We’re at episode 145 and this free market economist still refers to himself as “a christian, and a communist” in the opening. I wonder if that will be cleared up any time soon? 😛
This was a great episode. Thanks Dr. Murphy. The one question I would love to get an answer to is: Would a majority of postmodernist academics admit that they have a substanially Marxist worldview? Would the university administrators that hire postmodernists admit that they are hiring people who are highly likely to promote a Marxist worldview?
It seems to me that the pushback against postmodernism has very recently shifted from one of saying that it is just “fashonable nonsense” to use Sokal’s term to the more recent accusation that it is Trojan Horse for Marxism. I don’t have much reason to doubt anything Rectenwald asserted except this alternative data point: I have a friend and neighbor who is a tenured professor of Political Science at a brand name university. He doesn’t have many good things to say about the academic work of postmodernists in his field but, I’ve brought up the “they’re Marxists” critique with him and he thought it was a rather extreme fringe criticism. So, I’m just trying to sort through the various pieces of data.
A lot of this sounds like a critique of university culture and self-identified leftists within university culture more than a critique of Marxism / socialism / identity politics / etc as they exist outside of university culture.
According to an article from 2010, only 6.7% of the world’s population have college degrees.
www[dot]huffpost[dot]com/entry/percent-of-world-with-col_n_581807
“Forcing acceptance of beliefs based on their assertion alone” (from about 1 hour 7 minutes in) in particular sounds like a problem with universities. (Although force might be too strong a word, unless drugging people into accepting beliefs is a more common practice in universities than I think it is.) But supposing “force” here is a metaphor for rather less dramatic things like, “being given a bad grade”, “being shunned”, etc etc. If I get into a debate with someone on the street, or in a park, it is unlikely that the debate will end with one of us giving the other a grade of F. Nor is there any hotline that one of us could use to report the other for having a bias. However, if a student gets into a debate with a professor, it is possible the student will be punished with poor grades. And for whatever reason, a lot of students are terrified of getting poor grades. And then there are other mechanisms in place (shunning for example, apparently) for penalizing professors who fail to profess the way Deans want them to.
For example, I’m not sure how many people within university culture have noticed, but outside of university culture, Rachel Dolezal was the subject of a 2018 documentary, “The Rachel Divide”, and says she has received hundreds of supportive messages from people who were black, mixed, or in some way non-white. (Rachel Dolezal was mentioned about 56 minutes into the interview, and at least in Michael Rectenwald’s experience, it sounds as if things sympathetic to Rachel Dolezal are not tolerated in university culture that identifies itself as leftist.)
I’m not sure whether that means that people have decided they agree that she is black, or merely accept that she believes she’s black and it’s pointless to hate her for believing that, though I would guess there is some of both, but the point is that outside of universities, there are people who engage in forms of debate (such as documentary-making) that go beyond, “I am right, and if you don’t agree with me, I will give you an F or shun you or something.”
I give a grade of C. Quoting world statistics for a primarily US issue is distracting, and there is a lack of context- no mention of the fact that “passing for black” is a very, very minority pursuit. But overall a reasonably argued comment 🙂
“However, if a student gets into a debate with a professor, it is possible the student will be punished with poor grades.”
This is possible and should not happen. The student should get bad grades if they are unable to argue their case well. No teacher should penalize students for disagreeing, but they should penalize for failing to support their arguments.
It is easy for outsiders to select examples of egregious claims made by academics from all viewpoints. Walter Block was misrepresented as approving slavery by using selective quotes. Left wing academics are similarly misrepresented. We need to be careful about jumping on bandwaggons about “scandals” in academia.
I don’t see it as a primarily US issue. Politics is just as important in Guatemala, for example, as it is in the US. Furthermore, things that happen in the United States can potentially have a devastating impact on Guatemala. Consider, for example, the Guatemalan genocide.
Newly declassified American documents, for example, place a C.I.A. officer in the room where Guatemalan intelligence officers — men responsible for death squad killings — planned their covert operations in 1965. They show that C.I.A. and other American officials played a key role in the latter 1960’s in centralizing command structures and communications of agencies that would be involved in death squad killings for years. They contain C.I.A. reports of secret executions of Communist Party leaders by Guatemalan Government agencies in 1966 that Guatemalan officials publicly denied.
They also show that the C.I.A. station in Guatemala City knew that the Guatemalan army was massacring entire Mayan villages while Reagan Administration officials publicly supported the military regime’s human rights record. Even after the war was won, the documents reveal, Defense Intelligence Agency officials knew that the Guatemalan military was destroying evidence of torture centers and clandestine graveyards in 1994. Not a word was uttered publicly by the Clinton Administration.
Massacres, human rights violations and other atrocities described by some 9,000 witnesses and survivors clearly illustrated a governmental policy of genocide in Guatemala, correspondents were told by members of the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala at a Headquarters’ press conference this afternoon.
I don’t see it (it being politics) as a primarily US issue. It seemed to me that the issues actually addressed in the interview involved issues with the left in academia, and more specifically, issues with Michael Rectenwald’s personal experiences with the left in US academia. And yet, although he was talking about his personal experiences, it seemed to me (though I may have misunderstood) that he was making generalizations about the left based on those experiences in academia. If I understood correctly, or even if I did not understand correctly but other people understood incorrectly in the same way I did, then it seems relevant to point out that less than 10% of the world’s population is represented in academia. So there are a huge number of people who could be abstractly considered part of “the left” who are not represented in academia.
Politics is just as important in Guatemala, for example, as it is in the US. Furthermore, things that happen in the United States can potentially have a devastating impact on Guatemala. Consider, for example, the Guatemalan genocide.
Newly declassified American documents, for example, place a C.I.A. officer in the room where Guatemalan intelligence officers — men responsible for death squad killings — planned their covert operations in 1965. They show that C.I.A. and other American officials played a key role in the latter 1960’s in centralizing command structures and communications of agencies that would be involved in death squad killings for years. They contain C.I.A. reports of secret executions of Communist Party leaders by Guatemalan Government agencies in 1966 that Guatemalan officials publicly denied.
They also show that the C.I.A. station in Guatemala City knew that the Guatemalan army was massacring entire Mayan villages while Reagan Administration officials publicly supported the military regime’s human rights record. Even after the war was won, the documents reveal, Defense Intelligence Agency officials knew that the Guatemalan military was destroying evidence of torture centers and clandestine graveyards in 1994. Not a word was uttered publicly by the Clinton Administration.
Massacres, human rights violations and other atrocities described by some 9,000 witnesses and survivors clearly illustrated a governmental policy of genocide in Guatemala, correspondents were told by members of the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala at a Headquarters’ press conference this afternoon.
I realize, of course, that Michael Rectenwald, at least in the interview in question, didn’t actually say anything about Guatemala. But people in Guatemala were labelled as communists and as leftists (whether or not they actually self-identified with those labels), and slaughtered based on those labels, so apparently, they are labelled as leftists. But I’m fairly sure that doesn’t mean they held all the same views that Michael Rectenwald’s leftist colleagues held.
And I think that part of the problem with the term leftist. It can be used to refer to Mayan villagers in Guatemala, and it can also be used to refer to many professors in American universities, and yet those are very different demographics, and, just as one individual in either of those demographics may hold very different views from another individual in the same demographic, so to the statistical trends of opinions are likely to be different from one demographic to the other.
I hope that makes it more clear why I cited the statistic about how few people have college degrees, though I am not sure that it does. Perhaps you are even more confused why I suddenly brought up the Guatemalan genocide.
Regarding Rachel Dolezal, she was actually discussed by Michael Rectenwald and Bob Murphy. If I recall correctly, they seemed to find it weird that “the left” (or, more precisely, the people they considered leftist who they personally had interacted with) recognized that people could be transgender, but did not recognize transblack.
I pointed out that there was a sympathetic documentary about her, and that she received numerous supportive messages, to illustrate that people who might be abstractly identified as leftists do not all have the same opinion about issues like whether someone can be transblack (or at least consider herself transblack without being a pariah worthy of hate), and, further, that many of them seem to be capable of changing their opinions after engaging in activities like watching documentaries. Dissent is allowed, at least outside of academia. (And probably within academia too, though perhaps not equally at all universities and colleges.)
I do not know what Mayan villagers in Guatemala would think of Rachel Dolezal, if anyone told them about her.
Regarding Walter Block, this is from his website, and, according to his website, written by him.
If it is illicit to invade the person or property of another, what should be the appropriate response from the forces of law and order?[5] It is a combination of making the victim “whole” again, and punishing the aggressor.[6] What this amounts to, in effect, is “two teeth for a tooth” plus costs of capturing and scaring. [7] Consider the following scenario: A steals a car from B. A is now captured. What is the just punishment that will restore B, as much as possible, to his previous non-victimization state? First, the automobile must be returned from the carjacker to its rightful owner. That is the first “tooth.” Then, what A did to B must be, instead, done to A, in B’s behalf, by the forces of law and order. Since A relieved B of a car, and took it for himself, the same must now be done to A; that is, A’s own car (not the one he just stole from B which has already been returned to B as the first tooth) must be given to B.[8] This is the “second tooth.”[9]
If A does not have his own vehicle of equivalent value, then its value can be taken out of A’s hide: that is, instead of putting A in a jail at B’s (and all other taxpayers’) expense, where he can spend his days in front of a color tv, in cozy air conditioned circumstances, A will in effect be enslaved until he earns enough money to pay his debt to B. Our experience of this “curious institution” (Hummel, 1996; Thornton, 1994; Fogel and Engerman, 1974) shows that private concerns are able to “sweat” more value out of their charges than the costs of feeding and guarding them. So would it be, nowadays, under fully private (slave) prisons.
So, apparently, Walter Block actually does approve slavery. That’s not precise of course. It would be more precise to say that he approves slavery under specific circumstances, namely, enslaving criminals whom he deems deserving of enslavement.
He is not alone in approving of slavery in the context of punishing people deemed to be criminals. If you read the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, it says,
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Also, if you study Portuguese/Brazilian history, there’s a long precedent of considering slavery to be legitimate under certain circumstances, including as punishment for a crime. (I’ll try to find you a passage from “Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil” when I get the chance.) And not only in Portuguese/Brazilian history. This has been a recurring theme throughout human history, probably going back as far as the rise of agriculture, but certainly as far back as the Code of Hammurabi, which stated, for example, “If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.” (Or at any rate, that’s a translation of what it stated.)
Having established that Walter Block does indeed approve of the enslavement of people whom he would deem as criminals worthy of that punishment, and contextualized that by pointing out that many people throughout history have held similar views, and have approved of the enslavement of people they deemed criminals, I still think that Walter Block and those other people are in error to approve of slavery, even of criminals.
