It is with this premise that I began to formulate a concept of UBI, ranked income, and so forth. People simply can't do stuff if they don't have enough things to support a baseline existence. That baseline should be strong enough to offer education, health, freedom to wait for jobs that aren't abusive, the ability to travel, and so on. Agency is the core to an effective human, and our capitalistic society is designed to confer that agency upon a few.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Yes, and this is why old school liberals (i.e. supporters of liberty for all) support social programs. Supporting those that can't comfortably support themselves brings freedom from exploitation.
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
– Joey S
Asterix did a great bit on that. Slaves are freed and put to work for money, but suddenly they owe for food, housing, clothing, infrastructure etc. and are just as much slaves as before. In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don't have to worry anymore.
In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don’t have to worry anymore.
This last bit is Neo-Confederate propaganda. The "slaves were happy to be slaves" myth is wildly apocryphal.
Far more often, the freedmen leave their plantation economies in pursuit of more lucrative work in more industrial and urban regions. Harlem, New York and Detroit, Michigan are testament to the exodus of American colored people northward following the war. Or they strike out to undeveloped territories and form their own municipalities. Large black communities popped up across the Southwest and West coast, as the post-Civil War frontier was subjected to industrial scale genocide of native peoples.
The consequence of this mass migration is a labor shortage at home. One which can only be resolved by (a) raising wages / living standards until people want to stay or (b) re-enslaving the population through other means. In the case of the US South, these "other means" were the Jim Crow laws, which transformed the private plantation economy into a publicly managed (and privately profitable) state prison economy.
Following the end of Reconstruction under Rutherford B. Hayes, southern state governments imposed a suite of laws forbidding "vagrancy" and constricting the right of colored people to travel unattended. Independent communities of black citizens were raided and demolished (The Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 being two notable examples - really all of Red Summer being a major historical turning point for American race relations). Enormous prison compounds were constructed. And the incarceration rate among people of color skyrocketed.
The campaign to re-enslave the colored population was a central position of the "Dixiecrats" straight into the LBJ administration. And capturing these revanchists was pivotal to the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, even as the taste for segregation soured nationally on the American tongue. All of this was covered up and expunged from US History, following the 1980s Reagan Revolution and the reactionary efforts to undo the Civil Rights Movement. So it's very easy to never know the long dark winter of civil rights in post-Civil War American history.
But "slaves were actually happier to be on the plantation" is textbook Coolidge Era white nationalist revisionism.
Which is why I plan to fuck off to a mountain, and play dead.
When capitalism ends and we all finally revolt, we will be truly free.
Freedom to stave.
Everyone here should remember the story of Damocles. One of the things I enjoy about being poor is that I have nothing for people to steal. I don't worry about muggings, carjackings, home invasions, kidnapping. When you have money, a line starts to form to take it from you.
Slavery is not being denied the ability to earn wages.
Slavery is being denied the ability to save.
This is freedom under capitalism
Freedom to toil, freedom to starve, freedom to suffer without medicine or medical care. Freedom to freeze on the cold and bake in the sun.
The USA you're free to do whatever you like as long as it's these few specific things we believe are economically beneficial to the leaders but not you.
Unironically what natives of the Great Lakes region have been saying about the "civilized" western way of life for centuries.
The economy is designed to keep you locked into working for the rest of your life under stress. Freedom is only given to capitalists because that's how the system is designed.
One loophole is stealing.
I sold drugs, that was real freedom.
Yeah. Marx called it formal vs. real freedom. All the people are free to sleep under the bridges or at a five star penthouse. But some are forced to sleep under the bridge and only a few have means to exercise the freedom to enter the penthouse.
Welcome to left libertarianism. Cheers, you can vape in the hot tub but please no glass.
Maybe freedom as in financial freedom? I feel trapped cause of trauma and stuff but there's layers.
Like an onion
like an ogre
like a cake
They smell?
They make you cry?
I would say more to the point if everything in life needs to make a profit then freedom isn't free
its by design, politicians billionaire class intentionally instigated this way so people dont start pondering about politics, rising up against the aristocrats.
Yep, for more information on that read Debt: the First 5000 Years, it goes pretty deep into it from both anthropological and political perspectives
Instructions unclear. Im now in debt for 130k
Slavery evolved and took on new names, but never disappeared.
How much do you have saved up, that you're willing to tap into so that you can live for yourself and others, and not a paycheck? How long could you just exist before the debt becomes crushing? That's the length of your leash.
Retired people who live comfortably are basically 'off leash' but still confined to the yard. Some people have a 1-2 week 'leash'. Some may have saved up enough to have a 6-12 month 'leash The rest are the 'i could stop working whenever I want, but refuse to' or 'man I'm so fucking far in debt that I'll never be able to stop fucking working'
Most people will never be able to stop working because I'm a slave based economy, a slave must earn it's food every day, and it's bed every night.
The idea that you have to earn a living means you dont deserve to live.
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We lost our freedom when they took away the ability to put together a group of people/solo and go on an expedition/excursion because you had the resources and the want to. now we're slaves
“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread.”
Kropotkin?
Eh, yes and no.
People often don't really appreciate how much freedom they have until it's taken away.
But even with no money at all, I have a bike, and I can ride it as far as I care to in any direction I want (well, at least until I hit a border). And that is so much more freedom than I've had at other points in my life.
Okay... but what happens when you're hungry and broke at the same time? Just gonna ride your bike until you happen to come across someone handing out free food? The 'ability to bike around the block' isn't the kind of freedom that OP was talking about, it's the freedom to do what you want with your life without being forced to do something else (make money) first
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Hard to ride a bike when you don't have your health, sadly.
Yup. I remember a friend and I discussing various forms of freedoms: Freedom of speech, religion, privacy, etc. We tried to rank them by importance, and while I cannot remember our conclusions, I remember "Economic freedom" to be among the most important ones.
A person should have disposable income and freedom to spent it how they want.
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