Asklemmy

43856 readers

1567 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

-13

Was banning human slavery an authoritarian decision? (monyet.cc)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I'm just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.

As in, is any law that restricts people's freedom to do something (yes, even if it's done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner's freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it's only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?

Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

So you are trying to argue that slavery is a RIGHT? This looks like and argument of guilt by association. Authoritarian is seen as bad, by giving the abolishment of slavery the label of "authoritarian" gives of the idea that you want to associate it with being bad.

If having a law that restricts one’s ability to do something is “authoritarian” then any law is authoritarian, because laws, by definition, determine what behaviour is and isn’t allowed within a society. On that note, morality determines legality, not the other way around.

Slavery means that, if you're rich enough, you should be allowed to revoke the rights of others. This is refutable at so many levels. If someone were to "willingly" agree to give up their rights, then just you're just taking advantage of someone who was born in an unfavourable position and have no other choice other than to accept (and maybe not starve) or starve.