And I believe history gives a number of examples to show why it is a bad idea to enslave criminals. But to summarize the argument:
A) Allowing the enslavement of criminals can give lawmakers financial/economic incentive to criminalize ridiculous things, like, “using abusive language in the presence of a white woman” or “selling cotton after sunset”.
B) Allowing enslavement of criminals can give the police, judges, and others involved in law enforcement financial/economic incentives to find people guilty of crimes with little or no evidence that they are actually guilty.
C) If we accept that slavery is sometimes legitimate, and we see that someone is being enslaved, we might simply assume the person we see enslaved is enslaved for whatever we consider to be legitimate reasons, even if that is not actually the case, thus preventing rescue attempts.
D) Torturing someone to force them to work is arguably excessive punishment for car theft and many other things that people consider to be crimes.
E) The people who, arguably at least, would most deserve enslavement – rapists, murderers, and the most violent criminals in general – would also probably be the most dangerous to guard and force to work. Thing about this from the overseer’s perspective. Do you really want to be standing over a serial killer with a whip when he has a pickaxe or a garden tool or something like that in his hands? Would you feel safe doing so?
F) Slavery generally involves holding people in unsanitary conditions, and this has been responsible for a number of disease outbreaks in the past, most notably yellow fever outbreaks. For this reason, slavery, and in particular slavery that involves unsanitary conditions, could be considered reckless endangerment against the community/world at large.
I’ll try to find more supporting information for you when I have time (assuming you are interested in this topic), but to start with, consider the documentary, “Slavery by Another Name”, which covers the topic of just how horribly wrong that loophole in the 13th Amendment turned out in the United States, from after the Civil War until around World War II.
Regarding Walter Block, this is from his website, and, according to his website, written by him.
If it is illicit to invade the person or property of another, what should be the appropriate response from the forces of law and order?[5] It is a combination of making the victim “whole” again, and punishing the aggressor.[6] What this amounts to, in effect, is “two teeth for a tooth” plus costs of capturing and scaring. [7] Consider the following scenario: A steals a car from B. A is now captured. What is the just punishment that will restore B, as much as possible, to his previous non-victimization state? First, the automobile must be returned from the carjacker to its rightful owner. That is the first “tooth.” Then, what A did to B must be, instead, done to A, in B’s behalf, by the forces of law and order. Since A relieved B of a car, and took it for himself, the same must now be done to A; that is, A’s own car (not the one he just stole from B which has already been returned to B as the first tooth) must be given to B.[8] This is the “second tooth.”[9]
If A does not have his own vehicle of equivalent value, then its value can be taken out of A’s hide: that is, instead of putting A in a jail at B’s (and all other taxpayers’) expense, where he can spend his days in front of a color tv, in cozy air conditioned circumstances, A will in effect be enslaved until he earns enough money to pay his debt to B. Our experience of this “curious institution” (Hummel, 1996; Thornton, 1994; Fogel and Engerman, 1974) shows that private concerns are able to “sweat” more value out of their charges than the costs of feeding and guarding them. So would it be, nowadays, under fully private (slave) prisons.
So, apparently, Walter Block actually does approve slavery. That’s not precise of course. It would be more precise to say that he approves slavery under specific circumstances, namely, enslaving criminals whom he deems deserving of enslavement.
He is not alone in approving of slavery in the context of punishing people deemed to be criminals. If you read the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, it says,
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Also, if you study Portuguese/Brazilian history, there’s a long precedent of considering slavery to be legitimate under certain circumstances, including as punishment for a crime. (I’ll try to find you a passage from “Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil” when I get the chance.) And not only in Portuguese/Brazilian history. This has been a recurring theme throughout human history, probably going back as far as the rise of agriculture, but certainly as far back as the Code of Hammurabi, which stated, for example, “If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.” (Or at any rate, that’s a translation of what it stated.)
It is interesting how certain linguistic markers carry on well past their reflection of reality. We still talk of dialing telephone numbers, and for Block a “color TV” is the height of luxury, certainly not a black and white TV, which have not existed in any numbers for decades. I also suspect he does not play team ball sports,, where “keeping your eye on the ball” will result in abject failure.
Block believes voluntary slavery is OK and I suppose punishment for crime is a form of volunteering for punishment.
Moderation seems to be a bit of a problem at the moment.
Answered below, at least so far as the “allowing any form of forced labor (even in the limited context of punishing alleged criminals or enforcing contracts in which people allegedly agreed to forced labor) opens the door for widespread fraud” part of the argument goes.
Block apparently thinks one should be allowed to sell oneself as a slave. His views are controversial. His views however were misrepresented by the NYT in a famous case where selective quotes made it appear Block thought slaves in the Usa were treated well, spending their days pleasantly picking cotton and eating nice gruel.
I disagree profoundly with Blocks views but it is very important to make sure you are addressing Blocks views and not a caricature of them.
I also think that Walter Block is wrong, and that contracts that amount to slavery should not be upheld. You can’t stop people from signing such agreements, and there might be cases where they are temporarily desperate and willing to sign anything … but I don’t want to be put in a position where I’m expected to enforce this agreement after the person has changed his mind and wants out.
The argument is about property rights and inalienable rights vs alienable rights. There’s a whole bunch of potentially “sort-of like slavery” contracts that range from temporary servitude to even basic Non-Disclosure Agreements and in each case the alienable vs inalienable consideration needs to be taken seriously.
The lesson here is never talk to NYT reporters about anything, ever. Better to have no dealings whatsoever with such people.
I think maybe comments with the s-word are being delayed in the moderation queue. Did your comment go through the moderation queue?
Maybe I’ll just say “forced labor” or star it out or something instead.
In any case, you and Harold may be interested in this document:
The Ens****ment Process in the Portuguese Dominions of King Philip III of Spain in the Early Seventeenth Century
excerpt from:
Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black S****ry in Brazil
edited and translated by Robert Edgar Conrad
Basically, the author discusses certain justifications for condemning people to forced labor that were viewed as legitimate by certain Portuguese people of that time period. Apparently, these justifications were endorsed by “ancient theologians, doctors of canon law, and jurists.”
The author writes,
According to these principles, only infidels who are captured in just wars, or who because of serious crimes have been condemned by their Rulers may be held as legitimate s****s, or if they sell themselves, or if they are sold by their own fathers who have legitimate need.” And because, by the use of these four principles, great injustices are committed in the buying and selling of s****s in our Empire, as will later be seen, it is also certain that most of the s****s of this Empire are made so upon other pretexts, of which some are notoriously unjust, and others with great likelihood may be presumed to be so as well.
The author then goes onto explain how these “principles” are essentially an invitation to fraud.
In the author’s opinion,
So that, of every thousand s****s who are captured, scarcely one-tenth will be justly ens****d, which is a notorious fact confirmed by all God-fearing men who reside or have resided in those places.
Concerning the other two principles: the need to sell oneself to seek release from an unjust death or some other great misery; or being sold by one’s father who is in dire need — these are the causes of many unjust acts of ens****ment in those places. Because in some places, as has been said, some persons make a pretense of wanting to eat others, or of wishing to slaughter them, so that they can be sold. Many fathers sell their sons for almost nothing, without being in any dire need which might justify such a sale, which is invalid and without any force in law, because the power is not given to a father to sell his minor son, except in dire need, according to common scholarly doctrine. And also in place of their children they sell other relatives who are close at hand, and other strangers using tricks which they invent for the purpose, saying, or making them say, that they are their sons. And in Brazil before the above-mentioned law of King Sebastian, the Portuguese persuaded the Indians to sell themselves, and since, because of their ignorance, they didn’t understand how important this was, they sold themselves for a cotton jacket and some breeches, which later they wore out in the service of their own masters. And when they later understood the trick, if it was not possible for them to run away, some died from their misery and others lived in a state of perpetual grief. And one may suspect that in all likelihood the same thing happens in other places, such as Guinea, the land of the Kaffirs, etc.
So, according to this author, the Portuguese provision for “voluntary forced labor” (back in that time period) opened the door for widespread fraud where people were threatened with murder or even cannibalism to get them to agree to forced labor, and this was then falsely claimed to be “voluntary forced labor”, which was illegitimate even by Portuguese standards of the time period, but nevertheless still common practice. My interpretation of the comment about the Indians not understanding “how important this was”, is that translators between the Portuguese and the Indians most likely deliberately neglected to make sure the Indians understood what they were being asked to sell, thus making the transactions fraudulent. Or in other words, if the agreement is in Portuguese, but the person allegedly agreeing to forced labor doesn’t understand Portuguese that well (if at all), and the agreement is not adequately explained to them in their own language,and the translation is perhaps even deliberately misleading, then it is fraudulent.
My take on this is that allowing “voluntary forced labor” would introduce much worse problems than merely people who legitimately agreed at some point in time changing their minds later. If “voluntary forced labor” were permitted, then in all likelihood, it would lead to such a great amount of fraud, that for every person who “voluntarily” agreed (for some definition of voluntary), nine more (if we accept the Portuguese author’s estimate) would involuntarily subjected to forced labor, with various forms of fraud used to disguise their involuntary forced labor as “voluntary forced labor”. And that to me, is a huge reason (though not the only reason) to oppose the idea of accepting “voluntary” agreements to forced labor as legitimate, and subsequently enforcing such agreements.
Minor clarification… I’m not sure if the seventeenth century Portuguese concept of voluntary forced labor would be the same as the more modern concept of voluntary forced labor. (And that’s not even the term he used… he said “if they sell themselves”.)
In the author’s view, the sale of self is illegitimate if done because others make a *pretense* of wishing to slaughter and/or eat that person. It is not entirely clear to me if it would be legitimate, in the author’s view, if others *actually* wished to slaughter and/or eat the person. Perhaps the Portuguese of the time period would view such a transaction as legitimate, because, from their perspective, the buyer would be “saving” them from slaughter and/or being eaten. From a more modern perspective, most people would probably say that was illegitimate, because it’s clearly an agreement being made under duress. (Also, considering the death rates of forced laborers in Brazil, most people taken there weren’t exactly being “saved” for long, if they were being saved at all.)
Contracts have always and always will be used to take advantage of the less educated and less well off. Buyer beware. Is there a difference in principle of selling yourself and not understanding what you are signing and selling your land and not understanding what you are signing? I suppose one problem is it is harder to obtain relief if you are owned by someone else who controls your movements.
I suppose we could have a system of compulsory court-appointed advisors to ensure the seller knew what they were doing before such contracts could be legal as a safeguard. Of course, fathers would not be allowed to sell their sons. That is, should we wish to allow such things at all.
