.
They still have free choice though, in that no one is forcing them to work.
That's quite different to "real" slavery where there is some kind of involuntary nature. In the case of bonded slavery a person is forced to work until their "loan" is paid off.
The link you supply clearly says that wage slaves do not have freedom to leave the work they're doing. They are forced to continue working, just not always with threats of violence.
You appear to be saying that "wage slavery" is clearly separate from "slavery". I am saying that there are considerable overlap between them and that most people who are "wage slaves" are just "slaves".
Your link clearly talks about forced and bonded labor. People in those arrangements are compelled to keep working by another person.
In wage slavery a person is compelled to keep working by their bodily needs. That is sad, and I would love to see the day when it isn't the case. But it isn't the same thing as being compelled by another person.
It's quite disingenuous to argue my link says that wage slaves do not have freedom to leave the work they're doing. Put in context my link says this:
"Wage slavery refers to a situation where a worker's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate."
To make it clear: under wage slavery a person is free to leave, but must immediately find another job.
If we ignore those of us who have made their FU money, most of us differ from that situation only by degree: if we leave a job we have to find another one. Perhaps not immediately, but for many it is with a degree of urgency. Some would argue that makes us all wage slaves to some degree, and that may well be true.
But to say that is the same thing as those in actual, real chattel slavery, bonded labor or similar diminishes the real outrage we should feel at their lack of basic rights.
Doesn't sound like they agreed to or chose to have their hands chopped off, though. They were tricked, kidnapped and held for ransom from a family too poor to pay anything. So I don't see what you're getting at?
You seem to be saying that people who voluntarily enter into bonded slavery need to take responsibility for the choice they made. You appeared in your comment to suggest that bonded labour is not actual slavery - but it is.
No, he's pointing out that bonded slavery is not the same as wage slavery, as the element of free choice/freedom from harm doesn't exist in bonded slavedy.
I see the equivocation of suffering between bonded and 'wage' slavery to be incredibly disingenuous. Working at McDonald's doesn't make you a slave in the same sense as a person who has their limbs cut off for trying to escape, and to insist that 'wage slavery' is comparable is disturbingly detached from reality.
I don't think you understand the difference between voluntarily entering debt, and being forced into a situation against your will. Whether they are in a "good position" or not is irrelevant so long as they weren't forced into it. We all make stupid mistakes, and we have to live with them. Sometimes those mistakes are huge, and we will spend the rest of our lives "repaying" or fixing the damage.
Though, it's different with the mentally handicapped. They're not able to make informed decisions for themselves, and could quite easily (and voluntarily) get into huge debt. That is why they need to be protected by their family, which we are sorely neglecting by increasingly injecting the state as a surrogate parental figure when the parents(or family) are available and it is not necessary.