A Quote by Kenneth Smith on philosophy, slavery, capitalism, and labor

All slave labor is forced labor. So are all forms of labor where an individual has not got the educational or fiscal means to stand on his own in making a free contract with an employer, or where that capitalist has acquired the political and social as well as the economic clout to prevent evenhanded terms from being respected. What passes for the rational legal concept of a "contract" is unknown in American conditions of fact, for the vast majority of cases: most people hire their own labor out under conditions of duress, and the employer one-sidedly dictates the terms. That is how we got to a condition where the minimum wage for the working poor is not a living wage, and is getting worse and worse. Modernity is not more civilized than antiquity because it has legally abolished slavery; it is merely more modernized in recognizing that it is far, far cheaper and more prudent to rent slaves by the hour than to own them, which means you have to assume responsibility for their upkeep and care.