[Tanada]

I was surfing today and stumbled across this ARTICLE and realized the author has a point. In the distant past indentured servitude was a way for bankrupt people to support themselves for a known period of time while getting back on their financial feet.

Will it be coming back in the doomer scenario?

[Jack]

Absolutely. Also sharecropping. In a few decades, I expect to see serfdom and - perhaps - chattel slavery again.

Unless someone wishes to argue that humankind has gotten kinder, gentler, and more compassionate in the last 150 years....

[gego]

How many of you without the means of escaping the dependency of city life would jump at the chance to move to the countryside as an indentured servant?

As more human labor is needed to replace mechanization on the farm, and as city life becomes more unbearable, such arrangements, I think, are likely to be seen as a means of survival for those lucky enough.

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Compassionate Slavery

[Wrencher]

Maybe a better question is: "Will I or my children ever become indentured servants'.

For a lot of people in the world today, slavery is a fact. It is probably closer than you think. Not too many years ago my family had a reunion dinner at a local chinese resturant. As I went to pay the check I chatted with the girl at the register. She was very young - mid to late teens, and younger than my daughters at the time. You could tell that she was trying out her english on me by talking about more indepth subjects than what the bill was.

She told me that she was married to the cook, and that her mother lived in Bejing - she had a special calling card to call mainland China. She said that she and her husband worked seven days per week, and that they would do this for the next three or four years to pay off their debts....

We know quite a few Mexicans that have come across and work in almost indentured conditions - I guess they can quit and go some where else if they want too, so it is not quite the same, but it is a pretty tough row to hoe.

In India, the caste system has been outlawed - at least on the books, but millions of lower caste people work in virtual slavery all of their lives. There was a National Geographic article a couple of years ago about it..

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo ... hoto4.html

And another article on slavery world wide:

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1/

I don't know that it would have to become common.... and truly hope that it doesn't. A voluntary indenturement would be one thing, but I don't think it is in the nature of slavers to ever grant freedom.

[Heineken]

I look forward to indenturing some of my former employers for hard labor on my land.

[MicroHydro]

Never went away here, plenty of openings for sharemilkers in the Waikato dairy industry.

[Specop_007]

Hell, it practically exists today.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Compassionate Slavery

[Slowpoke]

Hah, compassionate slavery, what a sick joke. It's like saying compassionate rape.

[RdSnt]

I think you need to give yourselves a collective head shake.
You are already indentured slaves. Looking at the apathy and complacency of all Americans in a country that is self-destructing wholesale and there can be no other answer than that you have enslaved yourselves to the myth of the American Dream.
It's dead and what's left is a voluntary, lock-step march to fascist enslavement. All in the name of clinging to the last few months of debt financed comfort.

[ubercynicmeister]

"Return"?

It never went away...it's just changed form, nowadays we call it "the credit card".

[threadbear]

Indentured servitude? Isn't that a bit presumptuous? Who says the poor will be able to afford false teeth.

[elroy]

We call it a 'job' nowadays. And we don't pay tribute to lords, we pay taxes to governments. So much changes, yet so much remains the same.

[frankthetank]

I do it everyday. I work for the man!

[Seadragon]

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

You know, I never thought about peak oil when I watched that movie, but the shoe does fit...

[sventvkg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'A')bsolutely. Also sharecropping. In a few decades, I expect to see serfdom and - perhaps - chattel slavery again.

Unless someone wishes to argue that humankind has gotten kinder, gentler, and more compassionate in the last 150 years....

[sventvkg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RdSnt', 'I') think you need to give yourselves a collective head shake.
You are already indentured slaves. Looking at the apathy and complacency of all Americans in a country that is self-destructing wholesale and there can be no other answer than that you have enslaved yourselves to the myth of the American Dream.
It's dead and what's left is a voluntary, lock-step march to fascist enslavement. All in the name of clinging to the last few months of debt financed comfort.

[Heineken]

Each year until---when is "Tax Relief Day" now, sometime in May?---Americans are slaves of the US government. And in return they don't even get the basic health care citizens of most other industrialized countries can count on (not until the US slaves are 65 and worn out, that is). Instead, they get an empire of 750 military bases spanning the globe, and death-ray weapons programs for the Pentagon.

[duke3522]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sventvkg', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'A')bsolutely. Also sharecropping. In a few decades, I expect to see serfdom and - perhaps - chattel slavery again.

Unless someone wishes to argue that humankind has gotten kinder, gentler, and more compassionate in the last 150 years....