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Interview: OSI's new presidentInterview: OSI's new presidentPosted Feb 7, 2005 16:00 UTC (Mon) by RussNelson (guest, #27730)In reply to: Interview: OSI's new president by JoeBuck Parent article: Interview: OSI's new president "slaves only paid a quarter"? Wow. Put on your economist's hat, Joe (if you have one). The slaves worked, and they were compensated for their work with food, clothing, and shelter. That's a form of pay; low pay to be sure, but compensation for work. More on this topic at my blog: http://angry-economist.russnelson.com -russ
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Interview: OSI's new president Posted Feb 10, 2005 10:22 UTC (Thu) by zerblat (subscriber, #644) [Link] That doesn't make sense to me (but then, I don't have an economist's hat, thankfully). Slaves aren't compensated, they are provided with whatever they require to stay alive and healthy enough to work. Or perhaps you compensate your car for its valuble service of taking you from A to B by paying it in the form of gas, oil and whatever maintainance it needs?
Interview: OSI's new president Posted Feb 10, 2005 15:27 UTC (Thu) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link] I don't have an economist's hat, thankfully. Wow. That's a really weird thing to say. If you said "I don't have an mathematician's hat, but I really think that 2+2=5", a lot of readers would say "yeah, that follows logically, you would think that". If you don't know anything about economics, then you should expect your economic reasoning to be little better than guessing. Getting to your point, if slaves were indeed machines (the analogy you make), that is how you would look at it economically. But slaves weren't machines. They were able to withdraw their labor for reasons unrelated to their bodily maintenance. Cars don't do that, so your analogy falls down. Slaves would sabotage their work, work poorly, pretend to be stupid, pretend to not speak English, or even remove their entire work product by escaping temporarily or permanently. All of those took courage, and were the result of human choice. Slaves were people; some of them accepted their lot, and others struggled against it until the day they died, or were killed. Slaves that worked chose to work; alternatives were available to them. They weren't good alternatives, but they sometimes they were better than working. You have to conclude that because slaves (who knew their choices better than you or I) sometimes made that choice. You have to consider their maintenance as wages from an economic analysis of slavery. There are still slaves today even though many nations have outlawed slavery. If you are concerned about slavery, go read Free The Slaves's website. Modern slavery is typically of a different form than the American outright ownership of a person. It typically uses debtor's laws, and the slave's moral unwillingness to repudiate a debt, to keep the slave under control. The slave is induced, by force or by fraud, to enter into a situation where they require credit to get a job. For example, they have to pay for a bus ride to get to a remote workplace, and once there, they cannot take a different job. Once they owe money, they are kept from ever paying back that debt. It's a nasty, nasty situation.
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