I don’t think the argument that the contracts could be abused or mis-sold is sufficient of itself to invalidate the principle that you should be allowed to sell yourself. It does add weight in practice.
I don’t think the argument that the contracts could be abused or mis-sold is sufficient of itself to invalidate the principle that you should be allowed to sell yourself. It does add weight in practice.
If I were a law enforcement person of decent conscience (at least to the extent of not wishing to enforce fraudulent contracts), and I knew that there was a 9/10ths chance that a particular contract were fraudulent, if we are to believe the Portuguese author’s estimate in the matter, why would I want to enforce it? If I were such a law enforcement person, I wouldn’t want to enforce a contract that someone hand over a $10 bill if I believed a 9/10ths chance it were fraudulent. And, if the contract were that someone had agreed to be tortured at another person’s whim for the rest of their life (or by anyone the latter person sold them too, or some overseer, etc etc.), I would have all the more reason for caution. If it was merely a contract to hand over a $10 bill, I might be satisfied if there were a greater than 50% chance that the contract was not fraudulent, since that would mean that there was a greater than 50% chance I was delivering the $10 bill to the correct person (or if I were details-oriented, perhaps I would make change and divide up the $10 in accordance with the percent chance I believed the contract was either valid or fraudulent), but for torture, the level of evidence I would want, if I were such a law enforcement officer, would likely be unattainable. The standard of evidence just for throwing someone in prison, from the perspective of many modern law enforcement people of reasonable conscience, even in the comparatively humane prisons of the 21st century, is “beyond a reasonable doubt”. How much higher should the standard of evidence, then, be to condemn someone to a lifetime of torture? Perhaps, “beyond even unreasonable doubts”? I should think it would be an unattainable standard of evidence. (From the perspective of a law enforcement officer of reasonable conscience not wishing to enforce fraudulent contracts, that is.)
I suppose that doesn’t prove that someone shouldn’t be allowed to sell himself or herself. But, from my perspective at least, it does at least prove that there should be absolutely no enforcement beyond that individual person’s honor, since only that individual person could be completely sure that the contract was not fraudulent, and no one who is not completely sure “beyond even unreasonable doubt” ought to be enforcing it. (And since “beyond even unreasonable doubt” is an effectively unattainable level of evidence, essentially, no one, other than the person who allegedly sold himself or herself, ought to be enforcing the contract.)
Harold wrote,
I suppose we could have a system of compulsory court-appointed advisors to ensure the seller knew what they were doing before such contracts could be legal as a safeguard.
This has already been attempted, fairly recently in United States history. Or at any rate, something very similar to it was attempted.
In a letter dated March 21, 1903, Judge Jones wrote to Philander C. Knox.
Sir: Some witnesses before the Grand Jury here developed the fact that in Shelby county in this District, and in Coosa county in the Middle district, a systematic scheme of depriving negroes of their liberty, and hiring them out, has been practiced for some time.
The plan is to accuse the negro of some petty offense, and then require him, in order to escape conviction, to enter into an agreement to pay his accuser so much money, and sign a contract, under the terms of which his bondsmen can hire him out until he pays a certain sum. The negro is made to believe he is a convict, and treated as such. It is said that thirty negroes were in the stockade at one time.
The scheme uncovered by Judge Jones was not unique to Shelby and Coosa counties. Throughout much of the former Confederate states, after the US Civil War, convict leasing and similar systems became widespread, the general idea being to arrest black people (and in some instances, white people too) for trivial offenses, convict them based on shoddy evidence, and either sentence them directly to forced labor, or fine them an amount of money they could only pay off by agreeing to forced labor. (Under this system, it would be generous to estimate that only 9/10ths of these contracts were fraudulent. It was probably closer to a 10/10 fraud rate.)
[to be continued… but suffice it to say for now that Judge Jones eventually tries recommending that certain types of contracts be approved by judges.]
This seems essentially the same as plea bargains today. Especially as law officers are allowed to lie to suspects about the evidence against them. In the UK police are not allowed to lie about evidence. Seems a very good safeguard against wrong convictions.
Essentially the same, except the cruelty was more blatant back then.
Back then in Alabama, people were often sentenced to work in coal mines. Now, people are often sentenced to work for McDonald’s. I suppose that’s an improvement, in terms of reducing the amount of human suffering inflicted by the system, but it’s still forced labor.
From “America’s S**** Empire” by Chris Hedges,
“We have to shut down the prisons,” Council, known as Kinetik, one of the founders of the Free Alabama Movement, told me by phone from the Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, Ala. He has been in prison for 21 years, serving a sentence of life without parole. “We will not work for free anymore. All the work in prisons, from cleaning to cutting grass to working in the kitchen, is done by inmate labor. [Almost no prisoner] in Alabama is paid. Without us the prisons, which are s**** empires, cannot function. Prisons, at the same time, charge us a variety of fees, such as for our identification cards or wrist bracelets, and [impose] numerous fines, especially for possession of contraband. They charge us high phone and commissary prices. Prisons each year are taking larger and larger sums of money from the inmates and their families. The state gets from us millions of dollars in free labor and then imposes fees and fines. You have brothers that work in kitchens 12 to 15 hours a day and have done this for years and have never been paid.”
“We do not believe in the political process,” said Ray, who spoke from the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Ala., and who is serving life without parole. “We are not looking to politicians to submit reform bills. We aren’t giving more money to lawyers. We don’t believe in the courts. We will rely only on protests inside and outside of prisons and on targeting the corporations that exploit prison labor and finance the school-to-prison pipeline. We have focused our first boycott on McDonald’s. McDonald’s uses prisoners to process beef for paddies and package bread, milk, chicken products. We have called for a national Stop Campaign against McDonald’s. We have identified this corporation to expose all the others. There are too many corporations exploiting prison labor to try and take them all on at once.”
Found on commondreams dot org.
I wonder how many people caught up in that are either innocent of the crime of which they are convicted, and/or convicted of some non-violent “crime”, and/or still awaiting trial.
Also, the second circuit only ruled that it is unconstitutional to require pre-trial detainees to perform forced labor as recently as 2015. And even then there’s a bit of a loophole for “personal housekeeping chores”.
Also, Alabama is in the 11th circuit, not the 2nd circuit, so for all I know, pretrial detainees in Alabama might still be required to perform forced labor. I’m actually surprised that in about an hour of searching, I couldn’t find anything on the internet that says one way or the other whether pretrial detainees in Alabama are subjected to forced labor or not.
Not allowing police to lie about evidence is a good safeguard against wrongful convictions, as long as it is understood that one safeguard isn’t enough to stop wrongful convictions from happening anyway.
Also, it raises the question of, just who is there to stop the police from lying, even in the UK?
But anyway, while not allowing police to lie about evidence is a great idea, wrongful convictions do still happen even in the UK.
In S****ry by Another Name: The Re-Ens****ment of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon writes,
On June 15, Judge Jones issued a formal charge to the grand jury, answering their inquiries and directing how they should interpret the federal peonage statute as their deliberations continued. Jones began with a long discourse on the origins of the peonage statute after the acquisition of New Mexico by the United States, and then laid out how the new labor system of Alabama appeared to violate that law.
Jones explained that any man who induces a laborer to sign a contract agreeing to be held under guard and unable to leave until a debt is paid was guilty of peonage. A citizen or law enforcement officer who tricked a laborer into believing he could avoid criminal prosecution or a sentence to hard labor only by signing such a contract was guilty of peonage, the judge explained. Anyone who falsely accused a person of a crime in order to compel him or her to sign such a contract or conspired to obtain the labor of a worker through such false charges, Jones wrote, was guilty of violating the pre-emancipation s**** kidnapping act, which forbade “carrying away any other person, with the intent that such other person be sold into involuntary servitude.”
Jones also declared Alabama’s labor contract law—which bound hundreds of thousands of black workers to white landowners unconstitutional. Any person held against his will under this statute, Jones ruled, should be released on habeas corpus—the ancient legal principle used to win the release of the falsely imprisoned.
Southern whites immediately recognized the implications of the ruling, and the reaction was furious. “Judge Jones’ …opinion, if sustained by the highest court, is far reaching and with disastrous consequences to the labor system of the South,” wrote the Prattville Progress, a newspaper in the heart of a s****-riddled county. “There must be a revolution in the labor system.”
The residents of counties across eastern Alabama were baffled by Judge Jones’s interpretation of the law. Tens of thousands of black workers were at labor in Alabama under contracts signed when a white man “confessed judgment” for an arrested black man—paying his “fines” before any prosecution commenced and receiving in return a signed contract for labor.
These arrangements sounded precisely like the ones described by Judge Jones as illegal. Hundreds of farmers were at risk of arrest. Thousands more African American laborers were being forced to work in mines and timber camps under similar contracts signed between county governments and the state of Alabama itself. Some local attorneys asked if farmers who worked convicts for debts were guilty of peonage, wasn’t the state of Alabama equally guilty in its handling of convict leases? It occurred to virtually no one in Alabama that this was precisely the point. The vast majority of black laborers leased from the law enforcement system were being held illegally.
Even Judge Jones failed to comprehend the full ramifications of his opinion. Like many well-intentioned but still fundamentally racist whites, he naively believed that the system engineered by Pace in Tallapoosa County was an isolated instance of abuse. He accepted the common convention of the time that African Americans were less intelligent and more inclined to criminal behavior than whites. He presumed that the vast majority of blacks arrested in the South were in fact guilty of their crimes, and merited severe punishment. What made him more “progressive” than other whites, and where he differed from most white southerners, was that he believed blacks could not be brutalized in their punishment, and that the concept of impartial treatment of all citizens by the courts had to be upheld.
Rank-and-file southerners, especially in rural sections with large black populations, had no such illusions. They knew Judge Jones had set a standard by which thousands of white men were guilty of s**** dealing, that hundreds of state and county officials were in jeopardy, and that the whole financial structure of governments and local economies was at risk. A correspondent to the Birmingham Age-Herald reported that “more than 100 men” in the area of Coosa and Tallapoosa counties—just two of Alabama’s nearly seventy counties—were at risk of arrest in the federal investigation. “The people of East Alabama are very much wrought up…. They have people of East Alabama are very much wrought up…. They have been working criminals for twenty years, and the majority of such men do not know they are violating the law,” the writer said.
Inundated with bewildered queries, Judge Jones began to realize the breadth of coerced labor in his state. He hadn’t intended to set off panic. To quell anxieties, Jones quietly summoned a reporter for the Associated Press and explained that white men could avoid breaking the law if their contracts with blacks were approved by a local judge and signed in court. Surely local judges could never condone s****ry, Jones reasoned.
For more information, see Chapters VI and VII of S****ry by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon.
