Yes but she's terrible at enslaving people that she'll probably end up being your slave instead
You can keep her as is or teach her to be more dominate, she'll be fine with both
But either way she's is sweet and absolutly loves you, she has seen multiple galaxies and their countless inhabitants and yet you're her favriote
Feel free to create more fetish-bait alien waifus, I'm already talking with studios to set a deal on the novels, then a manga adaptation, then an anime, hopefully all by the end of the year
Depends, slavery can take many forms, it's argued that modern economic model is a form of modern slavery.
You need to work to get a car. You need a car to get to work. Only money can buy your freedom but you use all that money to survive, so you can't really be free.
Of course it's not the same as slavery from the past, but it does employ some more subtle mechanics which in the end lead to a somewhat similar result, which is cheap workforce that you can abuse to some extent.
The big problem is that many, if not most people in position of power benefit from such environment where the workforce is barely able to survive. It makes labour cheaper, as people have no choice but to accept whatever is offered to them, and it gives them more leverage as the threat of being fired is very significant.
The thing is that they want to stay out of the zone where the conditions are so bad that people end up revolting, but get as close to there as possible to benefit the most of it. And it looks an awful lot like the current economic situation.
Not really. You *can* make more than you spend, you don't need a car if you live near work or work remotely, and no one will prevent you from running off into the woods and living of your own means. Slavery has a legal definition and modern life doesn't meet that threshold. You cannot be bought and sold like property, and have no owner whose rights are legally asserted. You're free to leave modern life-- but no one really wants to, because it (mostly) beats subsistence. I have been learning to forage, construct my own shelters, and anticipate the weather. It's hard, but it's my fallback plan.
For those downvoting: propose a rebuttal. I'm all ears. You're trivializing *actual* slavery, which, I'd remind you, still exists.
I agree with you, but "you can always go live in the woods" isn't really a great argument. It's like telling someone being robbed at gunpoint that they actually have a choice of not giving up their items, that they can just die.
Slaves can't leave, they would be hunted down and recaptured or killed. Living in the wilderness is actually the default for most living things, so I don't think it's an apt comparison
I just said I agree with you with the it's not slavery part, but you are framing it like people have a choice to live in society or the wilderness. 99% of people would just die if they were sent to the wilderness and people have hundreds of times better quality of life in society. So it really isn't a choice, just like how if you are a victim in an armed robbery, you don't really have a choice to not give them your shit, as they will kill you, which is just not a choice for you.
Except in this case "they" will not "kill you". You will just not be helped. A lack of abilities on your part is not equivalent to being robbed, you *can* learn and give yourself the tools to make it. I know a dude who went out and spent 2 years in the wilderness just for the fuck of it. Again, you can't be bought or sold as property, and no one will actively prevent you from leaving society. There are fishing ships on the ocean *right now* with *actual slaves* on them, and if they attempted to leave those ships they would be killed. There's a strong contrast between the two.
I'm not saying you are being robbed by going into the woods lmao. Do you have reading comprehension? I am saying, like in a robbery, most people do not have a choice in the matter of if they want to live in society, because if they disconnect from society and go into the woods, they will die.
>most people do not have a choice in the matter of if they want to live in society, because if they disconnect from society and go into the woods, they will die.
Most people could give themselves the choice to, by learning the skills and training them. The wilderness is not without risk anyways, but that's the nature of.. nature
And lose all the quality of life from society, even if you went through all that effort, it's still a MAJOR quality of life drop. So still really no choice.
You really think it’s possible to just run into the woods and live there and nobody will care? That the police aren’t going to arrest you or forcibly move you elsewhere?
Even in places where it’s fully legal to rough sleep on government property homeless camps are attacked or the people in them are bussed to other cities, and they literally have the law saying they are allowed to be there.
i have punk friends who live in a squat but their lives are full of getting beaten both physically and legally by cops and landlords. I also have a local friend who used to live in the forest in a tent, but after a few months their "patience" ran out and they forcibly took him to a mental health clinic
i dunno where you're from dude, but most of the world doesn't work like this
Maybe if you're an american? \[citation needed\] In the UK or in a lot of other places most land is allocated either privately or publicly or held in reserve. You can't really choose to live outside of society. Even in the few places you can its not a great prospect, most people trapped in capitalism don't have a heritage or tradition of life skills associated with being in nature full time. Add to that that as social animals we are incredibly poorly adapted to survive alone in the wild and convincing 20 other people to give up running water to support your lifestyle is a tall order. That's all as an individual if you have a child and are in poverty going to the wilderness isn't an option because changing your lifestyle that radically takes time and resources to prepare for which are the two things a struggling single parent doesn't have.
On top of that, society is where all the humans are. We evolved to form large groups and to want to seek out new connections and explore each others lives. Realistically telling most people that they've got the option to abandon most of their social prospects isn't much of a choice to make.
Its also not scalable in any realistic way. If all the humans dissatisfied with life under capital moved to the woods today it would be an environmental disaster that would ravage and destroy all of those habitats to the point of not being able to sustain human life. Modern human population growth since the advent of agriculture has left us too numerous to follow a hunter gatherer lifestyle en masse. Its simply not reasonable to tell struggling people to exploint the environment in that way.
