SLAVERY ! have you no shame !!!!

Sometimes you just have to trust a man. It used to be the custom that, when leaving prison, a man got back all his property - including his six-shooter and ammo. It was understood that he had "paid his debt" and had to deal peacefully with the rest of the world, or else he'd be back in prison or maybe in a small box, six feet long, six feet under.

 

As a bonded labourer, it becomes hard to resist once you're disarmed and strapped in leg irons.  And if you've inherited a debt bond from your father and his father before him that keeps you effectively enslaved to someone, they've got ample incentive to restrict your options visavis getting out of it.

Any bonded labour imposed as a sentence should have a fixed limit on its duration, just like any other legal sentence, and this should override the limit of "until the debt is paid".  (Although paying it off as an incentive to "early" release should still work).

http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/bonded_labour.aspx

Failing to pay a debt incurred through crime is - guess what - CRIMINAL. If a person has violated the rights of others the obligation incurred thereby overrides any arbitrary, unprincipled "time limit" which may be placed upon their time of service.

A debt cannot be justly passed on from one generation to another, however, and that is a separate issue.

Sometimes you just have to trust a man. It used to be the custom that, when leaving prison, a man got back all his property - including his six-shooter and ammo. It was understood that he had "paid his debt" and had to deal peacefully with the rest of the world, or else he'd be back in prison or maybe in a small box, six feet long, six feet under.

That's true enough. This is not recognized today as much as it should be for two reasons: the penalties for crime are not sufficiently severe, and law-abiding citizens are disarmed.

A debt cannot be justly passed on from one generation to another, however, and that is a separate issue.

Yes. Of course, for an unpaid debt to reduce the size of an estate to zero is not passing the debt to the next generation - only trying to set it to a negative value is that.

Also, debts created through a crime indeed should be distinct from other debts. For the State to initiate force by creating a bankruptcy law might be excusable for voluntarily accepted debts, but it can't be justified for that kind of debt.

Restitution is the goal.  The actual restitution will be set by the arbitrator.  The perps are responsible for finding employment to settle the debt and support themselves while doing so.  The arbitrator may have a list of businesses who would be interested in hiring the perps.  That doesn't mean the perps have to seek employment with those businesses.

In short, the acceptance of responsibility and societal assimilation.  ZAP in action.

One thing the perps get out of cooperating is the standing to use the same process themselves, when and if they are ever victims.  Some of them won't see any value in that, of course, but many will.

Someone on another thread observed that "ivory tower" economists assumed (based on "prisoner's dilemma" studies) that humans wouldn't cooperate, but that simple observation of humans shows that we do cooperate, we just do.  I heartily recommend the works of Jerry Harvey (The Abilene Paradox, and others), who makes a powerful case for the fear of abandonment or being outcast as THE deepest human fear -- care to hear his story of how it was that fear that blew up the Challenger?

As with the "prisoner's-dilemma"-vs-real-human-behavior situation, we humans can act purely selfishly with no regard for a group -- and observation shows that we are much more likely to go along with our group.  That of course begs the question of who we think "our" group is.  Kinko and Lawrence appear to be absorbing (more or less unconsciously) the idea of themselves as Cerereans; Morris is not.  I'd expect Kinko and Lawrence also to think of the three of them as a group, but for Morris to regard the other two as merely useful.

What's to be done about the Morrises in our species, I don't know.  I think Kinko and Lawrence are the sort to be "testing their limits" -- finding out just how bad is "too bad to be included", and then staying more or less within those social norms.  And I think the threat of being denied use of the system, if they dishonor it, will carry weight with them (especially if it is merely implied, and not explicitly stated).

Life on Ceres would depend a lot on co-operation.
People with a severe problem with other people would eventually find no one willing to open an airlock and let them in.

The following turns into a religious ramble. This particular knowledge set also tends to make people assume I'm Jewish. If I were, though, this would be considerably more detailed, as I would have studied enough to be able to point out exactly where everything is.

From page 1.

Biblical stories look mixed too. When the Israelites first conquered Canaan they took slaves, and some of the tribes living there tricked them into accepting them as slaves rather than kill them.