[to be continued, but suffice it to say that local judges disappointed Judge Jones’ expectations.]
The result of Judge Jones’ faith that judges would not condone illegal forced labor was not in fact a reduction in forced labor, but instead, and increase in the amount of documentation of that forced labor, as we can see in Chapter XII of S****ry by Another Name: The Re-Ens****ment of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon,
Among the thousands of words of Judge Jones’s famous direction to the federal jury on the definitions of legal and illegal labor practices, a single sentence ultimately rose to greatest prominence. Jones advised that persons convicted of misdemeanors whose
Jones advised that persons convicted of misdemeanors whose sureties “confessed judgment” for them and worked them against their will could avoid violating the peonage statue by following a simple procedure. The laborers must be convicted in an authentic court— not by any bumpkin justice of the peace. The judgment and penalty had to be written down and recorded with the local courts. And the contract between the defendant and the person paying the fine—in which the defendant agreed to work for a certain amount of time to pay off the penalty— had to be signed “in open court with written approval of the judge.”
The implication was clear. There would be no risk of another energetic U.S. attorney arresting white farmers for peonage so long as they, and local judges, were sufficiently hygienic in the records they maintained.
The old southern window dressing of legal rights for African Americans won the day again. There was no evidence of the decline anticipated by Reese and Jones in the number of African Americans being held by private individuals as a result of ostensible court
fines. If anything, the number of black men “confessing judgment” swelled, now plainly and unabashedly acknowledged in open court. Moreover, undaunted by Judge Jones’s ruling against the state’s laws forbidding black men from leaving the employment of one white man without permission to work for another, the Alabama legislature passed a new but essentially identical “false pretenses” statute. Once held under a labor contract, black men who attempted to leave their employers faced criminal prosecution for doing so. If they had entered into the contract to avoid an earlier prosecution, the departure would exponentially increase the time they could be held as s****s.
In Shelby County, the number of African Americans “confessing judgment” in open court ballooned. Between November 1890 and August 1906, the dank county jail admitted 1,327 prisoners, facing a total of more than 1,500 charges. Physical descriptions were recorded only intermittently, but during the periods when notations of race were made, more than 90 percent of those arrested were black. A few were women.
For the same reason, court-appointed advisors could not be trusted to ensure that people allegedly selling themselves understood what they were doing and were not under any form of duress (such as death threats). Court-appointed advisors could easily be corrupted by the same means that judges in the former Confederate states were corrupted after the US Civil War.
Specifically, many of these judges in the former Confederate states probably received a share of the profit from their activities in forcing people into forced labor.
Douglas Blackmon explains in Chapter II of S****ry by Another Name,
The newly installed white government of Hale County—deep in the majority-black cotton growing sections of Alabama—began leasing prisoners to private parties in August 1875. A local grand jury said the new practice was “contributing much to the revenues of the county, instead of being an expense.” The money derived from selling convicts was placed in the Fine and Forfeiture Fund, which was used to pay fees to judges, sheriffs, other low officials, and witnesses who helped convict defendants.
*sarcasm* Because paying witnesses to say someone is guilty is clearly a recipe for a fair and just legal system! *end sarcasm*
We are still debating principles vs practicalities.
We could argue that
1) voluntary slavery should not be permitted because it is fundamentally wrong, or
2) Voluntary slavery should not be permitted because it is not possible to avoid abuse of the allowances for such volunteering.
In practice it may not make any difference which justificartion is used, but it does make a difference as to how you will adress simiar problems.
Personally, i prefer the idea that selling yourself should not be permissible and nobody should be allowed to own anybody else. That avoids the problem of proving consent etc.
Nevertheless, this is not a defeater for someone who argues that it shoud be allowed, given sufficient protections to guard against abuse.
ultimately we have 3 positions.
1) it is never OK
2) It is OK in principle, but pracicalities make it impossible to impllement fairly, so it should not be permitted.
3) It is OK
I prefer 1, but am happy to agree with those who subscribe to 2, because the result is the same.
To emphasize that many of the convicts caught up in convict leasing and similar systems were only considered criminals on the basis of horribly unjust laws and proceedings, here’s a few more quotes from S****ry by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon. These quotes are from Chapter IV.
The application of laws written to criminalize black life was even more transparent in the prisoners convicted of misdemeanors in the county courts. Among county convicts in the mines, the crimes of eight were listed as “not given.” There were twenty-four black men digging coal for using “obscene language,” ninety-four for the alleged theft of items valued at just a few dollars, thirteen for selling whiskey, five for “violating contract” with a white employer, seven for vagrancy two for “selling cotton after sun set”—a statute passed to prevent black farmers from selling their crops to anyone other than the white property owner with whom they share-cropped—forty-six for carrying a concealed weapon, three for bastardy, nineteen for gambling, twenty-four for false pretense. Through the enforcement of these openly hostile statutes, thousands of other free blacks realized that they could be secure only if they agreed to come under the control of a white landowner or employer. By the end of 1890, the new s****ry had generated nearly $4 million, in current terms, for the state of Alabama over the previous two years.
In an 1898 convict board report, the largest category in a table listing charges on which county convicts were imprisoned was “Not given.” No one even bothered to invent a legal basis for their ens****ment.
In a 1902 report, one man was in the mines for “disturbing females on railroad car.” More than a dozen were incarcerated for “abusive and obscene language.” Twenty convicts were digging coal for adultery, twenty-nine for gambling. Dozens of prisoners were at labor for riding a freight train without paying for a ticket. In 1902 and 1903, local officials in Jefferson County prosecuted more than three thousand misdemeanor cases, most of them yielding a convict to work in a Sloss-Sheffield mine—the vast majority of whom were black.
One of those convicts was John Clarke, a miner convicted of “gaming” on April 11, 1903. Unable to pay, he ended up at Sloss-Sheffield. Working off the fine would take ten days. Fees for the sheriff, the county clerk, and the witnesses who testified against him required that Clarke spend an additional 104 days in the mines. Sloss-Sheffield acquired him from Jefferson County for $9 a month. One month and three days later, he was dead, crushed by “falling rock.”
At least 2,500 men were being held against their will at more than two dozen labor camps across Alabama at the time Clarke died. More than nine hundred were in the Pratt Mines. Sloss-Sheffield held nearly three hundred. The McCurdys still controlled nearly one hundred in Lowndes County. Scores more were imprisoned in the turpentine and lumber camps of the Henderson-Boyd and Horseshoe Bend lumber companies and other remote prison compounds scattered deep in the forests of southern Alabama. Payments to the state that year exceeded a half million dollars, the equivalent of $12.1 million a century later and a figure nearly equal to 25 percent of all taxes collected in Alabama.
*sarcasm* Ah, yes, the heinous crime of Not Given, even more heinous than murder! How dare people commit Not Given! *end sarcasm*
And, even for those things which may actually be considered crimes, such as “the alleged theft of items valued at just a few dollars”, it is still questionable that the persons convicted were in fact guilty, considering the incentives for witnesses to simply lie, and, even if they were guilty, that they deserved such horrible punishment for such a minor crime. Also, “the alleged theft of items valued at just a few dollars” might in some cases be justified in the name of reparations, morally speaking that is, although it is doubtful any southern court of the time period would have recognized that defense.
Note that convict leasing frequently amounted to a death sentence. Douglas Blackmon writes at the end of Chapter II of S****ry by Another Name,
In the first two years that Alabama leased its prisoners, nearly 20 percent of them died. In the following year, mortality rose to 35 percent. In the fourth, nearly 45 percent were killed.
Additionally, Douglas Blackmon describes some of the torture methods used in Chapter XIV,
At the end of the day, whatever had happened deep in the earth, each man was held to account for the coal he collected while in the shaft. Healthy prisoners such as Green and Mun were required to produce eight tons each day. Any man who came up short of his assigned “task” was subject to the whip—held over a barrel by two other black men with his shirt removed and his pants pushed to his knees as the white mine superintendent or the designated whipping boss lashed him with a thick, four-inch-wide strap of leather. On some days, as many as two or three dozen men felt the bite of forty or fifty strokes. Those who chronically failed to meet task were beaten every day, often in the morning as well to remind them of the fate that awaited failure that night.
A convict named Alvaran Snow Allen published a simple religious leaflet near the turn of the century titled “The Story of a Lie,” recounting the misdeeds of his life and how they led him to become “Convict No. 2939” in an unspecified labor prison. In excruciating detail, he recounted the methods, lexicons, and apparatuses of prisoner punishment used throughout the southern prison labor system. “Come-a-longs” were steel bracelets snapped onto the wrists and fastened by a chain to a small metal crossbar. Turning the crossbar instantly twisted a man’s arms into a knot, forcing him to his knees. In a punishment known simply as “the chains,” a prisoner was placed in handcuffs attached to the ends of a thirty-inch-long steel bar, which was then hoisted with a pulley until the man hung clear of the floor, to be left suspended “from 50 minutes to two hours.” A variation on this torment was known in some camps as the “alakazan degree,” in which the victim’s ankles were cuffed behind his back and then his feet “drawn upward and backward until his whole body is stretched taut in the shape of a bow” and then tied to his wrists. Once pinioned, the most unfortunate prisoners were then placed in a closed and darkened box called a “crib” and left there in suffering. “The intense agony inflicted by this method of torture is indescribable; every muscle throbs with pain,” wrote one prisoner after his release.
“Little shackles” were egg-shaped pieces of iron riveted onto ankle rings on prisoners in rural work camps to make their feet too heavy to run. “Whipping straps” weighed two to seven pounds for routine beatings. “Shackles and chains” was a three-foot section of chain with an ankle cuff at one end and a two-inch ring at the other end. Once the cuff was riveted to a prisoner’s leg, the chain was wrapped around the leg during working hours, and then unspooled at day’s end to be attached to the one long chain holding all convicts in a particular sleeping area.
Famous to prison mines and camps in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida was the “pick shackle,” which Allen described as a sharpened pick head riveted upside down to a prisoner’s ankle—making it utterly impossible to run or even walk normally—and typically left there for the duration of a convict’s sentence. Worn for months or years at a time, the twenty- to thirtypound picks rubbing against bare skin caused abrasions that led to pus-filled lesions and infections prisoners called “shackle poison.” Littered through the records of convict camps are amputations of feet and lower legs as a result of blood poisoning from the injuries.
By far the most torturous and widely used punishment was the “water cure,” a medieval cruciation whose many variations rendered the strongest and most defiant of men utterly compliant. In its most moderate form, the water cure was simply forcing a man to stand naked under a shower of cold water until he convulsed with cold. More often, prisoners described being stripped of their clothing and tied to a post or chair. A water line—often a high-pressure fire hose—was turned on the naked prisoner, pounding his skin with intense pressure and filling his mouth and nose with torrents of water until he became convinced he was about to drown.
