VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

Saving the Slave: Slavery Changed Its Skin, and the Lock Called Debt

The last section nailed down the thing common to the bottom of all four systems, settling people, and also told you a line, that slavery, the thing itself, did not truly vanish, it only shed that most glaring skin and changed into one you cannot recognize, and it still has a great mass of people locked. This section saves the first kind, the slave. It recognizes, first, the people pressed at the very bottom of this world, still held by locks of every kind. Why is the first step to save the slave? Because they are at the very bottom. What a society most fears is that its lowest people are locked until they cannot breathe, driven until there is no road left. Save this lowest batch first, and the foundation of that society can hold steady. This section takes you to recognize two locks. The new skin slavery changed into, and that most binding lock, the one that looks least like a lock, debt.

First, drag the word slave out of that old picture in your head.

When you think of a slave, what do you think of? A person from thousands of years ago, an iron chain around his neck, a whip across his back, bought and sold like livestock. And you think, that kind of thing is long gone. Who chains anyone, whips anyone, these days? So you feel that slavery is a thing in the history books, with nothing to do with today.

Let me tell you, the core of slavery was never that iron chain, never that whip. The chain and the whip are only its oldest, clumsiest tools. The core of slavery is another thing. A person, locked by something, cannot get out, has no choice, his strength, his time, his whole self, wrung and used up, and what he gets back is only enough to keep a life hanging on, just enough that tomorrow he can go on being wrung.

Chew on that core. Locked, cannot get out, no choice, wrung, only enough to hang on. These five, put together, are a slave. As for whether there is an iron chain on his neck, a whip across his back, that is only the surface skin, the form, not the core. A person, even in decent clothes, in a clean house, with a phone in his pocket, so long as he is locked by something and cannot get out, has no choice, is wrung down to only enough to hang on, is, at the bone, a slave. See the core clearly, and turn back to look at today, and you will recognize the new skin.

The first layer of the new skin is the sweatshop. On this earth, to this day, there are sweatshops beyond counting. A person works a dozen and more hours a day, stands until his legs swell, works until his eyes blur, and what he earns is just enough not to starve, just enough to come back tomorrow for another dozen hours. He wants to leave? He cannot, he has no other way to live, and to leave here is to starve, and he is locked to that machine, dead fast, by those two words, to starve. There is no iron chain, but that lock of work-or-starve is stronger than an iron chain. A chain you can still find a way to break, but the lock of starving you cannot break, because what it locks is not your hands and feet, it is that mouth of yours that has to eat, and the family behind you that has to eat.

The second layer of the new skin is forced labor. Some people are lured in by a contract they cannot read, and their papers are taken, and they are shut in a place, doing work beyond what was agreed, and they cannot get away. And there are the laborers far from home in search of a living, in a strange place among strangers, their papers held in someone else's hand, the language not their own, nowhere to turn for help, at the mercy of whoever holds them. The slave-skin on them is nearly as thick as it was thousands of years ago. It is only that no one calls them slaves out loud.

The third layer of the new skin is the newest, the most decent, and the hardest to recognize, the person managed by a thing you cannot see. Look at the ones running deliveries, driving for the ride apps, picking up gig work on the platforms. They look so free. No factory wall, no clock to punch, take an order when you like, rest when you like, be your own boss. But look closer. Over their heads there is no foreman, and yet there is an algorithm, watching every second of them. This order must arrive in so many minutes, and a second slow means money docked, a rank lost, no good orders sent your way. That algorithm is sharper than any foreman, crueler than any foreman, and it never tires. It has worked out exactly how fast a person can go and how long he can hold out, and then it stacks the orders on him, one pressing on the next, driving him to run without stopping, to run to his limit, and then a little past it. He thinks he is his own boss, and in fact the algorithm over his head, the one he cannot see, is an overseer more terrible than any overseer of the old days.

Is he free? He is locked by that algorithm tighter than if he were locked in a factory. The people in the factory, when they clock off, can at least rest. But him, the pinging of that algorithm's orders sounds in his ear twenty-four hours a day, and if he rests a little longer this month's money falls short and the rent cannot be paid. He looks free, and in fact he is locked, dead fast, by a lock you cannot see.

This layer is the darkest of the three. The first two, the sweatshop worker, the one whose papers are held, that person at least knows he is suffering, knows he is trapped, and there is resentment in his heart. But this third one, the person locked by the algorithm, very often still feels himself quite free, quite decent, working for himself. That algorithm does not take a whip to him. It coaxes him. It builds into his phone a thing he cannot put down, an extra order and it flashes him a reward, several days worked in a row and it gives him a badge, a rung up the leaderboard and it tosses him a little sweetness. It packages the wringing of him into a game he plays with gusto himself. He is locked, and thinks he is fighting his heart out, for himself. This is the hardest layer of the new skin to recognize, where even the locked person cannot recognize the lock.

Do you see it now? Slavery did not vanish. It changed the iron chain into work-or-starve. It changed the whip into a contract, into papers held. It changed the foreman into an algorithm that never sleeps for twenty-four hours and reckons up your every second. It shed the old skin you could recognize at a glance, and put on the decent new skins of a job, of gig work, of freelancing, and it walks among the crowd of today. But its core, the locking of people, wringing them and using them, keeping them from getting out, keeping them at only enough to hang on, has not changed one bit. To recognize it is the first step to letting the person out.

Now that the new skins are recognized, let me single out one lock and go into it in detail. This lock binds more people today than any other, and yet it looks the least like a lock, because it is not slung around the neck, it is slung around the heart. It is called debt.