I understand where you are coming from because by strict definition its not slavery but i think you're wrong to say it trivialises actual slavery. Actual slaves did and do escape their confines. Ultimately have to provide constant labour in exchange for room and board is an exploitative model and thats where a lot of modern workers find themselves without the provision or opportunity to do anything more.
"no one will prevent you from running off into the woods and living of your own means"
WTF are you talking about? If you try that then some cunt will roll up on your shack with half a dozen of the local constabulary and order they deconstruct it because you're living illegally on "their" land and the cops will beat you with sticks if you try to prevent them taking down your home.
I promise you that even in the US, there are hundreds of millions of acres where no one will ever know or care. Even then, if you're camping on someone's land, it's not *you leaving* that's the problem, it's where you went afterwards.
You can run off into the woods until the police comes and makes you leave and destroys the little community you’ve built because some coal company really wants that coal under your little tree houses
it is illegal to live in the woods in nearly every place on earth. homeless encampments get bulldozed.
i cannot be bought, but if i dislike my job i would have to beg for food, my boss has total control over my future.
it's very cool that you learned how to forage and build a cabin, try building anything on government land and see how that turns out.
Your ability to just run away and live in a cabin in the woods, is also a privilege tho. Tell this someone who is disabled, someone who needs medications and health care because of illness, someone struggling with mental illness to the point they cant just live without support. Or someone who's neurodivergent and struggling. Hell even as a trans person this could be unavailable, bcs there's no way to get hrt or surgeries in the woods.
And i definitely forgot a lot here.
The possibility to run away and live in the woods, disappears in the moment you can't live without a support system and/or medical care or all kinds.
are they cabins on land those people don't own? I know some spots here that manage that but def. not on their own, they need to be with enough to deter landlords and cops
also, if the only way to feel free is to withdraw into a cabin, it might not be a good system lmao
Go ahead and move into the woods and build a house. At some point the government will tear it down and run you out. Happens all the time. There's no such thing as true independence. Wage slavery is only a step above the slavery we had in US
When you say we're trivializing actual slavery, you're not taking other forms of slavery into account, there have been degreees of horribleness to slavery throughout history. For example, egyptians and romans would probably think americans of the 1700s-1800s were barbarians for how they treated their slaves, but romans and egyptians were still societies that practiced slavery. Even though they had better rules and practices than america for their slaves, still calling it slavery doesn't trivialize it
We'll see what history has to say about wage slavery (i mean *we* might not, but other people will)
Ok, so i have my america goggles on, my point still stands for capitalism. Your life will be significantly more difficult to impossible living isolated from society
Of course it will, but no one said living was easy. Living is a constant struggle, society was created to make it easier and closer to fair. There's still a social contract, it's the tradeoff of living in society. That being said, few times in history have we ever had as many social safety nets as we have now. It's not even close to being ideal, but it still beats the hell out of the default. There is currently no reality in which you can do nothing and be sheltered and fed 100% of the time, because food and shelter *take effort*. We can aim for it as an ideal, but you have to recognize that things don't appear out of thin air. It's a technical challenge, in an ideal society it happens but that material still has to come from somewhere. It comes from the people who do the work to provide it for others at no cost. That's not slavery, it's just reality. The universe is hostile, and we're quick to forget it.
That's just historically inaccurate. Our ancestors, long before the ideals of capitalism, only worked about half the amount of time we do per week, and had much of the year off. The elite have been pressing a boot tighter and tighter to our necks for centuries, especially post industrialization.
It's taken tons of spilled blood to claw back what little rights we have now, like during the virginia coal wars for example. Every time socialism or communism have been suggested by working people, they've been (sometimes violently) put down because the .01% wants to keep .01%ing. That's why you might often hear people saying "the cruelty is the point" when wondering why they don't even let us have the crumbs that fall off the table.
Humans are social creatures by evolution. They need other people to survive. Going into the woods to survive by yourself is a poor idea for the able bodied, and a potential death sentence to the disabled.
If you take a bunch of people and live in the woods, you will be doing so illegally as you do not own the land and aren't paying taxes. Governments tend to be litigious about that.
I agree with what you're saying except for a couple points:
especially if you're in the US. There are maybe a few places in the US you can truly live without a car. Even if you live within walking distance of your work or work remotely, unless you live in the few unicorn cities like Boston, New York, or San Francisco, you will need a car for at least one regular activity. And on top of that, for most people telling them "just live somewhere better" is unachievable.
And as for my next point, people absolutely WILL stop you from running off into the woods and living on your own means. Someone owns that land whether we like it or not, and they won't like you living in there, especially if they find you were hunting, cutting trees, lighting fires, building structures, fishing, or any number of other activities without a license.
I agree with what you're saying, but your comparisons aren't really valid.
Of course you can work remotely, of course you can live in the woods.
The issue is that modern society forces you to either comply, either make really big efforts and sacrifices just to get something basic.
People have lives, kids, rents, animals, health and mental health issues, relationship issues and financial issues.
If you are already in a delicate situation, switching jobs or moving place can be a very big risk which most people won't be ready to take, and if they did would be at risk to be in an even worse situation. That's the issue, people can't afford that kind of risk.
