[MD] Quality decline

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting "Laycock, Jos (OSPT)" <Jos.Laycock at OFFSOL.GSI.GOV.UK>:

> Hi Platt
> 
> Savings account? is that like the opposite of a student loan?
> ;.)

Yes. A savings account is an asset. A student loan is a liability. 

> 
> My questions were too oblique, I try again:
> You said (roughly) 
> People who are prevented from owning property are slaves
> 
> I said 
> I am prevented from owning property by financial circumstance and am therefore a
> slave

Can you buy and own food, shelter, clothing? Then you are not a slave. Did
you volunteer to go into debt? Then you are not a slave. Was the debt forced
on you by government in the form of taxes? To the extent you owe tax, levied on you
without your permission and enforced at the point of a gun, you are a slave. 

> Platt 
> Any figures on my statement are property, therefore I am not a slave
> 
> Jos
> I infer from your statement, that you would consider my debts to invalidate my
> claims to slave-hood, and I counter this inferred argument by asserting that most
> modern day "slaves" also infact have debts.

If debts were incurred voluntarily, slavery is irrelevant. The only involuntary
legal debts I can think of are imposed by government. Can you cite others?

> A "supposed debt" would be one that was unfairly imposed on a person, like if I
> paid for your air fare to bring you to the UK and then tricked you into giving me
> your passport, before demanding under menaces that you work as a prostitue untill
> you pay back the airfare, all the while charging you "rent" on the house in which
> I keep you confined that exceeds the tiny commission I allow you to "earn" from
> each of your punters.

If you are referring to illegal trafficking in sex, we agree. That is a form of
slavery.     

> I used "citizenship" in that context as the alternative state of being to
> "slavery", there doesn't have to be an imigration angle invoved. Just consider a
> hypothetical slave owning society where reisdents are classified as either "slave"
> or "citizen" and the one is under the heel of the other. 

I'm confused as to how you define "citizen," "resident," and "slave." But, I
think we understand each other on the basic issue of slavery. When the state
owns everything, both it's citizens and its residents are slaves. Agree?

Platt

   



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