Can slavery be made more ethical?

[The_J]

I'm remembering something somewhat related to what Akka mentions.
There are some tribes in... uh...probably papua new-guinea, don't know... where, as a part of rite of manhood, young man needs to life for a while with an older man, to...er.... absorb their manhood...literally.
I guess you could also use something like this, just needs some tweaking.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The missing but obvious end to the question is "than [something]." And I can think of some somethings that would make the answer an easy yes.

We found a colony on the moon. It relies on an underground vault buffering the air supply. The available colonists are all fully employed in keeping the colony viable. A ship of refugees fleeing the chaos on earth arrives seeking refuge and has no way to return. We lack heavy equipment, but the colony can be made viable for the entire population if the size of the cavern can be increased 40% fairly quickly. Offering the refugees the opportunity to perform slave labor until the enlargement is completed would be "more ethical" than consigning them to death.

 

[rah]

Whether that would be considered slave labor is questionable in my opinion. Bur for the sake of discussion, what the heck.
This whole thread has been kind of iffy at best.

 

[EgonSpengler]

We found a colony on the moon. It relies on an underground vault buffering the air supply. The available colonists are all fully employed in keeping the colony viable. A ship of refugees fleeing the chaos on earth arrives seeking refuge and has no way to return. We lack heavy equipment, but the colony can be made viable for the entire population if the size of the cavern can be increased 40% fairly quickly. Offering the refugees the opportunity to perform slave labor until the enlargement is completed would be "more ethical" than consigning them to death.

Whether that would be considered slave labor is questionable in my opinion. Bur for the sake of discussion, what the heck.

Has anyone here read Pierce Brown's Red Rising? I can't really say much about it without posting a spoiler, but this made me think of that.

 

[Hrothbern]

What is a slave ?

When my mother married my father she gave up, lost, her legal capacity.
(to own property, to have a bank account, to perform transactions, for a job approval from my father was needed, just as for travelling, etc, etc)
When I was a year old in 1956, our law was changed to give a married women full legal capacity and other rights.

TIL why my mother mentioned to me as little kid as special that she "had the wallet" and my father (who worked ofc) got from her his monthly pocket money (mainly for smoking). My mother kept a logbook with all her spendings in return, till the last cent. She mentioned as well that most marriages at that time were not like that, which fitted with from what I learned from my street friends.

Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person.
Coverture was enshrined in the common law of England for several centuries and throughout most of the 19th century, influencing some other common-law jurisdictions. According to Arianne Chernock, coverture did not apply in Scotland, but whether it applied in Wales is unclear.[1]
After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture came under increasing criticism as oppressive towards women, hindering them from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late 19th century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law legal jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by subsequent reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

The principle of coverture was described in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England in the late 18th century:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage.

 

[Dekker]

Are you really writing or did you just want to hear rationalizations for slavery?

 

[Hrothbern]

Are you really writing or did you just want to hear rationalizations for slavery?

The freeedom we find normal is only a recent chapter of history

And recognising that, it is absolutely not my intention to defend or rationalise slavery
Just the rather frightening thought how easily freedom could be reversed as well, with so many people still believing that "we" are free.

If I have a provoking mood, I raise the issue of the limited freedom of children. Children still in the "benign" slave-owner, "benign" husband phase of history. That balance of "benign" parental does not feel right for me.
Not that I want more state "ownership" (although that is rock bottom the case in law in my country: parents own a window only), but more rights are imo justified.

The recent Climate protests of school kids striking, started by that 16 year old Swedish girl, showing that we as adults can trample over their future.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Are you really writing or did you just want to hear rationalizations for slavery?

I am inclined to accept the OP's word that this is for a writing project. He has posted some of his writing in the A&E forum here, as well as participating in the Iron Pen competitions.

 

[Mouthwash]

Are you really writing or did you just want to hear rationalizations for slavery?

Not sure how magic is relevant to the latter.

(I have a whole setting already in place, but I wanted a protagonist from one of the slaving cultures.)

 

[Yeekim]

It might be "more ethical", if the slave has willingly sold himself. Of course, the question whether it should be possible for a free person to sell himself to slavery has been debated for long.
The one (and imho only) logically sound and convincing counter-argument is that since a slave cannot have property but belongs to his master together with everything he has, his master (buyer) would lose nothing with such a trade, while the slave would gain nothing. Hence selling one's own freedom should not be possible. This, argument, however, does not cover a case where the person selling his freedom requires that payment is to be made to someone else...