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→Thank You, this article got me thinking: how slavery came into existence
[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 09:07, 21 June 2007 (EDT)
[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 09:07, 21 June 2007 (EDT)
:Basically, slavery was a man-made invention to deal with debtors. A thief, when discovered, owed a debt to the victim. All sorts of other crimes likewise resulted in victims suffering losses to the perpetrators whom could be identified as debtors. There even arose a concept of the society as a whole being victimized by debtors (today, liberals debate so-called "victimless crimes", alleging for example marijuana use or prostitution harms no one, which is highly debatable). The debtors were in most instances incapable of repaying the debt, and barring a disincentive or deterant, were often repeat offenders. Thus the very basic notions of living in a civilized society came into play, i.e. (1) maintaining and protecting property rights, and (2) preventing criminals from gaining ascendency over persons who by habit were honest in dealing with their fellow human beings. If the debtor could not repay a debt, his person became the property of the creditor, who then was burdened with financing the slave-debtor's survival and maintainance until revenue produced by the debtor's labor could be sold to (a) repay the slaves maintaince, and (b) repay the old debt. This process could be short circuited by selling the slave himself to another financier (in much the same way bad debts are sold to collection agencies today at a discount), thus the slave trade came into existence. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 11:00, 21 June 2007 (EDT)