There are written injunctions among the laws not to enslave foreigners who visit Israel just because they are foreigners in Israel, not without some good reason. I don't recall any punishment listed for people who do it, the rule just says not to. Is it plausible that this might have happened a lot? The claim was that every 50 years all the slaves were supposed to be freed. If that was followed it would imply that the amount of credit offered to debtors would drop each year until the 50th year. When you can be enslaved for less than one year, you are worth much less than when you can go for 50 years if you live that long. But I don't know whether that custom was ever actually practiced. And anyway it would be only for Israelites who were enslaved for debts, and not for foreign slaves captured by the army or bought from foreigners.

Historically, no, the every 50 years thing wasn't practiced - it's not for no reason that they are repeatedly referred to as a 'stiff-necked people'. The laws in Torah and actual practices have been vastly different ever since it actually got written down.
Debts were supposed to be forgiven every 7 years, and after every 7th 7, the next year was where ALL slaves were freed, and all land that had been purchased or anything like that was returned to the original owner/their family. (Part of this was so that you wouldn't have one family end up with pretty well the whole country because another had fallen on hard times, or because they'd had a lot of daughters to pay dowry for rather than having sons that would've received it. The original layout of the country was, each tribe gets an area proportional to the number of people in it, and then they draw lots to see who gets which section - nobody lays claim to anything beforehand.)
Numerical significance of the 7 - 7 implies completion, and refers to Adonai. (lit. translation 'Lord' - but it's not the one that gets translated all in caps there.) 7 7s is... complete completion? (7 sets of 7 7s would imply the completest completion ever, though, because having something appear three times is like 'complete', 'completer' 'completest', or 'holy' 'holier' 'holiest' etc. etc.)

Add in, once they were actually in the holy land after the exodus, they were commanded to give 'the peace' to everyone. They weren't supposed to go out and conquer anything, but part of the covenant made between them and Adonai was 'if you turn away from me, there will be war, famine, death, etc.
Those that were in the land already when the israelites arrived, context in the original hebrew indicates they'd reached complete corruption by this point, and as such were cut out of the 'inheritance' of eternal life.

Oh, you mentioned not seeing any sort of punishment written for the violation of the law not to take slaves of foreigners as they entered the land. Anything without a specified punishment, the punishment is death. Eternal life is revoked, and only through the messiah can it be granted again. (A lot of the laws in there are ones that only ever apply if you've broken some other law, and have thus lost eternal life. Doing them was supposed to be an indication of repentance, submission to Adonai, etc. There are a lot less to keep if you never break any in the first place - and one of the requirements of the messiah prophecied there was that they would never break any in the first place.) Repeated offenses of certain things, punishment is death by execution or something similar, but for much of it, the law told the people not to pass judgment because it was Adonai's job.

To be honest the system sounds so open to exploitation it's not even remotely funny.

All it would take is some money and/or blackmail material. Before long you could build up a huge "bonded labourer" workforce.

All it would take is some money and/or blackmail material. Before long you could build up a huge "bonded labourer" workforce.

If you have a large proportion of bonded laborers, you have a problem unless you have substantial support from the rest of society.

If you have a large proportion of bonded laborers, you have a problem unless you have substantial support from the rest of society.

Don't see how you have a problem. Not like the mass populace is going to rise up against you for the sake of "unsavoury characters"

If you have a large proportion of bonded laborers, you have a problem unless you have substantial support from the rest of society.

Don't see how you have a problem. Not like the mass populace is going to rise up against you for the sake of "unsavoury characters"

The unsavory characters might rise up against you.

The unsavory characters might rise up against you.

You'll notice that slave rebellions have varied in effectiveness through the centuries. The closer we get to the modern era the less effective they have been overall.

The unsavory characters might rise up against you.

You'll notice that slave rebellions have varied in effectiveness through the centuries. The closer we get to the modern era the less effective they have been overall.

There was the overthrow of Batista in Cuba. The overthrow of the Shah in Iran. The overthrow of Noriega in the Philippines. The overthrow of Somoza in Nicaragua. And a large handful of other examples.

How many slave rebellions succeeded in the old days? There was Haiti. Were there others?

You'll notice that slave rebellions have varied in effectiveness through the centuries. The closer we get to the modern era the less effective they have been overall.

Historically, for slavery to be stable, you need free citizens who do not much like the slaves to outnumber the slaves about two to one.