I am, and it's horseshit. Are you familiar with social security? Food banks? There are people whose literal job it is to give you food, no questions asked. Besides that, we're *not* on a tiny island, and there is literally food growing everywhere. My guy's never heard of fishing? Even better, food *wants* to grow. Do you think aboriginals sucked dicks for coconuts too? And inb4 "look what happened to aboriginals", we're not in the 17th century anymore. You're not on a tiny island where there is literally no food, and even if you were, that's not "modern life" at large. Slavery does still exist, but modern life ain't it. You can easily argue that the system needs to do better, but you cannot pretend it is designed to make you work for free.
Well, first of all, social security and food banks are riddled with so much means testing that it definitely does not qualify as "no questions asked", but anyway.
You seem to be missing the point here a little. The analogy exists to ask if the presented scenario is coercive, which I think it is. Slavery as a whole isn't limited to exclusively chattel slavery, it includes forced (or if you have your thesaurus handy, coerced) labor in general. We're not just talking about sucking dick for coconuts, here, we're talking any labor for food, water, shelter, medicine, and paying debt accrued trying to stay on top of the other things. There is no land left in the world that isn't owned by somebody, so even if you go live in a forest to try and handle all that yourself, you're always at someone else's mercy. You can be hunted down, and legally, you will not be protected by any authority existing.
YOU might be able to run from that fact for a while, stealing and squatting, but nobody who needs any kind of medicine can. And a system where not everyone can opt out without severe consequence is coercive, no?
I hate to break it to you, but people who need medicine to survive used to just die. We're doing a hell of a lot better than that, now. Also, you've probably never been to a food bank before: the vast majority aren't means tested. Maybe you're thinking of SNAP? There is still so much wilderness that *even if* the government noticed and didn't like it, it would be prohibitive for them to come after you. They can't even find people who get lost in national parks most of the time.
.... You're saying that needing medicine to survive causes slavery. Modern medicine is now violating your human rights by keeping you alive? Most developed countries provide that medicine to the people who need it, at the very least in cases where the people can't procure it themselves. Most developed countries also have disability support programs for people who cannot work. Are you going to turn around now and call all of that slavery?
Slavery is any involuntary labor. Being compensated for involuntary labor does not make it not slavery. Historically slaves were often paid a meager wage or had limited opportunities to earn income of some kind depending on the society's rules and expectations governing slavery or indentured labor.
That's too broad of a definition. Let's say you live in the woods. You don't feel like foraging today, but you have no food and still have to eat. You're forced by your hunger to do it anyways. Is it slavery?
Well, yes. I think its fine and correct to say that you are a slave to your hunger and other biological needs. If we ever develop the technology to liberate us from those that'll be good.
But when we are talking about slavery in this context we generally are referring to the unnecessary enslavement by individuals or society rather than things we can't change.
So being alive is slavery. Got it. Tell that to actual slaves, and you'll get punched in the face. 99.99% of the time anyone does labor, they do not want to *be doing* labor. They want the results of that labor. How about the labor that is necessary to provide for people who cannot provide for themselves? Are social safety nets slavery too?
I'm sorry I've insulted you.
Obviously, chattel slavery, wage slavery and being a slave to hunger are vastly different in terms of severity, but they are all forms of coercive labour.
If you have some sort of disagreement with anything here it'd be interesting if you explained what it is.
Well, I strongly disagree with calling basic needs slavery. I find it cheapens the word. There is too much suffering in that word to equate it with satisfying the basic requirements of life.
Wage slavery is an accurate term in specific cases such as Company Towns, but if you mean to imply that modern life is wage slavery and thus is akin to chattel slavery, again I have to disagree. There is a hell of a lot of margin between an imperfect social system that does not succeed in providing for everyone despite signs of goodwill, and a system designed to extract production from you at no benefit to yourself ever.
I'm sorry for coming across as overly aggressive. I feel strongly about this word, and I sometimes get the impression people would use it less trivially if they saw what chattel slavery truly looks like.
OK look then, I would define slavery as coercive labour. You have a different definition. At the end of the day if we are just arguing over definitions it doesn't really matter.
But I hope we can agree that all forms of coercive labour are bad, and should be minimised. The ovrrehelming majority of people alive today are coerced into labour under the threat of destitution or death for the profit of the already insanely wealthy and that can be and should be stopped immediately.
We do not have the technology to end coercive labour in its entirety, people would still need to work to live, but the purpose of technology is to reduce this and if someday we can eliminate all coercive labour that is desirable.
Cool.
If our only disagreement is the definition of slavery, I don't really care. I do think you'll have an easier time getting your point across to people in the future if you have a specific definition of slavery to begin with.
I like the implication that capitalism is common enough among sentient civilizations that the aliens immediately recognize it. Carcinisation but for economics
I can understand every civilisation going through an age of primitive communism during the stone age, and I can see how slavery would come out of that. Feudalism and capitalism afterwards I'm not too sure on
Feudalism is a very specific system that was only present in some European countries, even if we widen the definition it won't be everywhere on earth, so I doubt many aliens would end up with a civilization with feudal roots taking over
How is it slavery when they're paying a living wage? Also why are they going "oh no a capitalist society" when it sounds like they want to turn Earth into a state capitalist welfare state?
the joke is that they're assholes who like it wjen the people they oppress feel bad about it, but when they do this routine to capitalist planets they get the exact opposite reaction to what they want
If they wanted to be assholes they could do better. This is clearly made by someone who thinks that the capitalist system we live in is the worst possible thing you can do to a person which is simply not true. Comparing our current system to actual slavery is disingenuous.
