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June 4, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:46
2397 Selling Yourself Into Slavery

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses the notion and economic unreality of selling oneself into slavery.

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So let's talk about another question that comes up in a free society situation, a stateless society, which is, can you sell yourself into slavery?
Can you sell yourself into slavery?
So, what that, of course, technically means is you would go to someone and you would say, in return for a million dollars, I will allow you to take over my life forever, right?
So, you are now responsible for me and you tell me what to do and I promise to obey and I have become your slave in return for, I don't know, a couple of million bucks, whatever it's going to be, five million dollars.
That's an interesting question.
I think it's a silly question, but, you know, just because it's silly doesn't mean that it's not interesting.
How would Lois Lane, if impregnated with Superman's baby, give birth to a half-ferocious Kryptonian monster child?
Would it not come out several other exits than the assigned and appropriate one?
I mean, you know, interesting questions.
Silly questions, but interesting questions.
So why is it silly?
Well, It's not economically efficient.
It's just not economically efficient.
That's kind of important to understand.
So, let's say that you owe a guy a million bucks.
You're a really, really bad gambler.
You owe some guy a million bucks.
And you say, okay, well, I'll sell myself into slavery for you in return for the million bucks.
Well, it doesn't really add a lot to his freedom, does it?
I mean, slaves are time-consuming.
I mean, you've got to go tell them what to do all the time, right?
And slaves also were unmotivated, right?
It's far better to be owed money than to own a slave, economically speaking, right?
Because if you're owed money, then the person can do anything to get you that money, right?
But if you own a slave, then the person's motivation and options are much less, right?
I mean, slaves are Lazy.
I mean, not exactly lazy, but you know, given the economic incentives of the situation, because you've, you know, if you sell your life to someone for five million bucks, then the debt's already paid.
I mean, why not just sit around?
You know, just sit around with your thumb up your ass, right?
And say, okay, you own me.
And then you say, okay, well, go clean my car.
Okay, go clean your car.
Okay, go rake my lawn.
Okay, I'll go rake your lawn.
But you've got to keep ordering this person to do so, and they don't have an incentive to do a good job.
Whereas if it's like make your payments, then the person can go off and do whatever they want, and they can keep some of the money.
You never want to take...
100% of someone's income if they owe you money, because then they're incentive to, right?
This is the dead-be-dead phenomenon to some degree.
I mean, it's misnamed, but basically it's kids, moms who don't allow dads to see the kids and dads who are given ridiculous child support payments.
If you say, go make money, I'm going to take 100%, the person, you know, they may go to work and so on, but they're just...
They're about as motivated as a Soviet factory worker, you know, circa 1952, right?
Where they say, well, you pretend to pay us and we'll pretend to work, right?
I mean, that's sort of the deal.
And so, we know in a situation of 100% taxation, which is really what slavery is, well, slavery was more the direct ownership of the person rather than all the fruits of their labor, but In 100% taxation, 100% slave ownership, the person's simply not motivated to improve or increase their income.
Because, you know, why work overtime if you don't get paid any more money?
I mean, if you don't like the job or whatever, but in particular, why would you want to do anything like that?
And so what happens is the person becomes...
Kind of inert.
If they sell you their life, right?
It's like, you now own me until I'm dead.
So, I don't really feel like going to school, right?
I don't really feel like working overtime.
I don't really feel like adding to my human capital.
I don't really feel like working hard.
I don't really feel like networking.
I don't really feel like inventing anything.
I don't really feel like being entrepreneurial.
I don't really feel like any of that stuff.
So, if somebody owes you a lot of money, what you want is for them to be as free as possible, and then you get the benefit of interest, right?
So, I mean, just to take some numbers, and I pulled them out of my armpit, right?
So, let's say that somebody owes you money, and if they're free, they're going to make $50,000 a year, and you'll take some small portion of that, but you'll get interest, right?
Because the price of money over time.
But if they become your slave, they're only going to produce $10,000 or $20,000 worth of value because all of their incentive has gone.
And there's no incentive for them to improve or increase their human capital or anything like that, right?
I mean, slaves don't do push-up in the evenings so that they're stronger for tomorrow.
They don't invent labor-saving machinery.
So, or, you know, any way to, even if it's not machinery, they won't work to optimize anything.
They'll just go out and do the same dull, plotting, unthinking thing that they did yesterday before, you know, falling into a heap on the ground in depressed torpor at the end of the day.
So, if somebody's making $50,000 a year and they're paying you $10,000 a year, you're doing a lot better.
than having somebody who's only making you $10,000 a year.
Because in the former situation, you're continuing to get interest, whereas the second one, you're not.
Because in the former situation where the person's free but paying you money, they're going to be doing the general thing of gaining experience and wanting to pay you off.
And so, they're going to be motivated to make more money and so on.
Whereas, boy, the time you own a store, Like, when someone goes from free to slave, I mean, that day is the day of their maximum economic productivity, because now they're a slave, right?
So they don't want to do anything.
