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0 pointsmckn1ght1y ago0 comments

Indentured servitude was a contract one would enter into voluntarily with a perceived benefit on the other side. I think you’d have to squint pretty hard to argue that every criminal doing labor today voluntarily signed up for it to brighten their futures.

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nickff1y ago· 3 in thread

Well, supporters of state authority could argue that the contract was a prior one, the ‘social contract’. As it happens, I am a philosophical anarchist, so that doesn’t work for me, but most discussants here probably believe in political authority of some sort.

mckn1ghtOP1y ago

Equating “the social contract” with the type of legal construction involved with actual indentured servitude is some real “a taco is a hotdog” thinking.

nickff1y ago

Nobody currently alive actually voted on anything related to the US Constitution, any of the first fifteen amendments, or many important laws, because they weren't alive. I don't see how the Thirteenth Amendment is any different from the many laws which were enacted and last amended before you or I was alive. Either the populace has consented to all of that body of law, or none of it.

The "social contract" would be the only contract in existence for which those subject to the terms of it were not granted the opportunity of consideration and the free choice to accept or reject that contract.

A contract you cannot choose to decline, and that you'll face imprisonment for violating isn't really a contract at all, it's really just a set of orders being dictated to you by a tyrant willing to initiate violence to get their way.

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