Bitcoin: The end of human slavery

This is part 1 in my series, Bitcoin, the real Great Emancipator.

The series is a survey of the major types of human slavery, and how Bitcoin disrupts these repulsive institutions.

In Part 1 we will establish a solid definition for slavery and an approach for dissecting and evaluating each type.

Slavery is violent theft of property over a period of time. Let’s look at an example. If Bob hits Tom until he hands over his food he has not made Tom a slave. But if Bob takes a portion of Tom’s food every month for a year, and hits Tom if he attempts to resist, Bob has made Tom his slave for that year.

In other words if the victim anticipates the theft, and works knowing his goods will be stolen, he is a slave. This is because he is forced to labor for the predator (slave owner).

In the most crude form of slavery, the very body of the victim is assumed by the predator as his property. In this case the victims goods are claimed by the predator even before the victim produces them.

Humans don’t produce without freedom

But through logic and experience slave owners have discovered that humans are not cattle. They have learned that the productivity of a human goes down as their freedom is reduced. The challenge for these predators then, is to maximize their profit by finding the optimal degree of freedom. As they increase the victims freedom he becomes more productive, but the amount the predator is able to steal is also reduced.

Let’s return to our example above. Let’s imagine that Bob tells Tom that he will come by his house at the first of every month and that he needs to give Bob $1,000 to avoid a beating. And let’s assume Tom doesn’t actually owe Bob money and would never have agreed to this relationship if he didn’t think Bob would deliver on his threat.

Tom has become Bob’s slave. Normally Tom would work until he had produced enough good to satisfy his needs, and the needs of those he provides for, and then he would rest and enjoy leisure. But now, even before he has produced these goods, he must produce goods for Bob. As long as this relationship continues Tom is Bob’s possession. Bob may provide Tom more or less freedom. He may be more or less flexible with Tom if he is late. Bob may choose to increase the credulity of his threats, maybe by hiring other thugs to regularly visit Bob at home, or he may choose to spend more effort convincing Bob that this relationship is for his own good. But these decisions won’t effect the nature of the relationship any more than a farmer deciding to decrease fertilizer and increase watering effects his relationship with his corn fields.

Because of the mental anguish this unnatural relationship would produce in Tom it is a greater victimization than if Bob obtained the same amount of goods through random acts of theft.

So, slavery is the recurring theft of a man’s property through the threat of violence.

A Product Review of the versions of slavery

In order to better understand the nature of these unholy institutions we are going to look at the pros and cons for each of the 8 types of slavery from the perspective of the predator. Predators (slave owners) are concerned with minimizing their costs and maximizing their revenue.

While it’s obvious that their thinking is warped (this will become even more clear through this series) it is best to view slavery from their perspective so we can get a firm grasp on the best way to alter the incentive structure that gives birth to these abominations.

Each of the below attributes will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5.

• Productivity — how much wealth does the victim produce.
• Security costs — how much does the predator need to spend in order to prevent the victim from escaping. And for the predator to remain safe.
• Portion acquired — how much of the wealth produced by the victim is acquired by the predator.
• Investment risk — in some forms of slavery the predator must take on financial risk. It is to the predators benefit to minimize the amount of “investment risk” he must assume.
• Profitability — maximizing profitability is the overall goal of any slave owner. If a form of slavery becomes more profitable it will become more commonplace. If it becomes unprofitable it will cease to exist.

Finally we will end with a discussion of how Bitcoin is perfectly designed to bring about the destruction of each form of slavery. If you find yourself getting depressed as we dissect these inventions of evil skip ahead to see how Bitcoin will end them. And then, if you have the stomach for it, return to the analysis of the monsters themselves.

In part two we will be examining Socialist Slavery.