Comments on: Martin Luther King Jr. Day

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 19:38:51 +0000

I appreciate your clarification, Karl, and I’m really not trying to run from the question. I guess the way I would explain it is like this: just as our understanding of technology has changed drastically over the last 150-200 years, so slavery has changed. That makes a difference because in the “Roots” era that most people think of when they think of slavery, transportation and mobility were not as advanced as they are now – class and mobility have affected certain restrictions that used to exist on the ability of slaves to move or travel to locations where they could establish new lives as free people.
It’s not that working to repay any measly debt is slavery; it’s that a life characterized by debt is slavery to creditors. It’s a difference of degree, and while you say that the concepts of slavery and debt repayment and those of class and mobility seem to be unrelated, from what I’ve read about both, they have common roots.
Slavery at its inception was the ownership of human beings as chattel, yes, but the purpose behind it was cheap and expendable (or fungible) labor. The reason a market existed for slaves in the first place was because richer individuals and families needed labor to work fields and maintain real property in a primarily agricultural society. It was, at its foundation, a labor/market issue.
Property owners could not maintain their holdings alone; they could not maintain their wealth if they had to pay for the labor, plus there did not seem to be an available pool of laborers to reliably and consistently perform the work; and, they had little control over free workers beyond pay: if they did not pay (either at all or enough), the workers would leave.
Aside from the labor market issue, the source of slaves historically was not just those who were sold by their own to others for profit, whether by trick or just by outright sale, but also by indenture and debt. If, for example, you owed someone more than you could repay them on demand, you could be compelled to work for that individual until your debt was paid. You could run away, of course, and leave your possessions and former life behind, which people did. If the slaveholder wanted you back, he would have to leave his land and track you down, and that cost money and productivity.
The reason blacks became the “slaves of choice” was in large part because they could be identified on sight. From that perspective, anyone seeing a black person without the expected master would know that this individual did not belong where he or she was, they could be arrested and punished or sold or returned or whatever, but that preference did not restrict the condition of slavehood to just blacks, nor was the practice of buying and selling individuals (indentured servants, children of ones servants, etc.) limited to black people.
Translating that economic situation to modern life, including the technology and other labor/market conditions, and it makes sense to discuss debt and restricted class mobility in the same terms: modern slavery. Just because there continue to be those who are bodily sold and beaten and whipped or whatever does not mean that those who are enslaved by their debt are not also slaves.
The issue makes more sense when you look at credit scoring and assessment of interest by credit card companies, banks, etc., by use of the FICO score. Going back to the Bible for a minute, the Jews were instructed by God that if they loaned money to a poor person, they were not to charge interest so that they could give the person an opportunity to get back on his feet and return to productive society.
In modern times, those who can least afford to borrow must pay the highest interest on the same amount. If “Ralph” has a FICO score of 780 and “Marty” has a FICO score of 540, and both wish to borrow $1000 from the same bank, “Ralph” will pay (over time) less for the same money than “Marty” because of the allocation of risk. The more you owe, the more you pay, the less you can save, and therefore the less wealth you can accumulate to accomplish what people consider to be appropriate goals: owning a home, owning a car, buying food or clothing, etc.
Where this dovetails into class and mobility is in the presumption that everyone starts from the same point. In my conversations with people about debt and bondage, those with the least understanding of the relationship generally – I say “generally”, but not always – have not had significant money problems. They have “generally” had all of their needs met; they have “generally” never had to decide between paying rent or buying food; as adults, they have “generally” had a credit score of not less than 750.
That position completely ignores the reality that there are significant numbers of individuals, of all races, who have never lived like that – who have never had any money to manage, let alone learn to manage in a situation in which consequences for their mistakes are minimized, such as occurs when a child has an allowance and learns to manage his resources. And I’m not just talking about ghettos or poverty-level households; I’m talking about what we would ordinarily expect to be normal, middle-class homes in which there is no real education about managing money.
These are people who are enslaved – voluntarily, yes, but enslaved nonetheless – to their debt when they have a mortgage that requires at least 2 incomes, car payments (and insurance payments – because we have to have insurance), credit card debt for which the interest rate can double with no warning, and educational and other debt that is no longer dischargeable in bankruptcy even if the individual realized that he was in over his head.
What happens to the children in such households? They grow up thinking that debt is the way life is. They learn the same patterns their parents had. They continue the cycle of spending more than they make and making only minimum payments. Ultimately, they learn to live in fear of the telephone and the mail and they cannot enjoy real mobility because if they are lucky enough to get a good job, they don’t dare leave it because the house of cards they’ve been living with will fall. And afterward, where can they really go that the mess won’t go with them? Negative information stays on your credit report for at least 6-10 years, depending on what it is.
We might say that you pick up and start over again, but do people in those situations have that perspective? And starting over again, with more and more employers and landlords relying on FICO scores as part of their hiring or renting criteria, will be an uphill battle. Do people do it? Yes, but it takes tremendous effort and hope and help from others, and that’s my point in this discussion: to point out that there are still people in this country who are not free. Are we ever going to have a nation of completely free people? No. Does it mean that we shouldn’t try to make things better for our individual communities? No. It’s just that there is a widening class gap that, as I read history, seems headed for the same place: one in which significant numbers of people will have little or no control over their own destinies, and that bothers me.
I don’t see that people in this country, or possibly elsewhere in the world (except Ireland – that’s a topic for a different day), have the ability to create wealth or control their own destinies in any meaningful way. I don’t see that wealth is really being created in this country any longer: people exchange wealth and redistribute it, perhaps, but so much of our economy is based on credit that the number of people who own a home, for example, is greatly out-weighed by those who own a mortgage and often even at least one home equity loan or line of credit. It’s possible, and I know it’s being done, but it’s not the majority any longer, and it’s sad.
Perhaps my characterization is based on my observations of desperate people in desperate situations, but I fail to see how the type of situation I’ve described is any less labor/market driven slavery than what started back in the 1700s-1800s. From what I read of Dr. King’s speeches before his assassination, as well as subsequent discussions about the direction he was headed, I just don’t see them as distinct and unrelated concepts.
We need some major shifts in this country – economically, morally, socially, and in other areas. To be clear, I don’t for one second think that the government needs to assume this responsibility: we’ve all seen what happens when the government gets involved in things, and their involvement would only make it worse. I admit: I don’t know the answers. I do know that if the questions aren’t asked more often, no one will bother to figure them out, and I don’t want to just sit back and watch that happen.