In the Alabama prison mines where Green Cottenham was now an inmate, the preferred form of the water cure was simply to lift a man off his feet and plunge him headfirst into a barrel, with his arms tied or held useless to his sides. Guards or prisoners working under the supervision of one held the man’s furiously kicking feet to keep the barrel upright until his thrashing subsided—usually two to three minutes after being plunged into the liquid. Then the prisoner was hauled, gasping, out of the bucket, given a few seconds of air, then plunged down again. Repeated again and again, virtually no prisoner could avoid being turned into a shivering, begging wretch.
It my opinion, the descriptions of torture a) help explain why we should be extremely skeptical that anyone would agree to such a thing, if they were not under duress and understood fully what they were agreeing to. and b) that such things could not be considered proportionate punishment for anything but the most heinous of crimes. (And if someone actually did commit such a heinous crime, I would have safety concerns for any prison guard who tried to force that criminal to work.)
Of course, fathers would not be allowed to sell their sons. That is, should we wish to allow such things at all.
It’s obvious that 17th century Portuguese ideals were not the same as the ideals of more modern people, not even those modern people who agree with such things as subjecting criminals to forced labor or enforcing forced labor contracts. My point in quoting the Portuguese author was not that their ideals were different from the ideals of more modern people advocating in favor of subjecting criminals to forced labor or enforcing forced labor contracts, which is obvious, but that the 17th century Portuguese failed to even live up to their own ideals. And, for the same reasons they failed to live up to their own ideals, so we should expect any system of forced labor, under whatever justifications (punishing criminals, enforcing contracts, whatever) to fail live up to it’s own ideals (at least those ideals which are openly stated), once put into actual practice, unless of course the stated ideals are something that would fail to get in the way of s**** traders who are more interested in profit than they are in ideals.
So, I do not know, off the top of my head, of any modern philosophers who endorse the idea of fathers selling their sons and daughters. But that’s not the point. The Portuguese apparently did endorse this practice, albeit only if the father had “legitimate need”, and as a result, men lied and falsely claimed that people were their sons and daughters (even when this was not true) in order to sell them, and also ignored the “legitimate need” provision.
Contracts have always and always will be used to take advantage of the less educated and less well off. Buyer beware. Is there a difference in principle of selling yourself and not understanding what you are signing and selling your land and not understanding what you are signing? I suppose one problem is it is harder to obtain relief if you are owned by someone else who controls your movements.
It’s worth pointing out, that, even in 20th century English, or 17th century English for that matter, the term “sell oneself” does not necessarily mean to “sell oneself into s****ry”.
From dictionary dot com:
sell oneself
1
Convince another of one’s merits, present oneself in a favorable light, as in A job interview is an ideal opportunity to sell oneself to a prospective employer. Originally this idiom, dating from the second half of the 1700s, alluded to selling one’s services for money, but it was being used more loosely by the mid-1800s.
2
Compromise one’s principles for monetary gain. An early version was sell oneself (or one’s soul) to the devil, which alluded to enlisting the devil’s help in exchange for one’s soul after death. It is embodied in the legend of Faust, first recorded in the late 1500s.
So, even in the present day, if someone signed a contract to sell himself or herself, he or she could easily argue that he or she meant he or she was agreeing to present himself or herself in a favorable light, or else that he or she was agreeing to compromise his or her principles for monetary gain, and was not actually agreeing to forced labor, and dictionary.com would back that argument up. In fact, the interpretation of selling oneself into forced labor isn’t even given on dictionary.com.
If it’s that ambiguous even in the English language, how much more ambiguous might it be if a Portuguese s**** trader was communicating with an Indian person via a translator? For all I know, the Indian person may have believed they were selling their friendship, not selling himself or herself into forced labor, and the translation may well have supporting that interpretation.
Also, linguistic trickery is not the only concern. Straight up duress – e.g. death threats – are another way contracts might be fraudulent.
Another reason why forced labor should not be allowed in any form, whether it’s is restricted on the basis of criminal status, skin color, contract signing, or whatever, is disease.
Note that I am not arguing that everything that could possibly cause disease should be banned, but given that forced labor is already immoral for other reasons, it’s more of a felony murder type argument. (The idea of felony murder is that if in the process of committing some other felony, you accidentally kill someone, it still counts as a first degree murder, since if you hadn’t been committing the felony to begin with, the accident wouldn’t have happened.)
But, also, even if you don’t accept my argument that forced labor is already immoral for other reasons, forced labor does carry an exceptionally high risk of incubating and/or spreading deadly disease.
For example, yellow fever.
In “Yellow Fever: Scourge of the South”, Jo Ann Carrigan writes,
Some abolitionists suggested that yellow fever was not only the result of s****ry, having been introduced by the African s**** trade, but that the disease served as a penalty or punishment, afflicting those areas where the institution prevailed.
Jo Ann Carrigan mentions that some version of that argument appeared in the New York Tribune in 1853, and goes on to give the counterarguments given by pro-s****ry Southerners. (Note that Jo Ann Carrigan wasn’t endorsing the pro-s****ry arguments, just documenting them.) Personally, I think the pro-s****ry arguments were weak. Anyway, there’s more.
In “The American Plague : The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History”, Molly Caldwell Crosby writes,
Yellow fever, more than any other disease, would seem conjured by God and divinely directed. When the s**** trade first began, every European country that profited from the purchase and sale of Africans would soon see a yellow fever epidemic: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal. Though Asia had the ideal climate and the right mosquito, it has never had an epidemic of yellow fever. It also never participated in the African s**** trade.
As the European powers crossed the Atlantic to establish West Indian colonies, which quickly became horrific holding pens for s****s, yellow fever settled its roots in the western hemisphere and proliferated. The first epidemic on this side of the world occurred in 1648. After that, the s**** trade increased fivefold in the West Indies. And by 1702, as the trade of flesh spread to North America, yellow fever blossomed on the continent. From 1700 to 1750, the s**** population in America doubled and then doubled again. As each s**** ship arrived into the ports of the New World, bringing over ten million s****s to this hemisphere, yellow fever made a giant, evolutionary leap. It adapted. It spread. As one historian put it, “When the disease invaded the Atlantic and Gulf States, it struck with a force more powerful than the one which bombed Pearl Harbor more than two centuries later.”
Yellow fever became the most dreaded disease in North America for two hundred years. It did not kill in numbers as high as some of its contemporaries like cholera or smallpox, and it was not contagious; yet it created a panic and fear few other diseases, ancient or contemporary, can elicit.
During its tenure in this country, yellow fever would inflict 500,000 casualties and 100,000 deaths. The fever would stretch the length of North America, afflicting Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida and Texas.
The U.S. capital would move from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., after a devastating yellow fever epidemic in 1793. Alexander Hamilton suffered the fever, while George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fled the city; the United States government was paralyzed.
In New York, Greenwich Village would become known as “the Village” because it was the safe haven outside of the city during yellow fever epidemics.
Napoleon would abandon his conquests in North America after losing 23,000 of his troops to yellow fever in the colony of Haiti. He made a hasty and fearful retreat from this pestilent hemisphere, selling his large Louisiana holdings for cheap to Thomas Jefferson.
During the Civil War, yellow fever would serve as one of this country’s first forms of biological warfare. And the Spanish-American War, at the close of the nineteenth century, would be fought more against this fever than against the Spanish.
For the first century of its siege in the United States, yellow fever marked for destruction the heavily populated, northern port cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Then, in 1807, the Atlantic s**** trade was abolished, and the fever suddenly retreated from the North. By 1850, no other epidemics of yellow fever would occur in those major cities. As the North weaned itself from the s**** trade, its southern counterpart absorbed the s**** labor and the accompanying yellow fever. In the South, where s****ry became deeply entrenched, yellow fever found its lifeblood.
So, even before people finally figured out that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, they should have been able to figure out that it was spread by s****ry. (I suppose the poor sanitary conditions of s****ry, and the s**** trade in particular, probably provided favorable conditions for the mosquitoes to be transported across the Atlantic, or to wherever.)
Even if he wasn’t strictly 100% correct, I don’t think he was far off. The yellow fever may not have originated on the s**** ships, but those ships did allow yellow fever to travel away from regions in Africa where most people were immune to parts of the world with significant non-immune populations. And while it’s possible, in theory at least, that commerce not related to forced labor also could have carried yellow fever to other parts of the world, it seems that it generally spread along with s****ry, perhaps because the extreme lack of sanitation on those ships provided favorable conditions for the mosquitoes that can carry yellow fever.
Also, Molly Caldwell Crosby notes that Henry Rose Carter suggested that yellow fever came to North America via the African s**** trade in the 1931 book, “Yellow Fever: An Epidemiological and Historical Study of Its Place of Origin.”
This underlines the fact that rules and laws are ultimately enforced and decided by people. Any rule can be subverted if nobody in power wants to apply it. Checks and balances only work if there are sufficient motivated people to make them work. The SC for example has no mechanism to enforce their rulings.
This underlines the fact that rules and laws are ultimately enforced and decided by people. Any rule can be subverted if nobody in power wants to apply it. Checks and balances only work if there are sufficient motivated people to make them work.
Yes, exactly!
That said, it would simplify habeas corpus and other proceedings to free people from forced labor if we could simply assume that all cases of forced labor were illegitimate and illegal, rather than having to listen to the s**** drivers arguing that they are legitimately subjecting people to forced labor because “they are criminals” or “they signed a contract” or whatever excuses they come up with, especially if they are lying or otherwise acting fraudulently 9/10ths of the time or more.
Also, we should recognize that allowing people to profit off of law enforcement creates motives for both the writing of unjust laws, and the fraudulent “enforcement” of those laws. If there’s a financial/economic motive to arrest a person and find them guilty, then they might be arrested and found guilty because of that financial/economic motive, and not because of any actual wrongdoing on their part.
The motive behind laws and law enforcement should be to protect ourselves from legitimately evil acts like murder and rape, not to make money off of other people’s labor. While there’s still plenty of room for debate about what protecting ourselves from legitimately evil acts like murder and rape should look like, at least if the profit motive were out of the way, it would be easier to focus on that debate.
This is one of the better interviews I’ve heard. David Goronski’s interview with James Lindsey and Rechtenwald was good and (help me) Glenn Beck’s interview with James Lindsey was good.
We’re at episode 145 and this free market economist still refers to himself as “a christian, and a communist” in the opening. I wonder if that will be cleared up any time soon? 😛
I had to listen again – now it does sound like “communist”!