Think first about how a debt gets onto a person. A person is living, as plain and proper as can be. He wants a home, so he takes on a mortgage. He wants to meet an emergency, so he swipes a credit card. Money gets tight, so he takes an online loan. These, at the start, are none of them bad things. Borrowing money to get done a thing you otherwise could not is one of the very benefits of that tool, capital. But look further down. The moment this debt is on him, this person changes.

Do not think that only the ones who spend recklessly ever fall into debt. In this world of today, even a person as proper as they come cannot dodge debt. You want to make a home, to have a nest, and the price of a house, without taking on a thirty-year mortgage, can you afford it? You cannot. Your child has to go to school, the old folks have to see a doctor, and your money is short just for the moment, and without swiping a card, without borrowing a little, can you manage? You cannot. So this lock of debt picks out the proper person. The more a person wants to live his life on solid ground, to give his family something steady, the more easily he slings this lock onto his own neck with his own hands. It is not that he is not proper, it is precisely that he wants too much to hold this family up properly, and so, step by step, he walks into debt. And the moment this debt is on him, this person changes.

He used to live for himself, and for his family. The debt comes on, and he has gained one more master, and now he has to live for that debt. Every month, that repayment figure sits like a mountain on his head. The repayment day presses nearer by the day, and the string in his heart is drawn tighter by the day. He dares not fall ill, for one illness and this month's money breaks off. He dares not quit, for however rotten the job, however much he has to swallow, he has to grit his teeth and smile and keep his head down and go on, because the moment he stops, the debt cannot be repaid, and he will be dunned, fined, rolled by the interest into a bigger debt still. He dares not rest, dares not slow, dares not slip in the least, because behind him that debt waits with its mouth open.

You see, is this not exactly the same as the slave above? What is the core of a slave? Locked, cannot get out, no choice, wrung and used. A person chased by a debt is exactly this. He is locked by that debt and cannot get out. He has no choice, the worst job he still has to work, the greatest grievance he still has to swallow, because he cannot stop. His strength, his time, his whole self, all wrung into that pit of repaying the debt, just enough to fill this month, and next month that mouth opens again. He has no iron chain. But that debt is a lock slung around the heart, and it is tighter than an iron chain. An iron chain locks the body, and the body can still have its times of rest. The debt locks the heart, and that string will not loosen even in sleep.

And the most binding part is yet to come. Those other slaves above, the sweatshop worker, the one whose papers are held, at least the people around them can see that they suffer, can see that they are locked. The person chased by debt does not even have that. By day he still has to dress neat and go to work and laugh and chat with people, and no one can see that he is locked. He hides that lock in his heart and shoulders it alone. And the more he does so, the deeper that lock cuts.

There may well be someone like this right beside you. You see him every day, all smiles, in a suit, looking more decent than anyone, and you could never guess that at night he lies staring at the ceiling, reckoning up next month's repayment, figure by figure, till the sky grows light. The most poisonous thing about the lock of debt is exactly this. It locks the person inside, and it forces that person, on the outside, to put on the look of someone with nothing wrong. He cannot say it, for to say it is to lose his face, lose his job, lose the trust others place in him. He can only, alone, swallow that lock slung around his heart, and shoulder it. This kind of lock is even more wearing than the plain lock in the sweatshop, because it does not leave you even a place to cry out that it hurts.

To have you see this lock of debt clearly is not to have you never dare to borrow money again. Borrowing money to do a big thing is one of the benefits of the tool, and there is no fault in it. What you are to see clearly is how this lock turns a plain, proper person, bit by bit, into a modern slave who dares not stop, dares not fall ill, dares not quit, who lives for the debt.

And who slung this lock on? The one who borrowed has a part in it, he did the borrowing. But think one layer deeper. Who was it that turned borrowing money into a net that is everywhere? Who was it that stuffed a credit card into the hand of a student who does not yet have a job? Who was it that plastered the ads for online loans onto every poor person's phone, telling him money is easy to borrow, spend it first and worry later? Who was it that designed the trap of interest upon interest so that once a person borrows, he sinks deeper and deeper and can never repay? It was not the person who borrowed who designed this net. It was another hand, the hand that holds capital and makes its living precisely by putting people into debt and then chasing that debt to wring money out of them.

Think this layer through, and you will not go on blaming, in one breath, the person who took on the debt. You will not say anymore, who told him to borrow recklessly, it serves him right. A poor person, coaxed by ads that blot out the sky, hooked by a line that says spend it first, snared by a trap designed down to the last detail, takes one step in, and the net of compounding interest behind him draws tight. This net was not woven by him. It was woven, and laid out, and left waiting for him to step into, by that hand that makes its living eating people through debt. To blame his greed, to blame his foolishness, is to blame the wrong person. The one to go after is the hand that wove the net. And whose hand is that? It is still the hand this whole chapter has been burying along the way, to be brought out into the open later on.

For this section, first recognize these two locks clearly. The new skins slavery changed into, the work-or-starve of the sweatshop, the laborer whose papers are held, the tightest lock of all, the platform algorithm cloaked in the look of freedom. And this lock of debt, the one that looks least like a lock and yet binds the most people today, which turns a person into a modern slave who dares not stop, who lives for the debt, and which is slung on not by the person who borrowed but by that hand that makes its living wringing people through debt. To recognize these two locks is the first step to loosening the people they bind. The next section goes on to tell how AI has come, and how someone means to use it to make a great mass of new slaves who do not even know that they are slaves, and then how to let these locked people out, and settle them.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.