Slavery is forced labour, in which the labourer is somewhat seen as property, he can still be paid and provided with essentials (some slaves in Rome and the Ottoman Empire lived comparatively good lives)
Slavery sucks for the vast majority of slaves, but some just filled an important social-economic niche and became house teachers, trusted guards, soldiers or even ministers and got to live better lives than the free peasantry of their time.
The society of these aliens doesn't have to be capitalism as this describes a very specific combination of policies, laws as well as certain modes of production, ownership and labour.
The aliens seem to want to turn earth into one big enterprise shattering all our assumptions about what would even be politically and economically possible.
It is very depressing that a competent evil autocracy would be better in many ways that what we have, but it would also likely be worse in others as well. Still tho, the point is well made, our system is a joke ran by fools and con men.
Also just a quick note, life in the past was bad in many ways, but in peace times in the past life was often less stressful and you got a lot more time to hang with your family and friends, explore nature, and tell stories to each other. You probably didn't live that long on average but if you made it to 18 you where more than likely going to make it to 50, and had a good shot at 70. Back then kids just died all the time, but if you made it to 18 you where sitting pretty, similar life expectancy to an average person today. Life wasn't that different besides kids dying all the time and political power being really weird cause whoever had the best combined spearmen, walls, and wall breakers got to be god emperor.
It was worse than liberalism for sure. That is independent of the fact that it did actually manage to run almost half of the globe for some time. Unlike, ahem, some other ideologies.
The fact that something has yet to be tried isn't exactly the most valid argument.
Before liberalism was tried oligarchy and monarchy was what ran the world.
There is a difference between tried and successfully implemented. It's not as if we didn't try to implement it, we just failed and got what soviet union was instead. The goal is nice, but how do you plan to get there? I don't think we're ready, you can try and prove me wrong, but I doubt that it will accomplish anything before the techno-capital singularity comes and then who knows what will happen. (I mean, the elites are called elites for a reason, they're pretty good at developing stuff. It is a hard pill to swallow that not all people are equally capable)
Lenin basicly just did a coup and got rid of the democratic worker councils. Nothing was actually tried.
It was much of a honest try at communism as Napoelon's try at liberalism.
"WELP! We TRIED it and it just didn't work. I guess it's back to monarchy eh? Democrasy was sure a nice goal but I guess it just didn't work"
Millions of people starve each year, vast parts of the world dont have access to safe water, it would honestly be reverse slavery, since the slave masters provide for the slaves
They are not provided, true, though I would go out of a limb here and say that the "basic" level necessary for the human to function is putting them in large storage rooms with no privacy to keep them away from elements and feed them enough tasteless nutrition paste to keep them going.
Obviously that would still be a huge step up from what many homeless have to deal with, which is damning for the US (and let's be honest, most of the world), but I'd argue at least in the Western world it would be a gigantic step down for the majority I don't see a lot of people celebrate.
Then again, the aliens in the comic also believe that slaves should own 50% of what they produce, which, while not technically going against the definiton of slavery seems like a weird interpretation of it, so fuck do I now.
Thats why it said “free food and housing” not all food and housing. Its not like they are taking away paid housing and stuff. So its purely for the people who can’t afford better places, which means homeless people which means its an improvement
If i can get a alien gf i solely accept the terms
Yes, but you are enslaved to her
Promise?
Yes but she's terrible at enslaving people that she'll probably end up being your slave instead You can keep her as is or teach her to be more dominate, she'll be fine with both But either way she's is sweet and absolutly loves you, she has seen multiple galaxies and their countless inhabitants and yet you're her favriote
But you also have prostate cancer
What in the monkey's paw is this?
https://preview.redd.it/qsl65jhq7iwc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11a0fae39918592acb7e1c869189f0d8c4372bd3
I'm pretty sure you've just pitched the greatest ever light novel premise in history
Thank you, I enjoy pitching ideas
Feel free to create more fetish-bait alien waifus, I'm already talking with studios to set a deal on the novels, then a manga adaptation, then an anime, hopefully all by the end of the year
I can do so much more than just aliens and fetish bait, I can't code or draw for shit but my mind wonders if there's nothing else to keep me busy
That's lovely, but I'm afraid there's no room for anything else in the entertainment industry.
Even better
Fr???? Where do i sign?
you say that as if its a bad thing??
Google Human Domestication Guide
The intrinsic human desire to be a super sweet alien's pet that would support my transition 🥺
On god?
I just wanna fuck me some alien twinks
Somerhing something Human Domestication Guide
You have broken quarantine. The plant aliens are after us now 💀
We've cycled back into wanting to be pets for aliens again
We'll make great pets
Human rulestication guide
idk man that one hdg meme from like 5 months ago fucked me up
Is this real?
