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30 Percent a Slave
Let’s suppose you own a slave, and this slave of yours is very bright. (Automatically you might be imagining that we are back in the antebellum South, but that is incorrect. We are in modern times, so there’s not as much plantation work as there once was.) If you’ve got an intelligent, conscientious slave, it wouldn’t make sense to put him to manual labor, or have him just do random tasks for you around your house.
How do you get the most value out of this slave of yours? You could have him trained as a doctor or lawyer, and then rent him out. But what if he’s not really into the thing you’ve spent a bunch of resources to train him in? And how motivated do you think he’ll be to work hard for the employer he’s rented out to? You’ll also still be spending money to provide him with food and shelter, presumably. This is not a recipe for maximizing the value of your slave’s labor.
So instead of deciding for him what type of work he should do, or for whom he should work, you give him a significant amount of latitude in these decisions, and–this is the important part–you let him keep something like 70% of his earnings (obviously you can see where I’m going with this). Basically, you allow him to own property, start a family, choose where he works, and so on. Now, you could keep more than 30%, but as a savvy slavemaster, you are keenly aware of the Laffer Curve, so you don’t want to get too greedy. I guess you could use a progressive system of exploitation, whereby you don’t keep as much when he’s just starting out.
The first model of slavery that I described, where you use the labor yourself or rent it out, and must provide the basics for living, is the classic model–the normal way people would do slavery in the past. I think it is arguable that, in a modern, post-industrial economy, the old way of exploiting slave labor would be inefficient, especially for slaves with higher than average intelligence. The value to you of slaves with higher intelligence would be maximized by allowing them a good bit of autonomy. In this model, you could even bestow on your slave certain basic human rights. For example, when you take your 30% cut, your slave would have the right to complain about it.
So far we have been examining two models of private slavery. After private slavery was largely abolished in the 19th century, the State began to turn its attention to strengthening its grip on its public slaves–so-called citizens. (Abraham Lincoln, for instance, simultaneously ended private slavery and strengthened public slavery by waging an aggressive ideological war against secessionism.) In the 20th century, the Soviets and other communists took the “classic model” approach to public slavery. The second model, where significant autonomy is granted, we might call the “Capitalist” approach. The good news is, this was the variety of public slavery adopted by liberal democracies. The bad news is that we’re inching inexorably to the version that the Soviets favored.
I suspect that most people would take this “public slavery” talk as just a silly analogy. I do not mean it that way. I am dead serious when I imply that democracy is a form of slavery. I mean quite literally that the State owns you. For the definition of slave, Google gives me “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.” Merriam-Webster tells me it is “a person held in servitude as the chattel of another.” For example, tax livestock. Like any other slavemaster, the State will punish you if you disobey it and/or do not provide it with some portion of your labor. I will grant that the two definitions use the words “another,” implying another individual (and thus private slavery). But you would be functionally no less a slave if you were owned by a collection of individuals, as would be the case with a corporation or a state.
The big takeaway here is that slavery, whether private or public, is immoral. And any form that it takes, whether communism or liberal democracy, should be opposed by all people of good conscience. Don’t you good people agree?
Published in Politics
I love that graphic. Very amusing.
But it’s not democracy as such, is it? It’s just what happens when democracy goes all punch-myself-in-the-face-with-my-boot.
You’re right. It’s not an accurate depiction of democracy, since it implies that you’re doing it to yourself, which is not true. A more accurate depiction maybe would be the kid being trampled by an entire mob.
Insightful.
True.
CJ for President!
But is all democracy like that? Isn’t democracy that preserves liberty at least a theoretical possibility? And what’s the alternative?
By this definition of public slavery, any form of government is slavery. Without government, there is anarchy, where anyone who is stronger than you can rule your life. That is slavery too. This definition makes the term slavery meaningless.
We tried it with the Constitution, but as you can see, there will always be a ratchet whereby the State always interprets the law to give itself more and more power. The incentives built into democracy will over time erode liberty. The alternative is successive secession to voluntary associations.
So . . . not to democracy on smaller scales?
We talking about anarchy here? (The nice kind, I presume?)
You assume that slavery costs 30%. It’s much, much higher for the productive class.
