Originally Posted by Frank Knight

?Dreamers chose their current lives? I don't remember being consulted when I was brought into the USA. My earliest memories are of watching Barney & Friends in English.

The initial kneejerk reaction might be to laugh at the idea that we're in a scenario similar to slaves, but the comparison isn't wrong at all. It's a difference of degree, not substance. The problem is that most people only know the history of slavery in the American south's plantations.

One popular form of slavery for much of human civilization was that someone who couldn't pay off their debts became a slave until he could pay them off. So, yes, some forms of slavery were the results of voluntary decisions.

Even within the USA there existed a subclass of artisan slaves who lived lives very different from plantation slaves. They were given considerable freedom in their day to day lives and even allowed to keep some of the income they generated (so long as their master got his share). Was this because some slave owners were generous? God no. It simply happens to be that it was profitable to give some slaves more freedom in order to make them more productive.

On a sidebar, I feel obligated to state that slaves even had considerable freedom in their sexual lives. Contrary to popular belief, slave families were not commonly broken up. Again, this wasn't because of slaveowners being good people. They simply recognized that the family unit was productive.

We may have more freedom than plantation slaves of the American south, but neither do we live as freemen. The Bill of Rights do not, for practical purposes, apply to us. Our travel is restricted. Our options for employment are restricted. Our treatment by the police and courts is substandard. We pay and pay our taxes to our masters, but we rarely see any benefits from it.

Slavery should really be thought of as a spectrum. We may not be in the same point as others, but we are definitely on it.



Americans black are stuck in their current socioeconomic status because of institutional barriers placed on them. I won't get into the details.... You know what? I will.

Minimum wage laws have done more to retard the black community than almost anything else. Most blacks, once freed, were unskilled and their children denied access to proper schooling. Some blacks have managed to become skilled or get their children into good schools, but the great mass are still stuck in a situation where they cannot easily acquire new skills and move up the economic ladder. Minimum wage laws deny them the chance to work in the lower rings of the labour market and so many are permanently stuck at the bottom.

If the black community is to advance, it must find a way to get rid of minimum wage laws. While they're at it, they should get rid of zoning laws that discourage larger businesses from opening up shop in their neighborhoods and reform their schooling system by introducing school choice.