By: Karl

Karl — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 23:59:41 +0000

I only ask for a definition because that is almost certainly what this disagreement is about, and any examination of concrete examples will be pointless until we address the disagreement over the definition, because otherwise, we won’t even be talking (or writing) about the same thing. It would also make it clearer what it is that we are discussing — it looks like we have gone from discussing whether the need to work to repay debts is a form of slavery to discussing whether class is a limit on mobility and “freedom.” I guess I may be running from the sandbox by insisting on this, but like you said, posting multiple comments in a discussion like this can take up time, and I think I would be wasting that time if I were willing to continue without making sure that I know what we are talking about. Before, I just thought that we disagreed over the definition of slavery, but now, I don’t even know whether we agree that we are talking about slavery.

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:37:49 +0000

On a more serious note, I appreciate and understand where you’re coming from in further prompts for answers – I have learned a great deal from the other posters as well as the questions directed at me in response to my own posts, and I am grateful for the push those questions creates to dig deeper.
It has created a bit of a dilemma, though, because I’m not a “serious blogger” – I read, catch the ideas, and can type fast enough to do what I’ve been doing, but I just don’t have the time some of you have to distill things as readily. To quote a much more experienced writer, I apologize for writing so much, but I didn’t have time to write less.
By the same token, from my review, most of those with, as you put it, “at least some basic amount of competence in responding to such demands” are more often than not individuals who either agree with your position or whom you (for whatever reason) don’t want to piss off. Just an observation before I go home.

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:21:28 +0000

Awwww – aren’t you sweet! “Logically exhaustive” is one of my favorites!!

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:15:39 +0000

To throw out another reference to Greek philosophy, I have to say that lc reminds me a lot of Euthyphro.