Marginal tax rate is 22%, down from 25%. Savings Interest is also charged at that rate. Capital gains is still 15%. Ignoring the phase out above $117K, Social Security is 7.65% State Income tax varies, but lets use 5%.
Say your employer sets your salary at 100K. After social security, you get $92.35K, but your employer also paid $7.65K matching. Before any income tax is paid, you’re now at $87.4K, loosing 15.3% Add in the 22% marginal and 5% State on the original $100K, that’s 42.3,% lost for each extra dollar you earn. And that doesn’t account for Sales and Property taxes paid with after tax income.
And suppose you save $100K sometime. In the early 1990’s, you could get 5% interest with inflation less than 3%, or 2% net income. But with 5% interest, the marginal tax would take 1.5%, thus your real rate of return is about 0.5%.
Even with Cap Gains at 15%, many states take their 5%, so 20% goes to taxes when the property is sold. But again, how much is just inflation?
Even the average wage earner works from January 1 to Mid June to pay all taxes. For higher paid individuals, the net tax rate is well past 50%.
We are well past the maximum point on the Laffer curve when all taxes and inflation are taken into account!
Yes, every form of government is slavery. Unlike my definition for slavery, your definition of anarchy contradicts the actual definition. Anarchy is where nobody rules your life. You simply have guns or hire a private security firm or something. What would you do to prevent thugs from bullying you? If you can explain what is wrong with my definition of slavery, that would be great.
Could we start by reviewing, rephrasing, reiterating, or restating your definition of slavery?
I suppose anarchy is like real communism. Never been tried before.
I have hard time believing flawed humans could create a society of voluntary associations that wouldn’t result in most people experiencing a life that was nasty, brutish and short.
A wise person once opined, “If men were angels there would be no need of government.”
My definition of anarchy may be linguistically incorrect, but perhaps one can say that true anarchy is an unstable condition that will not last long. Like a heavy radioactive isotope, it will break down quickly. Somebody will take charge. I admit that your post presents an interesting thought experiment regarding government control. Perhaps like the Laffer curve, there is a sweet spot of optimal slavery that we need to be looking for.
The two dictionary definitions in the post were:
* a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them
* a person held in servitude as the chattel of another
I suppose you could reasonably make the case that a democracy’s subjects are not its property, per se. However, it does demand obedience, and presumes a legal claim to at least some portion of the fruits of your labor.
For me it boils down to a legal claim to the involuntary taking of my labor.
If the guy at the store doesn’t want to sell me food unless I give him the money I made with my labor but I don’t want him to take the money, is he taking my labor involuntarily? Food sellers force me by not letting me eat without taking some of my labor.
Or is it voluntary because I agree to the exchange? But we also agree to the government in a democracy.
As another wise man said, “Because men aren’t angels, they can’t have a government.”
Can you explain what government is doing that keeps life from becoming nasty, brutish and short?
What is interesting about almost all objections to a state of nature (anarchy), is that they are utilitarian. That is, you speculate that it wouldn’t work, or you can’t imagine how it would work. Most people don’t address whether or not it is moral to institute a monopoly of violence.
A free society would certainly take constant vigilance. There will always be those who wish to use aggression to gain things they haven’t earned. It wouldn’t be a utopia. There would be conflict, crime, and occasional violence. But none of that would be coming from the monopoly of the State. What do you think the government does that is indispensable?
Yes, you agree to the exchange, so it’s voluntary. And no, I do not agree to the government. I withdraw my consent to be governed. :)
As for democracy, people aren’t really agreeing to the policies (with the exception of popular referenda, when permitted). They are usually only voting on the narrow question of who rules over them. And this usually determined by a minority of eligible voters. But it is true that most people have been conditioned to give at least implicit consent.
So it’s slavery for the handful who prefer no government? Why is it slavery for those us who consent to having a government?
It’s more than implicit, and that consent is indirect does not mean it is not given. The people could have better representatives if we voted for them.
That’s a great question. I think you are right that it is perhaps only slavery for those of us who do not consent to the government. The problem isn’t so much that you are agreeing to let the State tell you what to do, it’s that you are also agreeing for it to tell me what to do. The government is legitimate only so long as you agree that it is.