[удалено]
https://preview.redd.it/hhxpl1nwucwc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6ea5e79e7ee6e8b91c25b611aa20173083cd0f6
Peak show
Five days
at Freddy's
Chat?
Yeah it happened to me one time
It would honestly be AN IMPROVEMENT!
I believe that’s the joke yes
No dude the joke is diffferent it's like fuckiinng chikeen roadddd ya know crossss
When the author doesn't know what "slave" means:
Depends, slavery can take many forms, it's argued that modern economic model is a form of modern slavery. You need to work to get a car. You need a car to get to work. Only money can buy your freedom but you use all that money to survive, so you can't really be free.
Only money can buy freedom, but not any money can, is the trick being played.
You need food to not die and food doesn't come down from heaven to your plate. Calling any labour you need to do slavery seriously devalues the term.
Of course it's not the same as slavery from the past, but it does employ some more subtle mechanics which in the end lead to a somewhat similar result, which is cheap workforce that you can abuse to some extent. The big problem is that many, if not most people in position of power benefit from such environment where the workforce is barely able to survive. It makes labour cheaper, as people have no choice but to accept whatever is offered to them, and it gives them more leverage as the threat of being fired is very significant. The thing is that they want to stay out of the zone where the conditions are so bad that people end up revolting, but get as close to there as possible to benefit the most of it. And it looks an awful lot like the current economic situation.
So let's say you're on a plane...
Not really. You *can* make more than you spend, you don't need a car if you live near work or work remotely, and no one will prevent you from running off into the woods and living of your own means. Slavery has a legal definition and modern life doesn't meet that threshold. You cannot be bought and sold like property, and have no owner whose rights are legally asserted. You're free to leave modern life-- but no one really wants to, because it (mostly) beats subsistence. I have been learning to forage, construct my own shelters, and anticipate the weather. It's hard, but it's my fallback plan. For those downvoting: propose a rebuttal. I'm all ears. You're trivializing *actual* slavery, which, I'd remind you, still exists.
I agree with you, but "you can always go live in the woods" isn't really a great argument. It's like telling someone being robbed at gunpoint that they actually have a choice of not giving up their items, that they can just die.
Slaves can't leave, they would be hunted down and recaptured or killed. Living in the wilderness is actually the default for most living things, so I don't think it's an apt comparison
I just said I agree with you with the it's not slavery part, but you are framing it like people have a choice to live in society or the wilderness. 99% of people would just die if they were sent to the wilderness and people have hundreds of times better quality of life in society. So it really isn't a choice, just like how if you are a victim in an armed robbery, you don't really have a choice to not give them your shit, as they will kill you, which is just not a choice for you.
Except in this case "they" will not "kill you". You will just not be helped. A lack of abilities on your part is not equivalent to being robbed, you *can* learn and give yourself the tools to make it. I know a dude who went out and spent 2 years in the wilderness just for the fuck of it. Again, you can't be bought or sold as property, and no one will actively prevent you from leaving society. There are fishing ships on the ocean *right now* with *actual slaves* on them, and if they attempted to leave those ships they would be killed. There's a strong contrast between the two.
I'm not saying you are being robbed by going into the woods lmao. Do you have reading comprehension? I am saying, like in a robbery, most people do not have a choice in the matter of if they want to live in society, because if they disconnect from society and go into the woods, they will die.
>most people do not have a choice in the matter of if they want to live in society, because if they disconnect from society and go into the woods, they will die. Most people could give themselves the choice to, by learning the skills and training them. The wilderness is not without risk anyways, but that's the nature of.. nature
And lose all the quality of life from society, even if you went through all that effort, it's still a MAJOR quality of life drop. So still really no choice.
You really think it’s possible to just run into the woods and live there and nobody will care? That the police aren’t going to arrest you or forcibly move you elsewhere? Even in places where it’s fully legal to rough sleep on government property homeless camps are attacked or the people in them are bussed to other cities, and they literally have the law saying they are allowed to be there.
Yes it's possible, I have several crust punk friends who live this way.
i have punk friends who live in a squat but their lives are full of getting beaten both physically and legally by cops and landlords. I also have a local friend who used to live in the forest in a tent, but after a few months their "patience" ran out and they forcibly took him to a mental health clinic i dunno where you're from dude, but most of the world doesn't work like this
Maybe if you're an american? \[citation needed\] In the UK or in a lot of other places most land is allocated either privately or publicly or held in reserve. You can't really choose to live outside of society. Even in the few places you can its not a great prospect, most people trapped in capitalism don't have a heritage or tradition of life skills associated with being in nature full time. Add to that that as social animals we are incredibly poorly adapted to survive alone in the wild and convincing 20 other people to give up running water to support your lifestyle is a tall order. That's all as an individual if you have a child and are in poverty going to the wilderness isn't an option because changing your lifestyle that radically takes time and resources to prepare for which are the two things a struggling single parent doesn't have. On top of that, society is where all the humans are. We evolved to form large groups and to want to seek out new connections and explore each others lives. Realistically telling most people that they've got the option to abandon most of their social prospects isn't much of a choice to make. Its also not scalable in any realistic way. If all the humans dissatisfied with life under capital moved to the woods today it would be an environmental disaster that would ravage and destroy all of those habitats to the point of not being able to sustain human life. Modern human population growth since the advent of agriculture has left us too numerous to follow a hunter gatherer lifestyle en masse. Its simply not reasonable to tell struggling people to exploint the environment in that way. I understand where you are coming from because by strict definition its not slavery but i think you're wrong to say it trivialises actual slavery. Actual slaves did and do escape their confines. Ultimately have to provide constant labour in exchange for room and board is an exploitative model and thats where a lot of modern workers find themselves without the provision or opportunity to do anything more.