This was a great episode. Thanks Dr. Murphy. The one question I would love to get an answer to is: Would a majority of postmodernist academics admit that they have a substanially Marxist worldview? Would the university administrators that hire postmodernists admit that they are hiring people who are highly likely to promote a Marxist worldview?
It seems to me that the pushback against postmodernism has very recently shifted from one of saying that it is just “fashonable nonsense” to use Sokal’s term to the more recent accusation that it is Trojan Horse for Marxism. I don’t have much reason to doubt anything Rectenwald asserted except this alternative data point: I have a friend and neighbor who is a tenured professor of Political Science at a brand name university. He doesn’t have many good things to say about the academic work of postmodernists in his field but, I’ve brought up the “they’re Marxists” critique with him and he thought it was a rather extreme fringe criticism. So, I’m just trying to sort through the various pieces of data.
A lot of this sounds like a critique of university culture and self-identified leftists within university culture more than a critique of Marxism / socialism / identity politics / etc as they exist outside of university culture.
According to an article from 2010, only 6.7% of the world’s population have college degrees.
www[dot]huffpost[dot]com/entry/percent-of-world-with-col_n_581807
“Forcing acceptance of beliefs based on their assertion alone” (from about 1 hour 7 minutes in) in particular sounds like a problem with universities. (Although force might be too strong a word, unless drugging people into accepting beliefs is a more common practice in universities than I think it is.) But supposing “force” here is a metaphor for rather less dramatic things like, “being given a bad grade”, “being shunned”, etc etc. If I get into a debate with someone on the street, or in a park, it is unlikely that the debate will end with one of us giving the other a grade of F. Nor is there any hotline that one of us could use to report the other for having a bias. However, if a student gets into a debate with a professor, it is possible the student will be punished with poor grades. And for whatever reason, a lot of students are terrified of getting poor grades. And then there are other mechanisms in place (shunning for example, apparently) for penalizing professors who fail to profess the way Deans want them to.
For example, I’m not sure how many people within university culture have noticed, but outside of university culture, Rachel Dolezal was the subject of a 2018 documentary, “The Rachel Divide”, and says she has received hundreds of supportive messages from people who were black, mixed, or in some way non-white. (Rachel Dolezal was mentioned about 56 minutes into the interview, and at least in Michael Rectenwald’s experience, it sounds as if things sympathetic to Rachel Dolezal are not tolerated in university culture that identifies itself as leftist.)
https://nypost.com/2020/07/04/rachel-dolezal-vindicated-by-black-lives-matter-movement/
I’m not sure whether that means that people have decided they agree that she is black, or merely accept that she believes she’s black and it’s pointless to hate her for believing that, though I would guess there is some of both, but the point is that outside of universities, there are people who engage in forms of debate (such as documentary-making) that go beyond, “I am right, and if you don’t agree with me, I will give you an F or shun you or something.”
I give a grade of C. Quoting world statistics for a primarily US issue is distracting, and there is a lack of context- no mention of the fact that “passing for black” is a very, very minority pursuit. But overall a reasonably argued comment 🙂
“However, if a student gets into a debate with a professor, it is possible the student will be punished with poor grades.”
This is possible and should not happen. The student should get bad grades if they are unable to argue their case well. No teacher should penalize students for disagreeing, but they should penalize for failing to support their arguments.
It is easy for outsiders to select examples of egregious claims made by academics from all viewpoints. Walter Block was misrepresented as approving slavery by using selective quotes. Left wing academics are similarly misrepresented. We need to be careful about jumping on bandwaggons about “scandals” in academia.
I don’t see it as a primarily US issue. Politics is just as important in Guatemala, for example, as it is in the US. Furthermore, things that happen in the United States can potentially have a devastating impact on Guatemala. Consider, for example, the Guatemalan genocide.
“The World: The C.I.A. and Guatemala; The Spies Who Never Came In From the Cold War”
by Clifford Krauss
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/07/weekinreview/the-world-the-cia-and-guatemala-the-spies-who-never-came-in-from-the-cold-war.html
Also see “PRESS CONFERENCE BY MEMBERS OF GUATEMALAN HISTORICAL CLARIFICATION COMMISSION”
https://www[dot]un[dot]org/press/en/1999/19990301.guate.brf.html
I don’t see it (it being politics) as a primarily US issue. It seemed to me that the issues actually addressed in the interview involved issues with the left in academia, and more specifically, issues with Michael Rectenwald’s personal experiences with the left in US academia. And yet, although he was talking about his personal experiences, it seemed to me (though I may have misunderstood) that he was making generalizations about the left based on those experiences in academia. If I understood correctly, or even if I did not understand correctly but other people understood incorrectly in the same way I did, then it seems relevant to point out that less than 10% of the world’s population is represented in academia. So there are a huge number of people who could be abstractly considered part of “the left” who are not represented in academia.
Politics is just as important in Guatemala, for example, as it is in the US. Furthermore, things that happen in the United States can potentially have a devastating impact on Guatemala. Consider, for example, the Guatemalan genocide.
“The World: The C.I.A. and Guatemala; The Spies Who Never Came In From the Cold War”
by Clifford Krauss
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/07/weekinreview/the-world-the-cia-and-guatemala-the-spies-who-never-came-in-from-the-cold-war.html
Also see “PRESS CONFERENCE BY MEMBERS OF GUATEMALAN HISTORICAL CLARIFICATION COMMISSION”
https://www[dot]un[dot]org/press/en/1999/19990301.guate.brf.html
I realize, of course, that Michael Rectenwald, at least in the interview in question, didn’t actually say anything about Guatemala. But people in Guatemala were labelled as communists and as leftists (whether or not they actually self-identified with those labels), and slaughtered based on those labels, so apparently, they are labelled as leftists. But I’m fairly sure that doesn’t mean they held all the same views that Michael Rectenwald’s leftist colleagues held.
And I think that part of the problem with the term leftist. It can be used to refer to Mayan villagers in Guatemala, and it can also be used to refer to many professors in American universities, and yet those are very different demographics, and, just as one individual in either of those demographics may hold very different views from another individual in the same demographic, so to the statistical trends of opinions are likely to be different from one demographic to the other.
I hope that makes it more clear why I cited the statistic about how few people have college degrees, though I am not sure that it does. Perhaps you are even more confused why I suddenly brought up the Guatemalan genocide.
Sorry for typos.
“And I think that part of the problem with the term leftist”
should be:
“And I think that *is* part of the problem with the term leftist”
“so to the statistical trends”
should be:
“so too the statistical trends”
Regarding Rachel Dolezal, she was actually discussed by Michael Rectenwald and Bob Murphy. If I recall correctly, they seemed to find it weird that “the left” (or, more precisely, the people they considered leftist who they personally had interacted with) recognized that people could be transgender, but did not recognize transblack.
I pointed out that there was a sympathetic documentary about her, and that she received numerous supportive messages, to illustrate that people who might be abstractly identified as leftists do not all have the same opinion about issues like whether someone can be transblack (or at least consider herself transblack without being a pariah worthy of hate), and, further, that many of them seem to be capable of changing their opinions after engaging in activities like watching documentaries. Dissent is allowed, at least outside of academia. (And probably within academia too, though perhaps not equally at all universities and colleges.)
I do not know what Mayan villagers in Guatemala would think of Rachel Dolezal, if anyone told them about her.
Regarding Walter Block, this is from his website, and, according to his website, written by him.
http://www.walterblock.com/publications/toward-a-libertarian-theory-of-guilt-and-punishment-for-the-crime-of-statism/
Now, reading footnote number 8,
So, apparently, Walter Block actually does approve slavery. That’s not precise of course. It would be more precise to say that he approves slavery under specific circumstances, namely, enslaving criminals whom he deems deserving of enslavement.
He is not alone in approving of slavery in the context of punishing people deemed to be criminals. If you read the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, it says,
Also, if you study Portuguese/Brazilian history, there’s a long precedent of considering slavery to be legitimate under certain circumstances, including as punishment for a crime. (I’ll try to find you a passage from “Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil” when I get the chance.) And not only in Portuguese/Brazilian history. This has been a recurring theme throughout human history, probably going back as far as the rise of agriculture, but certainly as far back as the Code of Hammurabi, which stated, for example, “If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.” (Or at any rate, that’s a translation of what it stated.)
Having established that Walter Block does indeed approve of the enslavement of people whom he would deem as criminals worthy of that punishment, and contextualized that by pointing out that many people throughout history have held similar views, and have approved of the enslavement of people they deemed criminals, I still think that Walter Block and those other people are in error to approve of slavery, even of criminals.
And I believe history gives a number of examples to show why it is a bad idea to enslave criminals. But to summarize the argument:
A) Allowing the enslavement of criminals can give lawmakers financial/economic incentive to criminalize ridiculous things, like, “using abusive language in the presence of a white woman” or “selling cotton after sunset”.
B) Allowing enslavement of criminals can give the police, judges, and others involved in law enforcement financial/economic incentives to find people guilty of crimes with little or no evidence that they are actually guilty.
C) If we accept that slavery is sometimes legitimate, and we see that someone is being enslaved, we might simply assume the person we see enslaved is enslaved for whatever we consider to be legitimate reasons, even if that is not actually the case, thus preventing rescue attempts.
D) Torturing someone to force them to work is arguably excessive punishment for car theft and many other things that people consider to be crimes.
E) The people who, arguably at least, would most deserve enslavement – rapists, murderers, and the most violent criminals in general – would also probably be the most dangerous to guard and force to work. Thing about this from the overseer’s perspective. Do you really want to be standing over a serial killer with a whip when he has a pickaxe or a garden tool or something like that in his hands? Would you feel safe doing so?
F) Slavery generally involves holding people in unsanitary conditions, and this has been responsible for a number of disease outbreaks in the past, most notably yellow fever outbreaks. For this reason, slavery, and in particular slavery that involves unsanitary conditions, could be considered reckless endangerment against the community/world at large.
I’ll try to find more supporting information for you when I have time (assuming you are interested in this topic), but to start with, consider the documentary, “Slavery by Another Name”, which covers the topic of just how horribly wrong that loophole in the 13th Amendment turned out in the United States, from after the Civil War until around World War II.
Regarding Walter Block, this is from his website, and, according to his website, written by him.
