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Slave Labor

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Mammon

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Unless theyve initiated force against you, why would you have the right to take either their life or their property? There are many 'uncivilized' people within our own society, but we do not infringe on their rights if they have not committed a crime.

Edited by eriatarka
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Unless theyve initiated force against you, why would you have the right to take either their life or their property? There are many 'uncivilized' people within our own society, but we do not infringe on their rights if they have not committed a crime.

It would depend on how much more uncivilized. Savages don't have rights. Native American history is a good example of when it is just to conquer. As for enslaving them, why would you want to ?

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Is it wrong for a more civilized society to enslave a less or anti-civilized society. We recognize that we can take their property (sort of), but can we take their lives?
You should read some of the writings of Ayn Rand on the topic of rights and morality, if you are interested in questions of slavery.
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It would depend on how much more uncivilized. Savages don't have rights. Native American history is a good example of when it is just to conquer.

What an idiotic and ignorant statement. They were humans with fully functional (though not fully rational) brains. Do you really see a difference between the religious irrationality of Native American tribes and of, say, the Puritans or the Quakers? These weren't some Aztec death-lovers willing to kidnap and sacrifice the innocent.

Edited by brian0918
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What an idiotic and ignorant statement. They were humans with fully functional (though not fully rational) brains.

What he really should of said is that they had no rights to any land. The Indians had no concept of private property and thought that for some reason they "intrinsicly" had "rights" to all of the land. They quickly and properly found out that they possessed no such thing.

Edited by EC
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I don't think it is right to enslave a savage group of humans anymore. That is, it might have made sense when we first discovered such people, already trading each other for profit, into slavery. However, we know now that such men are not some proto-human species, and are in fact just normal men brought up in an irrational environment. Moreover, historically, we should know better than to assume that because slavery and barbarism are possible to men, that somehow metaphysically changes them from men to beasts.

Just because Ayn Rand called them 'savages' as a judgement of their way of life, does not necessarily mean they are not still human. They may not have any notion of rights, but they still have a rational capacity, and it is immoral to have any more desire to enslave a savage than a civilised man, just because he doesn't know any better.

(That said, once they start claiming a right to put your delicious white-man flesh in their cooking pot, we have every right to nuke Tehran... I mean, we have every right to demolish this hypothetical barbarian 'civilisation'.)

Edited by Tenure
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