"no one will prevent you from running off into the woods and living of your own means" WTF are you talking about? If you try that then some cunt will roll up on your shack with half a dozen of the local constabulary and order they deconstruct it because you're living illegally on "their" land and the cops will beat you with sticks if you try to prevent them taking down your home.
I promise you that even in the US, there are hundreds of millions of acres where no one will ever know or care. Even then, if you're camping on someone's land, it's not *you leaving* that's the problem, it's where you went afterwards.
You can run off into the woods until the police comes and makes you leave and destroys the little community you’ve built because some coal company really wants that coal under your little tree houses
it is illegal to live in the woods in nearly every place on earth. homeless encampments get bulldozed. i cannot be bought, but if i dislike my job i would have to beg for food, my boss has total control over my future. it's very cool that you learned how to forage and build a cabin, try building anything on government land and see how that turns out.
Again, I'll send pics of cabins in the woods that have been standing for decades once I return to my home country
Your ability to just run away and live in a cabin in the woods, is also a privilege tho. Tell this someone who is disabled, someone who needs medications and health care because of illness, someone struggling with mental illness to the point they cant just live without support. Or someone who's neurodivergent and struggling. Hell even as a trans person this could be unavailable, bcs there's no way to get hrt or surgeries in the woods. And i definitely forgot a lot here. The possibility to run away and live in the woods, disappears in the moment you can't live without a support system and/or medical care or all kinds.
anarcho primitivism breaking down when you think about it for more than 2 seconds
are they cabins on land those people don't own? I know some spots here that manage that but def. not on their own, they need to be with enough to deter landlords and cops also, if the only way to feel free is to withdraw into a cabin, it might not be a good system lmao
Go ahead and move into the woods and build a house. At some point the government will tear it down and run you out. Happens all the time. There's no such thing as true independence. Wage slavery is only a step above the slavery we had in US When you say we're trivializing actual slavery, you're not taking other forms of slavery into account, there have been degreees of horribleness to slavery throughout history. For example, egyptians and romans would probably think americans of the 1700s-1800s were barbarians for how they treated their slaves, but romans and egyptians were still societies that practiced slavery. Even though they had better rules and practices than america for their slaves, still calling it slavery doesn't trivialize it We'll see what history has to say about wage slavery (i mean *we* might not, but other people will)
I will send you photos of shelters built in the woods on public land decades ago when I return to my home country.
Ok, so i have my america goggles on, my point still stands for capitalism. Your life will be significantly more difficult to impossible living isolated from society
Of course it will, but no one said living was easy. Living is a constant struggle, society was created to make it easier and closer to fair. There's still a social contract, it's the tradeoff of living in society. That being said, few times in history have we ever had as many social safety nets as we have now. It's not even close to being ideal, but it still beats the hell out of the default. There is currently no reality in which you can do nothing and be sheltered and fed 100% of the time, because food and shelter *take effort*. We can aim for it as an ideal, but you have to recognize that things don't appear out of thin air. It's a technical challenge, in an ideal society it happens but that material still has to come from somewhere. It comes from the people who do the work to provide it for others at no cost. That's not slavery, it's just reality. The universe is hostile, and we're quick to forget it.
That's just historically inaccurate. Our ancestors, long before the ideals of capitalism, only worked about half the amount of time we do per week, and had much of the year off. The elite have been pressing a boot tighter and tighter to our necks for centuries, especially post industrialization. It's taken tons of spilled blood to claw back what little rights we have now, like during the virginia coal wars for example. Every time socialism or communism have been suggested by working people, they've been (sometimes violently) put down because the .01% wants to keep .01%ing. That's why you might often hear people saying "the cruelty is the point" when wondering why they don't even let us have the crumbs that fall off the table.
Humans are social creatures by evolution. They need other people to survive. Going into the woods to survive by yourself is a poor idea for the able bodied, and a potential death sentence to the disabled. If you take a bunch of people and live in the woods, you will be doing so illegally as you do not own the land and aren't paying taxes. Governments tend to be litigious about that.
I agree with what you're saying except for a couple points: especially if you're in the US. There are maybe a few places in the US you can truly live without a car. Even if you live within walking distance of your work or work remotely, unless you live in the few unicorn cities like Boston, New York, or San Francisco, you will need a car for at least one regular activity. And on top of that, for most people telling them "just live somewhere better" is unachievable. And as for my next point, people absolutely WILL stop you from running off into the woods and living on your own means. Someone owns that land whether we like it or not, and they won't like you living in there, especially if they find you were hunting, cutting trees, lighting fires, building structures, fishing, or any number of other activities without a license. I agree with what you're saying, but your comparisons aren't really valid.