That depends on better representatives running. I think you have a sense of the kind of people government attracts.
So is government slavery for those who consent to it but whose policies happen to get voted down? E.g., all Democrats agree to have government, but most of them don’t agree to put Trump in charge; are they by definition enslaved until the next election? If their slavery ends in January 2021 will I become a slave at the same time?
Well, yeah. If we were better people or had better laws or better systems of government this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
I’d say practical. But tomato, tomahto. Has any society existed, anywhere at any time, meeting the requirements you define? We would all like to live in utopia. How do we create it? Can it scale?
Are children slaves because they are dependent? Is my 94 year old demented mother a slave because she can’t care for herself? I fulfill my obligations to my family because even though I have free will, I also have a conscience. I make a moral choice.
Life is trade offs. As practical humans, we are more concerned with how we balance.
The lefties certainly think so. This OP reminds me of Marx, except that Marx blamed the capitalists and the bourgeoisie for taking the labor of the proletariat involuntarily. But Marx also claimed to be pursuing the elimination of government. (It didn’t work out that way in practice, but then, it never does.) The more I think about it, the more Marxist this OP seems to me.
In any event, the difference is that a slave doesn’t get to choose his owner. The citizens in a democracy do get to choose their “owners,” if you want to call the government an “owner.”
I’ve often thought something similar. I determined that the closer to having government take 50% of your earnings the closer to being a slave you are. This is especially the case when large portions of taxed wealth is being appropriated directly to other people. That is, not something that benefits everyone or even the taxpayer him/herself.
So we can all argue well about the definitions of slavery and such, but regardless of these abstract nuances, there is a point whereby people who work and are taxed at nearly 50% are a type of slave since they are working for others who aren’t.
This becomes most in effect in the middle-class bracket.
In other words, the state owns you (unless you’re a woman who wants an abortion, then it’s her body).
We had founders who had thought a lot about this, and designed a system to avoid it. No income tax, the federal government provided national security and a very limited essential national public goods. Their design was sound, but the same drift always occurs and it never ends well. The key remains the income tax and free movement as some states, like California drift toward totalitarianism, folks can leave, but it’s not looking good anywhere. We must replace the Federal income tax and we must return to the constitution or it will not end well.
I am not sure this is a supportable claim.
This is also why I have analogized modern government to slavery – the point of much of today’s taxation is not to provide for the general well-being, but to transfer the money to specific preferred groups of people.
According to most major historians, societies simply lacked a vocabulary that required “employment” os “resources” as anything but “slave labor”. The radical change from greaco-roman views of Slaves as basically “living tools” or property, to be treated well or poorly to the owners benefit or loss, changed radically with the Judeo-Christian idea that humans were intrinsically valuable as made in the image of God, and had rules against treating humans as tools or property. Judeo-Christian based (not the church ad the government) law emphasized a very fair justice and labor/trade system.
England and the US benefitted from the self-governing character of this basis and it showedup when the age of revolutions happened. Take a look at the “enlightenment-based” revolutions (based on greaco-roman values rather than Judeo-Christian values), and note the vioelce, how long and the inability to self govern where enlightenment based and/or gov wedded to the church revolutions occurred vs Judeo-Christian revolutions that developed some pretty swell self-governing systems that worked in real time. (sorry for the typos, my writing is invisible to me, I suppose im on too low a member tier to respond in the comments.)
As yet another wise man said, “You’re gonna hafta serve somebody / It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord / But, you’re gonna hafta serve somebody.” If you are going to define slavery this broadly, then you will be a slave. Some form of government is inevitable.
You don’t have to wait until 2021. You already can’t fire them, no matter what they do. If you bought insurance, and they failed to make good on a claim they promised to cover, you would leave that company and find another. You also can’t force your neighbor onto your policy. Even if there were only one insurance company in a free society, you could at least opt out of buying a policy. Not so with the State. You have no choice but to be a subject, whether you participate or not, and whether you ascent to its legitimacy or not.
Anarchists are often accused of Utopianism, but this sentiment seems pretty Utopian to me. There is simply no moral way to use aggressive coercion against your neighbor.