Even if the slave is making more...
Like maybe slaves making $20,000 a year for you.
But the problem is, you have to manage that person.
You have to run that person's life.
You have to tell them what to do.
You have to take care of their medical bills, right?
They're your slave, right?
So this is your investment.
So if they get sick, you know, it's like if you rent a car, you don't change the oil.
But if you buy the car, well, you're going to...
You know, get the filters changed and oil changed and tire pressure checked and all that kind of stuff, right?
So if you own someone, then you're responsible for their upkeep.
You're responsible, you've got to feed them, you've got to provide them shelter, healthcare, dentistry, you name it, right?
And what if they want to date?
What if they want to have kids?
Anyway, I mean, that's a whole sort of, they are the slaves or whatever.
So, with slaves comes, quote, free labor, although it's not free because you've got to manage it, and it's going to be much less, if an increase in value over time than if the person was free, but the big problem that you have with a slave is, you know, bad productivity and almost certain liability.
What if your slave is driving you around and crashes into some gold-plated school bus?
Well, they're not going to sue the slave.
They're going to sue you.
Whereas if you hire a limo driver, that limo driver is going to come with the third-party insurance or his insurance from his limo company, so you're not personally liable.
If you're a slave, you know, as a result of, you know, catastrophic depression, if your slave, you know, goes out and strangles a hobo, then you're going to be in trouble for that because the slave is not going to be anymore an independent agent, at least nearly as much, right?
Because you've taken over their personhood.
So, when you look at it in that sense, I don't really think anybody who's owed a lot of money would rather take somebody's entire future, all the liability, all the healthcare costs, all the problems that that accrues to, rather than just say, you know, go make money and pay me off, right?
So, I think that's kind of an important thing to understand about that, right?
It's not practical.
It's not productive.
You're much better off even just charging a little bit more interest because you don't assume any liability.
You're not responsible for their healthcare costs.
You don't have to tell them what to do.
They're just going off doing their thing and sending you money, right?
I mean, that's the way to get value out of people if they owe you money, right?
Not take them over completely.
I mean, that's just...
It completely demotivates them, and you end up with a huge amount of liabilities, and it's just not economically valuable to do that.
It could be a failure of my imagination, which is mortal and limited, but I can't imagine a situation.
Please tell me if I've missed something obvious, or even if I've missed something not obvious.
I can't think of a situation.
Wherein it would be of great value for people to take over others and own them as slaves.
I can't see where that would be ever economically beneficial relative to simply charging them interest based upon what they owe you.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense.
And the last thing that I'll say is it's sort of important as well.
So, as I was saying in the last show, a contract does not create with it a magical physics-based imperative of enforcement.
This is really, really crucial to understand.
I mean, there's just so many things that I would like to get across to people.
I try.
But this is really, really essential to understand.
If nobody respects the contract, well, the contract just ain't going to be enforced.
It ain't going to be enforced.
I mean, it's the free market equivalent of jury nullification, which is, I don't think this is a crime, so I'm not going to convict.
This is not a valid contract because it's slavery, and slavery is distasteful to people.
Now, if the contract isn't enforced, nobody's going to enter into it.
So, if the contract is going to lose you money because you're going to kill the person's motivation over the course of their life to improve their human capital, become ambitious, make more money, blah, blah, blah, right?
So it's going to cost you money, it's going to raise your liabilities, it's going to raise your costs, and it's going to be incredibly questionable whether it can even be enforced due to violating general community standards.
Then it's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen, people.
It's not going to happen.
I'll take my chances with X, right?
I mean, compare that to the draft.
Compare that to, you know, ridiculous amounts of jail time for non-crimes.
I mean, we don't...
Even if, again, even if every 100,000 blue moons, this were to occur...
In a free society, somebody will find some way and had so little sense of their own economic advantage that they'd rather take someone's life than their productivity.
Look, if taking people's lives was more valuable than taking the products of their labors, Then we'd still all be serfs, not taxpayers.
Like, we are taxpayers because we are free-range serfs, right?
We are serfs.
They found that it's much more profitable to take the products of people's labors while letting them choose their own occupations than it is to have them tied to the land and take all their food from them and give them a pittance, right?
I mean, that just doesn't work.
It doesn't work, economically.
So, even if some way were found for this to work...
And once every thousand blue moons, somebody was able to get somebody into a binding contract of slavery, despite its abhorrence by the general population and so on.
We're still about a billion times better off than we are under a state, right?
I mean, this is all very, very important to understand.
We are not comparing a free society with some imagined nirvana of infinite protection and decency, honor, virtue, and kindness.
This is not how...
Reality works.
Well, that's not how reality works.
You know, I sort of imagine that if a plane's going down, if people can jump out, if it's heading straight into a cliff, they'll jump.
Why?
Well, because, you know, it may not be great to jump out of a plane, but, you know, it's a heck of a lot better than staying in a plane and smashing it in.
Maybe you'll fall into a snowdrift or something, right?
I mean, this is sort of what could happen.