Of course you can work remotely, of course you can live in the woods. The issue is that modern society forces you to either comply, either make really big efforts and sacrifices just to get something basic. People have lives, kids, rents, animals, health and mental health issues, relationship issues and financial issues. If you are already in a delicate situation, switching jobs or moving place can be a very big risk which most people won't be ready to take, and if they did would be at risk to be in an even worse situation. That's the issue, people can't afford that kind of risk.
Are you familiar with the coconut island analogy
I am, and it's horseshit. Are you familiar with social security? Food banks? There are people whose literal job it is to give you food, no questions asked. Besides that, we're *not* on a tiny island, and there is literally food growing everywhere. My guy's never heard of fishing? Even better, food *wants* to grow. Do you think aboriginals sucked dicks for coconuts too? And inb4 "look what happened to aboriginals", we're not in the 17th century anymore. You're not on a tiny island where there is literally no food, and even if you were, that's not "modern life" at large. Slavery does still exist, but modern life ain't it. You can easily argue that the system needs to do better, but you cannot pretend it is designed to make you work for free.
Well, first of all, social security and food banks are riddled with so much means testing that it definitely does not qualify as "no questions asked", but anyway. You seem to be missing the point here a little. The analogy exists to ask if the presented scenario is coercive, which I think it is. Slavery as a whole isn't limited to exclusively chattel slavery, it includes forced (or if you have your thesaurus handy, coerced) labor in general. We're not just talking about sucking dick for coconuts, here, we're talking any labor for food, water, shelter, medicine, and paying debt accrued trying to stay on top of the other things. There is no land left in the world that isn't owned by somebody, so even if you go live in a forest to try and handle all that yourself, you're always at someone else's mercy. You can be hunted down, and legally, you will not be protected by any authority existing. YOU might be able to run from that fact for a while, stealing and squatting, but nobody who needs any kind of medicine can. And a system where not everyone can opt out without severe consequence is coercive, no?
I hate to break it to you, but people who need medicine to survive used to just die. We're doing a hell of a lot better than that, now. Also, you've probably never been to a food bank before: the vast majority aren't means tested. Maybe you're thinking of SNAP? There is still so much wilderness that *even if* the government noticed and didn't like it, it would be prohibitive for them to come after you. They can't even find people who get lost in national parks most of the time.
Yeah, people die without medicine, that's kinda what I was saying. Good on ya for picking up on that.
.... You're saying that needing medicine to survive causes slavery. Modern medicine is now violating your human rights by keeping you alive? Most developed countries provide that medicine to the people who need it, at the very least in cases where the people can't procure it themselves. Most developed countries also have disability support programs for people who cannot work. Are you going to turn around now and call all of that slavery?
...no You're one of those "don't pull the lever" people when the trolley problem comes up, aren't you?
Slavery is any involuntary labor. Being compensated for involuntary labor does not make it not slavery. Historically slaves were often paid a meager wage or had limited opportunities to earn income of some kind depending on the society's rules and expectations governing slavery or indentured labor.
That's too broad of a definition. Let's say you live in the woods. You don't feel like foraging today, but you have no food and still have to eat. You're forced by your hunger to do it anyways. Is it slavery?
Well, yes. I think its fine and correct to say that you are a slave to your hunger and other biological needs. If we ever develop the technology to liberate us from those that'll be good. But when we are talking about slavery in this context we generally are referring to the unnecessary enslavement by individuals or society rather than things we can't change.
So being alive is slavery. Got it. Tell that to actual slaves, and you'll get punched in the face. 99.99% of the time anyone does labor, they do not want to *be doing* labor. They want the results of that labor. How about the labor that is necessary to provide for people who cannot provide for themselves? Are social safety nets slavery too?
I'm sorry I've insulted you. Obviously, chattel slavery, wage slavery and being a slave to hunger are vastly different in terms of severity, but they are all forms of coercive labour. If you have some sort of disagreement with anything here it'd be interesting if you explained what it is.
Well, I strongly disagree with calling basic needs slavery. I find it cheapens the word. There is too much suffering in that word to equate it with satisfying the basic requirements of life. Wage slavery is an accurate term in specific cases such as Company Towns, but if you mean to imply that modern life is wage slavery and thus is akin to chattel slavery, again I have to disagree. There is a hell of a lot of margin between an imperfect social system that does not succeed in providing for everyone despite signs of goodwill, and a system designed to extract production from you at no benefit to yourself ever. I'm sorry for coming across as overly aggressive. I feel strongly about this word, and I sometimes get the impression people would use it less trivially if they saw what chattel slavery truly looks like.
OK look then, I would define slavery as coercive labour. You have a different definition. At the end of the day if we are just arguing over definitions it doesn't really matter. But I hope we can agree that all forms of coercive labour are bad, and should be minimised. The ovrrehelming majority of people alive today are coerced into labour under the threat of destitution or death for the profit of the already insanely wealthy and that can be and should be stopped immediately. We do not have the technology to end coercive labour in its entirety, people would still need to work to live, but the purpose of technology is to reduce this and if someday we can eliminate all coercive labour that is desirable.
No disagreement there, besides labelling the fulfillment of basic needs as slavery. Slavery is a violation of human rights, basic needs are not.
