Comment on Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle’
meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works 9 months agoYou can’t violence your way into efficient human labor without repealing the 13th Amendment.
Let’s see if the SCOTUS says that the slavery clause only applies to individual people that congress specifically designates as free, a la the wholly made up rules on the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.
Dasus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’d like to agree with you, but I’d like to note that the 13th amendment of the US constitution specifically states slavery is allowed as a punishment for a crime.
So all you need to do is manufacture laws which make something common criminal and put heavy sanctions on it.
Like say… draconian drug laws around cannabis, or making abortion carry the same sentences as murder. Three strike laws in which you can sentence someone to prison for life for stealing $14.
law.utexas.edu/…/legalized-slavery-in-the-united-…
Thats how the US subsidises labour. Enslaved prisoners.
So you can violence your way into efficient human labour without repealing the 13th amendment. Perhaps there’s a point at which it won’t work anymore, but seems to have worked fine for the past century or so
meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I’d make the argument that slavery provides a higher quantity of workers, but since it’s against the workers’ wills, it is not as efficient (units of work per unit of time).