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:09:14 +0000

“The penalty, rather, is that such failure reveals the interlocutor in question to be incompetent as an interlocutor, and demonstrates that generally arguing with them would be, in Aristotle’s phrase, “like disputing with a vegetable” (Metaphysics, Gamma IV).”
Or, rather, that despite efforts to answer the repeated demands of people who refuse to simply discuss without having to “win”, the subject simply does not have the time to conclude – be careful how you characterize someone you don’t know enough about to do so knowledgeably. And before you back up to previous discussions, I will tell you: you don’t have enough information to make that assessment, tomato.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:27:42 +0000

I was hoping someone else would respond to lc’s completely inaccurate characterization of Paul, but I guess I’ll have to briefly break my don’t-respond-to-the-dimwit policy. As someone who has very frequently disagreed with Paul, I can attest that he’s uniformly demanding on all his interlocutors; it’s just that usually the people he makes such demands on have at least some basic amount of competence in responding to such demands. (I might also note that Karl was making these demands on lc no less than Paul.)
The main penalty for not meeting such simple demands of dialectical responsibility is not getting thrown out of the sandbox, since we’re not talking about mere play (for which there may be no standards of rightness and wrongness) but rather rational discourse (for which there is an important difference between doing it well, doing it badly, and indeed not even making it to the level of doing it at all). The penalty, rather, is that such failure reveals the interlocutor in question to be incompetent as an interlocutor, and demonstrates that generally arguing with them would be, in Aristotle’s phrase, “like disputing with a vegetable” (Metaphysics, Gamma IV).

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:49:22 +0000

“I echo Karl’s calls for you to define better what you mean by ’slavery.’”
Or what? You won’t play with me anymore?
Look, you don’t have to agree with me. It’s not my job to convince you of anything. I’ve explained all I’m going to explain about it, and you can choose to agree, disagree, pick apart, pick your nose, whatever. My point was clear to anyone who was really interested in at least getting where it came from, and you’re pushing for a treatise on the subject which a) is not what this forum is for, and b) is more than you push for from people you agree with (or even mildly disagree with but aren’t in a snit about).
It’s a big sandbox, Paul. Deal with it.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 02:50:22 +0000

However affective class is (and it is less so in the United States than in the United Kingdom or India, although sadly more so in the States than in Sweden), race remains an independent, and powerful, variable.
Or, as Chris Rock said, “There isn’t a single white person in this audience who would be
willing to trade places with me, and I’m RICH.”
I echo Karl’s calls for you to define better what you mean by “slavery.” You consistently refuse to define your terms or state your premises, which allows you the rhetorical–but not the substantive–freedom to shift positions rather blithely. As Karl astutely notes, debt may be a precondition to slavery in certain situations, but that does not make debt in se equivalent to slavery. And although heavy debt unmercifully enforced may be de facto slavery, here we are talking about sharecroppers or serfs, and less frequently about the bourgeoisie. (There yet remains a massive distinction between a low FICO store, which may in fact be a just consequence of past actions, and being in hock to the gombeen man without any recourse.)
Further, the definition of debt slavery you’ve offered here:
“Your work doesn’t repay the money. You and your work are just the collateral. The person you borrow from basically owns you and all your work until you repay them.”
is, in fact, not far off from a Marxist interpretation of the relatinonship between Capital and Labor. I have long maintained that certain insights of Marxism should not be discarded, but I am surprised to see such a radical argument coming from such a–to use another Marxist term–reactionary interlocutor. But, of course, if you’re up for a discussion of the proletarianization of the workforce in post-industrial societies or of the alienation from work inherent in all post-agrarian cultures, I’m game.

By: lawyerchik1

lawyerchik1 — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:32:39 +0000

The point was that, before his death, King was moving in a direction toward recognition of the limits of class (not as in “you have no class”), rather than race, as the defining limitation in mobility and freedom. The questions you raise are points on a continuum.
As for the BAPCPA, the effect of the new bankruptcy law is not only to prevent abuses but in the process to further limit even legitimate reasons for discharge of debts. It represents the further erosion of opportunity for those who aren’t part of the appropriate class, and I see them as related concepts.