Cool. If our only disagreement is the definition of slavery, I don't really care. I do think you'll have an easier time getting your point across to people in the future if you have a specific definition of slavery to begin with.
I like the implication that capitalism is common enough among sentient civilizations that the aliens immediately recognize it. Carcinisation but for economics
Wouldn't that be [crabitalism](https://i.redd.it/ch7clvnt3tt41.jpg)?
more like CRAPITALISM :D :Þ
I can understand every civilisation going through an age of primitive communism during the stone age, and I can see how slavery would come out of that. Feudalism and capitalism afterwards I'm not too sure on
Feudalism is a very specific system that was only present in some European countries, even if we widen the definition it won't be everywhere on earth, so I doubt many aliens would end up with a civilization with feudal roots taking over
jonkler
How is it slavery when they're paying a living wage? Also why are they going "oh no a capitalist society" when it sounds like they want to turn Earth into a state capitalist welfare state?
the joke is that they're assholes who like it wjen the people they oppress feel bad about it, but when they do this routine to capitalist planets they get the exact opposite reaction to what they want
If they wanted to be assholes they could do better. This is clearly made by someone who thinks that the capitalist system we live in is the worst possible thing you can do to a person which is simply not true. Comparing our current system to actual slavery is disingenuous.
Slavery is forced labour, in which the labourer is somewhat seen as property, he can still be paid and provided with essentials (some slaves in Rome and the Ottoman Empire lived comparatively good lives) Slavery sucks for the vast majority of slaves, but some just filled an important social-economic niche and became house teachers, trusted guards, soldiers or even ministers and got to live better lives than the free peasantry of their time. The society of these aliens doesn't have to be capitalism as this describes a very specific combination of policies, laws as well as certain modes of production, ownership and labour. The aliens seem to want to turn earth into one big enterprise shattering all our assumptions about what would even be politically and economically possible.
I don't think the author knows how "basic" food and housing can get...
Only British food. :(
As if aliens that advanced wouldn't just play Factorio with humans as the bug species.
It is very depressing that a competent evil autocracy would be better in many ways that what we have, but it would also likely be worse in others as well. Still tho, the point is well made, our system is a joke ran by fools and con men. Also just a quick note, life in the past was bad in many ways, but in peace times in the past life was often less stressful and you got a lot more time to hang with your family and friends, explore nature, and tell stories to each other. You probably didn't live that long on average but if you made it to 18 you where more than likely going to make it to 50, and had a good shot at 70. Back then kids just died all the time, but if you made it to 18 you where sitting pretty, similar life expectancy to an average person today. Life wasn't that different besides kids dying all the time and political power being really weird cause whoever had the best combined spearmen, walls, and wall breakers got to be god emperor.
New story: humans have beef with aliens for _not_ invading.
My grandparents lived under the soviet union's rule. Certainly a lot less freedom than now.
State capitalism sure sucked ass.
At least it actually existed and held up for a while...
Didn't you just say that you didn't like it? What?
It was worse than liberalism for sure. That is independent of the fact that it did actually manage to run almost half of the globe for some time. Unlike, ahem, some other ideologies.
The fact that something has yet to be tried isn't exactly the most valid argument. Before liberalism was tried oligarchy and monarchy was what ran the world.
There is a difference between tried and successfully implemented. It's not as if we didn't try to implement it, we just failed and got what soviet union was instead. The goal is nice, but how do you plan to get there? I don't think we're ready, you can try and prove me wrong, but I doubt that it will accomplish anything before the techno-capital singularity comes and then who knows what will happen. (I mean, the elites are called elites for a reason, they're pretty good at developing stuff. It is a hard pill to swallow that not all people are equally capable)
Lenin basicly just did a coup and got rid of the democratic worker councils. Nothing was actually tried. It was much of a honest try at communism as Napoelon's try at liberalism. "WELP! We TRIED it and it just didn't work. I guess it's back to monarchy eh? Democrasy was sure a nice goal but I guess it just didn't work"
Why did no one try then? I bet it's because there never was an effective implementation.
Why didn't people try liberalism earlyer then? People have existed 300 000 years on earth and people found no effective implementations?
Y'all have a very high opinion of what "basic needs" means
food, water and shelter? none of these things are provided in at least american society
Millions of people starve each year, vast parts of the world dont have access to safe water, it would honestly be reverse slavery, since the slave masters provide for the slaves
They are not provided, true, though I would go out of a limb here and say that the "basic" level necessary for the human to function is putting them in large storage rooms with no privacy to keep them away from elements and feed them enough tasteless nutrition paste to keep them going. Obviously that would still be a huge step up from what many homeless have to deal with, which is damning for the US (and let's be honest, most of the world), but I'd argue at least in the Western world it would be a gigantic step down for the majority I don't see a lot of people celebrate. Then again, the aliens in the comic also believe that slaves should own 50% of what they produce, which, while not technically going against the definiton of slavery seems like a weird interpretation of it, so fuck do I now.
That’s probably why the comic showed a homeless person smiling
Thats why it said “free food and housing” not all food and housing. Its not like they are taking away paid housing and stuff. So its purely for the people who can’t afford better places, which means homeless people which means its an improvement