So, but if you, you know, if somebody comes up to you, this is how most people experience arguments for a free society, right?
They experience it as someone coming up to you and saying, ah, you see, I know that this is a comfortable ride, and you have your in-flight entertainment, but how would you like to jump out the window, just in case there's a crash?
Well, people who look at you like, are you insane?
I'm...
I'm riding comfortably, there's no indication of a crash, there's no problem, so why on earth are you telling me to jump out the window of the plane, right?
Like, what madness is this, right?
And, you know, tragically, this is the way that people experience a free society.
Or at least arguments for it.
Because, I mean, gosh, I mean, look around, right?
I mean, people are chugging along, life is chugging along, and there is no giant catastrophe that is immediately visible.
So, society is trundling along, and You're just basically saying to people, yeah, the ride might be a little bit bumpy and so on, and they're saying, oh my god, let's pull the emergency chute and get out of this airplane and take our chances falling to the water.
People are like, I don't really think we're there yet.
And I get it.
I get it.
I really do.
I mean, if you view a free society as jumping out of a plane, then you're going to weigh costs and benefits and so on and Now, on the more theoretical side of the question, the question is, does somebody have the right to sell themselves into slavery?
Well, you can't sell off moral responsibility, right?
I mean, that you can't do.
You can't say, I'm going to sign a contract wherein I can go and do whatever I want, and you are now liable, you are now legally liable for my deeds, right?
I don't think you can do that at all.
I think that's not valid or fair or moral or anything like that.
Because that's doing something which is physically impossible, which is transferring moral responsibility from one person to another.
That's not valid.
I mean, that's like saying, you take the test and I get the score.
Well, no.
The test is a Is it an evaluation of your particular knowledge and therefore only you can get the score for your test?
It's like saying, you take my test and I will take your score.
Well, that's just cheating, right?
I mean, so you can't assign moral responsibility to someone else because that's externalizing A voluntaristic agency or potential which is only in your own brain, right?
It's like having a contract with someone which says, I'll smoke and you take all the risk for lung cancer.
No, because you can't externalize the risk to lung cancer, right?
Because you're damaging your own lungs, not the other person's lungs, right?
I don't mean like, I sign a contract where if one of my lungs gets diseased, I'll take your lung.
I mean, literally signing a contract where someone says, I will smoke, but your lungs will get all the damage from my smoking.
That would be logically impossible.
I mean, it's physically impossible.
It can't happen.
Right?
I mean, just try this.
Stand outside a nightclub and say, listen, man, you can do all the drinking, but if you give me 50 bucks, I'll take all the hangover for you.
People would say, well, I can't externalize, I can't sell my hangover or buy respite from a hangover.
I can't have you assume that which is internal to me, right?
Right?
Stand outside.
Hey, man, you can have all the authentic Indian food that you want.
I will get the farts for you.
You know, for ten bucks.
I will do all the farting for you from your exquisite Indian meal.
Well, by the time you pat your lips dry at the Gulab Jaman, nothing has transferred, right?
So, these realities are kind of significant.
You cannot externalize your moral agency at all.
Now, You can externalize risk agencies, of course, right?
Like, you can buy insurance that says, if I crash my car, then if there's an accident, right?
So, you can externalize accidents because accidents are not willed.
By their very definition, they're accidents, right?
That's why you can't buy insurance for suicide because suicide is willed and Accidental death is not willed, right?
So you can externalize accidents, but you cannot externalize moral agency.
So, I mean, for instance, can you imagine whether or not a group in a free society would be willing to sell murder insurance?
In other words, if you go and murder people, we will take the rap.
Well, no.
Such a thing would be incomprehensible.
Because the only people who would buy that insurance would be people who would want to kill.
So, that's an important thing.
You cannot externalize your moral agency.
And slavery is the externalization of your life and everything, including your moral agency.
So, it's not morally possible to do that in any way that I could imagine.
Now, you can certainly sell your future productivity, which is obviously what happens when you borrow money at interest, right?
And you get into a 20-year mortgage.
You are saying, you know, I'm making a decision for me in 20 years.
And that's fine, right?
Because that's not selling your moral agency, right?
That's simply selling your...
All you're selling there is your financial productivity.
You're not selling your moral agency, right?
So that's pretty important to understand.
It's a big difference, right?
And so, from that standpoint, I think it's really important to get that you could have the right to sell off your future productivity, without which you can't borrow at interest, but you can't ever externalize your moral agency.
And from that standpoint, I think it would be not logically possible, morally possible.
It fails the universality test as well.
So I hope that helps.
I mean, obviously it's a big question, big issue.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect ironclad, airtight answer.
But I think once we realize that nobody's going to want to do this anyway, we can recognize that it's not something that we're going to have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how to prevent or whether it's possible.
It doesn't matter.
It ain't going to happen.
And so, thank you as always for your time and attention.
If you would like to chip in to chipping away at the mental edifice known as the state, fdrurl.com forward slash donate bitcoins.
Gratefully accepted.
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