Are you as appalled as I am?

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

So, the problem is not our patronage, but the conditions. This is something we can agree on.

The two are closely linked. The widespread conditions would certainly not exist on such a grand scale if we were not eagerly buying up the unimaginably vast quantities of product as fast as they can produce them. Our abundant money and grotesquely engorged level of insatiable consumerism is fueling and perpetuating the system just as as it is. The rich keep getting richer and more powerful on the backs of the poor, and the poor keep getting poorer and more powerless.

But the comparison to slavery is loose at best when you compare employing indigenous people to enslaving kidnapped people.

Not so loose a comparison as one might think. Just as coal miners were virtually permanent indentured servants before labor unions came into being, who really had no choice but to work under severe and unsafe conditions until they sickened and died, the system being carefully arranged so that they would never be able to pay off their debts to the bosses, so it is that these people (including, not so accidentally, actual prisoners) laboring under slave-like and dangerous conditions are all virtual prisoners of this modern unjust and inhumane system. They may not be kidnapped people (no need to kidnap them from other countries since the available labor force was there already), but are nonetheless no better off than permanent indentured servants, who in order to survive have little choice but to labor their entire lives from childhood to old age under abominable conditions. The system is laid out in such a way as to ensure they can never advance, get out of debt, or improve their situation in life, or even hope to provide their children with a life any less hopeless than their own.

One half to two thirds of all immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants. At times, as many as 75% of the population of some colonies were under terms of indenture. Even on the frontier, according to the 1790 U.S. Census, 6% of the Kentucky population was indentured.
This was a labor system, not a system of apprenticeship. (Galenson, 6) The historic basis for indenture grew out of English agricultural servitude and began because of labor shortages in England and in the colonies. It developed at a time when England had a great number of people being displaced from farming. This led to an early growth of the indentured labor system.
The importation of white servants under contracts known as indentures proved more profitable as a short-term labor source than enslaving Indians or using free labor. Eventually, the final attempt to ease labor shortages was enslavement of Africans. Wherever you find slavery, you first find indentures.

[shootingstar]

Hey, now we know why there are still many who still want to immigrate to North America --despite China's growing economy and Communists loosening up on economic privatization.


But then they get here and some end up in sweat shops. Yea, well several of my cousins who immigrated to Toronto in 1980's, did factory clothing piecework ..in their homes at times. I would drop over to visit and find their work/set-up. But now the garmet industry in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, has shifted to China.

No wonder why their children go gangbusters at university and try to scale the professional worlds here.

A person sees too much.

[Biciclista]

But now the garmet industry in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, has shifted to China.

No wonder why their children go gangbusters at university and try to scale the professional worlds here.

A person sees too much.

well said.

[Ana]

I think they should have ads for some sexy, versatile bicycles!