Slave Masters Aren't Necessarily Bad
Human Slaves
While human slavery as a whole is indefensible, it
is possible to be a slave master who is a good person.
Imagine for a moment that you are a decent, moral
white person living in the early 1600's in English North America. You just got word that your
rich uncle died and you inherited his estate.
When you arrive at the estate, you see a mansion,
cotton fields, and a dozen black slaves hard at
work. The entire estate is now under your full
control. What do you do? You have several
choices:
1) Your can free the slaves. If you consider the
historical context, you realize this cannot possibly
happen because there was no such thing as a "free
slave" in North America back then.
If you tell your slaves "Stop working. You are all
free to leave immediately!", the moment they leave your
plantation they will be captured and enslaved once
again by whoever finds them.
2) You can let them stay on your property
indefinitely. This means they must be fed, housed, and
medically cared for like any other person. Where
will you get the money to do this? Previously,
this was done with money the slaves earned for their
master by picking cotton. Since they are no
longer working, there are no earnings. You can sell
all the land you inherited and use the money to house
and feed these former slaves, but consider: they can
never leave your plantation for reasons stated in
point #1. Also, the money you receive for
selling the plantation will eventually run out, and
then what? How will you pay for the people
living on your property when you're broke?
3) You can ask them to continue working the fields,
and use all the money made from their labor for their
benefit. But no matter how you improve their
working conditions, and no matter how well you treat
and feed them, they will still be slaves because they
have to work, and they cannot leave.
So if you are a decent moral white person living in the early
1600's in America, the best you can do is be
the most benevolent slave master possible. If
you can think of a better alternative, contact
me and let me know.
Non-Human Slaves (animals &
genetically-engineered humanoids made for slavery)
Before starting this section, I have to ask "Why
is slavery immoral"? In my opinion, it's immoral
because it causes emotional and/or physical
suffering. This means if it can be arranged so
that a slave doesn't feel any kind of discomfort
(emotional or physical), then it will be moral to
enslave him.
For example, I don't think bees suffer emotionally
when humans steal their honey. Therefore, it is
moral to do so. In effect, bees are the slaves
of humans. It can be difficult to determine
whether any given organism is actually suffering and
to what extent, so there's lots of grey area
here. Is it ethical to enslave horses, as
humans have for thousands of years? I guess it
depends on how well they are treated. If the
horse is happy and content, why not?
On creating a slave-race of people: In my
experience, almost everyone believes that it is
immoral to genetically engineer a slave-race of
humanoids for doing dangerous and difficult labor.
I disagree. Why not genetically-engineer a being who
is the perfect slave? He has no free will and is
always ready to do whatever he's told. He'll have no
emotions, no hopes, no dreams, no aspirations, no
preferences, and he'll be incapable of physical and
emotional pain. He'll just be a mindless worker
who does what he's told. Why is creating such a being
immoral? We already have mechanical robots like
this, why is it any less moral to create living
biological beings like this? I would like you to
contact me and explain why.