Slavery vs. Freedom?: A Cost Analysis

Is there an advantage to being a slave rather than a minimum wage worker, who lives on a subsistence salary? A slave is a piece of property that needs to be maintained, just like a car or tractor. Hence from a health point of view, the situation of the slave is better than that of many workers in America, who still struggle with health costs, despite the advances of Obamacare. A slave like a pet also has to be fed and treated with plenty of TLC, otherwise it will become squirrelly and indolent. Repeated punishments and beatings have not been found to increase the effectiveness of slaves. Minimum wage workers, however, require little TLC. If a worker in a fast food joint doesn’t perform his job, there’s always a replacement waiting in the wings. Of course, freedom is the one thing that slaves don’t have. Everyone talks about freedom and dreams of it, but once it arrives its benefits fall far short of the promise that was once held out. Sure it’s nice to be free, but freedom like independence means that you end up having to fend for yourself. It’s nice to be free if you can hack it, but if you end up having a hard time in an increasingly competitive marketplace, then you may want think about relinquishing your freedom. In general, when you create a spread sheet and list all the pluses and minuses of freedom versus slavery, you’re going to find that it’s a very close call. Would you rather be enslaved by a relatively nice owner, say a Thomas Jefferson type, or work for McDonald’s for the rest of your life?

Freedom

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (l954) and Roe v. Wade (l973) were arguably the two most momentous decisions in Supreme Court history. If the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were direct products of the thinking of Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke. Then Roe v.Wade and Brown v. Board  (which turned over Plessy v Ferguson, the famed “separate but equal” decision of l896) were not only reflections of two great libertarian movements—civil and women’s rights—but also the culmination of an evolutionary process as manifested in jurisprudence. But these two decisions were not only milestones of political, economic and legal thinking. They define an era that began with The New Deal, the Camelot of the Kennedy White House with its resident intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the hope of the troubled Obama Years. When we think about the ideals that manifest themselves in the liberal wings of both the Democratic and Republic parties, Roe v Wade and Brown v. Board redefine the notion of Inalienable Rights. Freedom is the title of Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling novel and it would be hard to imagine this work of fiction and all the complexities of the world it describes without Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board whose outcomes were declarations of new freedoms. Yet Conservative thinkers who criticize these two decisions are probably right. Both Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education extended the notion of human liberty beyond the original intentions of the writers of the Constitution. "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties!" exclaims Hamlet. How will the verdicts  of our 21st Century Supreme Court define or redefine the Rights of Man?