If it is illicit to invade the person or property of another, what should be the appropriate response from the forces of law and order?[5] It is a combination of making the victim “whole” again, and punishing the aggressor.[6] What this amounts to, in effect, is “two teeth for a tooth” plus costs of capturing and scaring. [7] Consider the following scenario: A steals a car from B. A is now captured. What is the just punishment that will restore B, as much as possible, to his previous non-victimization state? First, the automobile must be returned from the carjacker to its rightful owner. That is the first “tooth.” Then, what A did to B must be, instead, done to A, in B’s behalf, by the forces of law and order. Since A relieved B of a car, and took it for himself, the same must now be done to A; that is, A’s own car (not the one he just stole from B which has already been returned to B as the first tooth) must be given to B.[8] This is the “second tooth.”[9]
http://www.walterblock.com/publications/toward-a-libertarian-theory-of-guilt-and-punishment-for-the-crime-of-statism/
Now, reading footnote number 8,
If A does not have his own vehicle of equivalent value, then its value can be taken out of A’s hide: that is, instead of putting A in a jail at B’s (and all other taxpayers’) expense, where he can spend his days in front of a color tv, in cozy air conditioned circumstances, A will in effect be enslaved until he earns enough money to pay his debt to B. Our experience of this “curious institution” (Hummel, 1996; Thornton, 1994; Fogel and Engerman, 1974) shows that private concerns are able to “sweat” more value out of their charges than the costs of feeding and guarding them. So would it be, nowadays, under fully private (slave) prisons.
So, apparently, Walter Block actually does approve slavery. That’s not precise of course. It would be more precise to say that he approves slavery under specific circumstances, namely, enslaving criminals whom he deems deserving of enslavement.
He is not alone in approving of slavery in the context of punishing people deemed to be criminals. If you read the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, it says,
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Also, if you study Portuguese/Brazilian history, there’s a long precedent of considering slavery to be legitimate under certain circumstances, including as punishment for a crime. (I’ll try to find you a passage from “Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil” when I get the chance.) And not only in Portuguese/Brazilian history. This has been a recurring theme throughout human history, probably going back as far as the rise of agriculture, but certainly as far back as the Code of Hammurabi, which stated, for example, “If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.” (Or at any rate, that’s a translation of what it stated.)
It is interesting how certain linguistic markers carry on well past their reflection of reality. We still talk of dialing telephone numbers, and for Block a “color TV” is the height of luxury, certainly not a black and white TV, which have not existed in any numbers for decades. I also suspect he does not play team ball sports,, where “keeping your eye on the ball” will result in abject failure.
Block believes voluntary slavery is OK and I suppose punishment for crime is a form of volunteering for punishment.
Moderation seems to be a bit of a problem at the moment.
Answered below, at least so far as the “allowing any form of forced labor (even in the limited context of punishing alleged criminals or enforcing contracts in which people allegedly agreed to forced labor) opens the door for widespread fraud” part of the argument goes.
I tried to write you a reply regarding Walter Block, but it got stuck in the moderation queue for some reason.
In any case, here’s a link.
http://www.walterblock.com/publications/toward-a-libertarian-theory-of-guilt-and-punishment-for-the-crime-of-statism/
See in particular footnote 8 in that link.
Also see:
https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment
In particular, the part starting with “except”.
Also see 53 and 54 of the Code of Hammurabi.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Code_of_Hammurabi_(Harper_translation)
For some of the results of the loophole in the 13th amendment, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXwqVxY7R1g
and also the book by Douglas A Blackmon which that documentary is based on.
Block apparently thinks one should be allowed to sell oneself as a slave. His views are controversial. His views however were misrepresented by the NYT in a famous case where selective quotes made it appear Block thought slaves in the Usa were treated well, spending their days pleasantly picking cotton and eating nice gruel.
I disagree profoundly with Blocks views but it is very important to make sure you are addressing Blocks views and not a caricature of them.
That’s very reasonable of you Harold.
I also think that Walter Block is wrong, and that contracts that amount to slavery should not be upheld. You can’t stop people from signing such agreements, and there might be cases where they are temporarily desperate and willing to sign anything … but I don’t want to be put in a position where I’m expected to enforce this agreement after the person has changed his mind and wants out.
The argument is about property rights and inalienable rights vs alienable rights. There’s a whole bunch of potentially “sort-of like slavery” contracts that range from temporary servitude to even basic Non-Disclosure Agreements and in each case the alienable vs inalienable consideration needs to be taken seriously.
The lesson here is never talk to NYT reporters about anything, ever. Better to have no dealings whatsoever with such people.
I think maybe comments with the s-word are being delayed in the moderation queue. Did your comment go through the moderation queue?
Maybe I’ll just say “forced labor” or star it out or something instead.
In any case, you and Harold may be interested in this document:
The Ens****ment Process in the Portuguese Dominions of King Philip III of Spain in the Early Seventeenth Century
excerpt from:
Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black S****ry in Brazil
edited and translated by Robert Edgar Conrad
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Basically, the author discusses certain justifications for condemning people to forced labor that were viewed as legitimate by certain Portuguese people of that time period. Apparently, these justifications were endorsed by “ancient theologians, doctors of canon law, and jurists.”
The author writes,
The author then goes onto explain how these “principles” are essentially an invitation to fraud.
In the author’s opinion,
To give some of the author’s examples:
So, according to this author, the Portuguese provision for “voluntary forced labor” (back in that time period) opened the door for widespread fraud where people were threatened with murder or even cannibalism to get them to agree to forced labor, and this was then falsely claimed to be “voluntary forced labor”, which was illegitimate even by Portuguese standards of the time period, but nevertheless still common practice. My interpretation of the comment about the Indians not understanding “how important this was”, is that translators between the Portuguese and the Indians most likely deliberately neglected to make sure the Indians understood what they were being asked to sell, thus making the transactions fraudulent. Or in other words, if the agreement is in Portuguese, but the person allegedly agreeing to forced labor doesn’t understand Portuguese that well (if at all), and the agreement is not adequately explained to them in their own language,and the translation is perhaps even deliberately misleading, then it is fraudulent.
My take on this is that allowing “voluntary forced labor” would introduce much worse problems than merely people who legitimately agreed at some point in time changing their minds later. If “voluntary forced labor” were permitted, then in all likelihood, it would lead to such a great amount of fraud, that for every person who “voluntarily” agreed (for some definition of voluntary), nine more (if we accept the Portuguese author’s estimate) would involuntarily subjected to forced labor, with various forms of fraud used to disguise their involuntary forced labor as “voluntary forced labor”. And that to me, is a huge reason (though not the only reason) to oppose the idea of accepting “voluntary” agreements to forced labor as legitimate, and subsequently enforcing such agreements.
Minor clarification… I’m not sure if the seventeenth century Portuguese concept of voluntary forced labor would be the same as the more modern concept of voluntary forced labor. (And that’s not even the term he used… he said “if they sell themselves”.)
In the author’s view, the sale of self is illegitimate if done because others make a *pretense* of wishing to slaughter and/or eat that person. It is not entirely clear to me if it would be legitimate, in the author’s view, if others *actually* wished to slaughter and/or eat the person. Perhaps the Portuguese of the time period would view such a transaction as legitimate, because, from their perspective, the buyer would be “saving” them from slaughter and/or being eaten. From a more modern perspective, most people would probably say that was illegitimate, because it’s clearly an agreement being made under duress. (Also, considering the death rates of forced laborers in Brazil, most people taken there weren’t exactly being “saved” for long, if they were being saved at all.)
Contracts have always and always will be used to take advantage of the less educated and less well off. Buyer beware. Is there a difference in principle of selling yourself and not understanding what you are signing and selling your land and not understanding what you are signing? I suppose one problem is it is harder to obtain relief if you are owned by someone else who controls your movements.
I suppose we could have a system of compulsory court-appointed advisors to ensure the seller knew what they were doing before such contracts could be legal as a safeguard. Of course, fathers would not be allowed to sell their sons. That is, should we wish to allow such things at all.
I don’t think the argument that the contracts could be abused or mis-sold is sufficient of itself to invalidate the principle that you should be allowed to sell yourself. It does add weight in practice.
Harold wrote,
If I were a law enforcement person of decent conscience (at least to the extent of not wishing to enforce fraudulent contracts), and I knew that there was a 9/10ths chance that a particular contract were fraudulent, if we are to believe the Portuguese author’s estimate in the matter, why would I want to enforce it? If I were such a law enforcement person, I wouldn’t want to enforce a contract that someone hand over a $10 bill if I believed a 9/10ths chance it were fraudulent. And, if the contract were that someone had agreed to be tortured at another person’s whim for the rest of their life (or by anyone the latter person sold them too, or some overseer, etc etc.), I would have all the more reason for caution. If it was merely a contract to hand over a $10 bill, I might be satisfied if there were a greater than 50% chance that the contract was not fraudulent, since that would mean that there was a greater than 50% chance I was delivering the $10 bill to the correct person (or if I were details-oriented, perhaps I would make change and divide up the $10 in accordance with the percent chance I believed the contract was either valid or fraudulent), but for torture, the level of evidence I would want, if I were such a law enforcement officer, would likely be unattainable. The standard of evidence just for throwing someone in prison, from the perspective of many modern law enforcement people of reasonable conscience, even in the comparatively humane prisons of the 21st century, is “beyond a reasonable doubt”. How much higher should the standard of evidence, then, be to condemn someone to a lifetime of torture? Perhaps, “beyond even unreasonable doubts”? I should think it would be an unattainable standard of evidence. (From the perspective of a law enforcement officer of reasonable conscience not wishing to enforce fraudulent contracts, that is.)
I suppose that doesn’t prove that someone shouldn’t be allowed to sell himself or herself. But, from my perspective at least, it does at least prove that there should be absolutely no enforcement beyond that individual person’s honor, since only that individual person could be completely sure that the contract was not fraudulent, and no one who is not completely sure “beyond even unreasonable doubt” ought to be enforcing it. (And since “beyond even unreasonable doubt” is an effectively unattainable level of evidence, essentially, no one, other than the person who allegedly sold himself or herself, ought to be enforcing the contract.)
Harold wrote,
This has already been attempted, fairly recently in United States history. Or at any rate, something very similar to it was attempted.
In a letter dated March 21, 1903, Judge Jones wrote to Philander C. Knox.
The scheme uncovered by Judge Jones was not unique to Shelby and Coosa counties. Throughout much of the former Confederate states, after the US Civil War, convict leasing and similar systems became widespread, the general idea being to arrest black people (and in some instances, white people too) for trivial offenses, convict them based on shoddy evidence, and either sentence them directly to forced labor, or fine them an amount of money they could only pay off by agreeing to forced labor. (Under this system, it would be generous to estimate that only 9/10ths of these contracts were fraudulent. It was probably closer to a 10/10 fraud rate.)
[to be continued… but suffice it to say for now that Judge Jones eventually tries recommending that certain types of contracts be approved by judges.]
This seems essentially the same as plea bargains today. Especially as law officers are allowed to lie to suspects about the evidence against them. In the UK police are not allowed to lie about evidence. Seems a very good safeguard against wrong convictions.
