“It’s cheaper for one to enslave people than it is to voluntarily employ them for pay. If I pay $15 to a worker and I can pay $10 for someone to enslave someone else isn’t it cheaper to enslave than to voluntarily employ?”
I believe this is a vast over-simplification of reality for the follow reasons.
In a small local community of voluntaryists I highly doubt that someone will move to kidnap and enslave the people around him. I would imagine this would cause quite a stir even if they tried to hide their slaves. Wouldn’t you think the strange household increase in productivity from unknown sources would raise some eyebrows? This is not even mentioning the fact that people would be noticeably disappearing in the nearby vicinity which in itself would give cause for wonder. Therefore I do believe if someone in a stateless society really wanted to enslave people it would have to be in an area far removed from his place of residence.
In order to understand the incredible cost that must be endured to artificially prop up the institution of slavery we must think back to the time of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some things that were needed to be paid for in order to procure the slaves where the cost of building the ship, its crew, and all onboard equipment, the cost of bribing tribes to travel to the interior of Africa to kidnap the people and bring them back to the coast, the immense cost to ship them over an ocean, the immense cost to house, clothe, and feed every single slave, the cost to employ bounty hunters and slave catchers to retrieve runaways and bring them back to their masters etc. Do you really think after all this expenditure of effort, money, and resources it is still more profitable for someone to enslave others as a means for productivity than to employ them through voluntary mutual consent? Was the cotton so valuable? It must have been worth more than gold!
As with anything that is subsidized by the State, the profits are nationalized and the losses socialized. We can see this most clearly with the 2009 bailouts after the housing crisis. Many banks and investment houses clearly failed yet they did not go bankrupt because the State swooped in and saved their hide with billions of dollars of taxpayer currency and debt of the future. However it is perfectly fine when these same banks and investment houses make billions in speculative derivative gambling, ETF and commodity manipulation, rigging of interest rates with LIBOR scandal, and as a result of the Mandrake Mechanism (currency creation) process in general. Such special interest groups have always existed in one form or another throughout history, artificially propped up by stolen taxpayer currency and debt. These unnaturally large institutions simply cannot exist in their own right without the favoritism and protectionism that the State offers. Slavery is no different.
Just do good things
Danilo
A practitioner of Eastern Healing arts with degrees in Acupuncture and Chinese medicinal herbs, I have always questioned the status quo, a path which led me to peaceful anarchism. Through my journey, I have worn many hats, that of a classical pianist, avid chess player, philosopher, comedian, and now father of two little anarchists. My wife brands me as a Cultural Critic, but I am simply following my thirst for knowledge and passion for writing.
