Comment by 6510
10 months ago
You never hear people talk about what slavery did for homelessness. One can be quite deranged, if a mean and a bed are provided and we beat you with a stick you are motivated to do the manual labor. It is also a sound method to overcome addiction. If pampered people living the good life cant quit smoking, stop drinking, cant quit Valium, cant stop eating. What would it be like to wake up under the bridge with an empty stomach and a crack addiction?
I wont try to sell forced labor but if I had to chose between Fentanyl and picking cotton it would be a rather easy choice.
Fortunately that choice is pure fiction.
No one has ever solved addiction with slavery, as you suggest. Just the opposite: many addicts have been forced by their addiction and circumstances into sex work, and some abducted sex slaves have been forced into addiction to control them.
You seem to have a rich fantasy about what life is like for the impoverished and addicted.
Slavery is perhaps the wrong term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
This is just slavery fanfiction. Mentally ill, uncooperative slaves would more likely have been killed to "send a message" to the others, and I expect functional addiction would be encouraged for manual labourers so long as it didn't harm productivity. I don't know what would lead you to draw assumptions like this (well, beyond the obvious).
I find it quite paradoxical how a person making great effort towards taking care of themself can some how turn out worse than care from someone who doesn't care about you.
We've made a lot of progress collectively and want to help everyone but end up doing a pretty crappy job.
I know some people who aren't doing very well mentally and do some substance abuse. Their job preserves what little sanity they have left. The periods between jobs are sheer terror, they almost die and might lose their home.