Essentially the same, except the cruelty was more blatant back then.
Back then in Alabama, people were often sentenced to work in coal mines. Now, people are often sentenced to work for McDonald’s. I suppose that’s an improvement, in terms of reducing the amount of human suffering inflicted by the system, but it’s still forced labor.
From “America’s S**** Empire” by Chris Hedges,
Found on commondreams dot org.
I wonder how many people caught up in that are either innocent of the crime of which they are convicted, and/or convicted of some non-violent “crime”, and/or still awaiting trial.
Also, the second circuit only ruled that it is unconstitutional to require pre-trial detainees to perform forced labor as recently as 2015. And even then there’s a bit of a loophole for “personal housekeeping chores”.
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/apr/9/second-circuit-requiring-pretrial-detainees-perform-forced-labor-unconstitutional-15000-settlement-remand/
Also, Alabama is in the 11th circuit, not the 2nd circuit, so for all I know, pretrial detainees in Alabama might still be required to perform forced labor. I’m actually surprised that in about an hour of searching, I couldn’t find anything on the internet that says one way or the other whether pretrial detainees in Alabama are subjected to forced labor or not.
Not allowing police to lie about evidence is a good safeguard against wrongful convictions, as long as it is understood that one safeguard isn’t enough to stop wrongful convictions from happening anyway.
Also, it raises the question of, just who is there to stop the police from lying, even in the UK?
But anyway, while not allowing police to lie about evidence is a great idea, wrongful convictions do still happen even in the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-47973826
In S****ry by Another Name: The Re-Ens****ment of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon writes,
For more information, see Chapters VI and VII of S****ry by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon.
[to be continued, but suffice it to say that local judges disappointed Judge Jones’ expectations.]
The result of Judge Jones’ faith that judges would not condone illegal forced labor was not in fact a reduction in forced labor, but instead, and increase in the amount of documentation of that forced labor, as we can see in Chapter XII of S****ry by Another Name: The Re-Ens****ment of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon,
For the same reason, court-appointed advisors could not be trusted to ensure that people allegedly selling themselves understood what they were doing and were not under any form of duress (such as death threats). Court-appointed advisors could easily be corrupted by the same means that judges in the former Confederate states were corrupted after the US Civil War.
Specifically, many of these judges in the former Confederate states probably received a share of the profit from their activities in forcing people into forced labor.
Douglas Blackmon explains in Chapter II of S****ry by Another Name,
*sarcasm* Because paying witnesses to say someone is guilty is clearly a recipe for a fair and just legal system! *end sarcasm*
We are still debating principles vs practicalities.
We could argue that
1) voluntary slavery should not be permitted because it is fundamentally wrong, or
2) Voluntary slavery should not be permitted because it is not possible to avoid abuse of the allowances for such volunteering.
In practice it may not make any difference which justificartion is used, but it does make a difference as to how you will adress simiar problems.
Personally, i prefer the idea that selling yourself should not be permissible and nobody should be allowed to own anybody else. That avoids the problem of proving consent etc.
Nevertheless, this is not a defeater for someone who argues that it shoud be allowed, given sufficient protections to guard against abuse.
ultimately we have 3 positions.
1) it is never OK
2) It is OK in principle, but pracicalities make it impossible to impllement fairly, so it should not be permitted.
3) It is OK
I prefer 1, but am happy to agree with those who subscribe to 2, because the result is the same.
I am not sire if you subscribe to1 or 2.
To emphasize that many of the convicts caught up in convict leasing and similar systems were only considered criminals on the basis of horribly unjust laws and proceedings, here’s a few more quotes from S****ry by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon. These quotes are from Chapter IV.
*sarcasm* Ah, yes, the heinous crime of Not Given, even more heinous than murder! How dare people commit Not Given! *end sarcasm*
And, even for those things which may actually be considered crimes, such as “the alleged theft of items valued at just a few dollars”, it is still questionable that the persons convicted were in fact guilty, considering the incentives for witnesses to simply lie, and, even if they were guilty, that they deserved such horrible punishment for such a minor crime. Also, “the alleged theft of items valued at just a few dollars” might in some cases be justified in the name of reparations, morally speaking that is, although it is doubtful any southern court of the time period would have recognized that defense.
Note that convict leasing frequently amounted to a death sentence. Douglas Blackmon writes at the end of Chapter II of S****ry by Another Name,
Additionally, Douglas Blackmon describes some of the torture methods used in Chapter XIV,
It my opinion, the descriptions of torture a) help explain why we should be extremely skeptical that anyone would agree to such a thing, if they were not under duress and understood fully what they were agreeing to. and b) that such things could not be considered proportionate punishment for anything but the most heinous of crimes. (And if someone actually did commit such a heinous crime, I would have safety concerns for any prison guard who tried to force that criminal to work.)
Harold wrote,
It’s obvious that 17th century Portuguese ideals were not the same as the ideals of more modern people, not even those modern people who agree with such things as subjecting criminals to forced labor or enforcing forced labor contracts. My point in quoting the Portuguese author was not that their ideals were different from the ideals of more modern people advocating in favor of subjecting criminals to forced labor or enforcing forced labor contracts, which is obvious, but that the 17th century Portuguese failed to even live up to their own ideals. And, for the same reasons they failed to live up to their own ideals, so we should expect any system of forced labor, under whatever justifications (punishing criminals, enforcing contracts, whatever) to fail live up to it’s own ideals (at least those ideals which are openly stated), once put into actual practice, unless of course the stated ideals are something that would fail to get in the way of s**** traders who are more interested in profit than they are in ideals.
So, I do not know, off the top of my head, of any modern philosophers who endorse the idea of fathers selling their sons and daughters. But that’s not the point. The Portuguese apparently did endorse this practice, albeit only if the father had “legitimate need”, and as a result, men lied and falsely claimed that people were their sons and daughters (even when this was not true) in order to sell them, and also ignored the “legitimate need” provision.
Harold wrote,
It’s worth pointing out, that, even in 20th century English, or 17th century English for that matter, the term “sell oneself” does not necessarily mean to “sell oneself into s****ry”.
From dictionary dot com:
So, even in the present day, if someone signed a contract to sell himself or herself, he or she could easily argue that he or she meant he or she was agreeing to present himself or herself in a favorable light, or else that he or she was agreeing to compromise his or her principles for monetary gain, and was not actually agreeing to forced labor, and dictionary.com would back that argument up. In fact, the interpretation of selling oneself into forced labor isn’t even given on dictionary.com.
If it’s that ambiguous even in the English language, how much more ambiguous might it be if a Portuguese s**** trader was communicating with an Indian person via a translator? For all I know, the Indian person may have believed they were selling their friendship, not selling himself or herself into forced labor, and the translation may well have supporting that interpretation.
Also, linguistic trickery is not the only concern. Straight up duress – e.g. death threats – are another way contracts might be fraudulent.
Another reason why forced labor should not be allowed in any form, whether it’s is restricted on the basis of criminal status, skin color, contract signing, or whatever, is disease.
Note that I am not arguing that everything that could possibly cause disease should be banned, but given that forced labor is already immoral for other reasons, it’s more of a felony murder type argument. (The idea of felony murder is that if in the process of committing some other felony, you accidentally kill someone, it still counts as a first degree murder, since if you hadn’t been committing the felony to begin with, the accident wouldn’t have happened.)
But, also, even if you don’t accept my argument that forced labor is already immoral for other reasons, forced labor does carry an exceptionally high risk of incubating and/or spreading deadly disease.
For example, yellow fever.
In “Yellow Fever: Scourge of the South”, Jo Ann Carrigan writes,
Jo Ann Carrigan mentions that some version of that argument appeared in the New York Tribune in 1853, and goes on to give the counterarguments given by pro-s****ry Southerners. (Note that Jo Ann Carrigan wasn’t endorsing the pro-s****ry arguments, just documenting them.) Personally, I think the pro-s****ry arguments were weak. Anyway, there’s more.
In “The American Plague : The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History”, Molly Caldwell Crosby writes,
So, even before people finally figured out that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, they should have been able to figure out that it was spread by s****ry. (I suppose the poor sanitary conditions of s****ry, and the s**** trade in particular, probably provided favorable conditions for the mosquitoes to be transported across the Atlantic, or to wherever.)
One Mr. Audouard went so far as to argue that yellow fever originated on s**** ships due to the extremely poor hygiene on such ships.
https://www.scielo.br/pdf/hcsm/v16n2/en_15.pdf
Even if he wasn’t strictly 100% correct, I don’t think he was far off. The yellow fever may not have originated on the s**** ships, but those ships did allow yellow fever to travel away from regions in Africa where most people were immune to parts of the world with significant non-immune populations. And while it’s possible, in theory at least, that commerce not related to forced labor also could have carried yellow fever to other parts of the world, it seems that it generally spread along with s****ry, perhaps because the extreme lack of sanitation on those ships provided favorable conditions for the mosquitoes that can carry yellow fever.
Also see the original Portuguese version of Mr. Audouard’s argument.
https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-59702009000200014&lng=pt&tlng=pt
Also, Molly Caldwell Crosby notes that Henry Rose Carter suggested that yellow fever came to North America via the African s**** trade in the 1931 book, “Yellow Fever: An Epidemiological and Historical Study of Its Place of Origin.”
This underlines the fact that rules and laws are ultimately enforced and decided by people. Any rule can be subverted if nobody in power wants to apply it. Checks and balances only work if there are sufficient motivated people to make them work. The SC for example has no mechanism to enforce their rulings.
Yes, exactly!
That said, it would simplify habeas corpus and other proceedings to free people from forced labor if we could simply assume that all cases of forced labor were illegitimate and illegal, rather than having to listen to the s**** drivers arguing that they are legitimately subjecting people to forced labor because “they are criminals” or “they signed a contract” or whatever excuses they come up with, especially if they are lying or otherwise acting fraudulently 9/10ths of the time or more.
Also, we should recognize that allowing people to profit off of law enforcement creates motives for both the writing of unjust laws, and the fraudulent “enforcement” of those laws. If there’s a financial/economic motive to arrest a person and find them guilty, then they might be arrested and found guilty because of that financial/economic motive, and not because of any actual wrongdoing on their part.
The motive behind laws and law enforcement should be to protect ourselves from legitimately evil acts like murder and rape, not to make money off of other people’s labor. While there’s still plenty of room for debate about what protecting ourselves from legitimately evil acts like murder and rape should look like, at least if the profit motive were out of the way, it would be easier to focus on that debate.
This is one of the better interviews I’ve heard. David Goronski’s interview with James Lindsey and Rechtenwald was good and (help me) Glenn Beck’s interview with James Lindsey was good.