The alternative would be starvation. In such a case, what would YOU prefer: to starve to death on the street, or to become somebody’s slave for seven years.
Personally I’d rather starve to death because I believe my freedom is worth dieing for. Your mileage may vary.
Seems to me some here are confusing slavery with employment or a contractual commitment. Slavery is one person OWNING another as they own any other piece of property. Irrespective of how well they’re obliged to treat that piece of property, the slave is DEHUMANIZED. Joining the military is NOT slavery, it’s a commitment that you sign up for. A sergeant does not ‘own his’ platoon, a slave owner OWNS HIS SLAVES.
I’ll bet those who think slavery is OK see themselves as the owner and not the owned. Personally I’d rather be dead than a slave.
Amen to that, brother. You can't morally "sell" yourself into slavery any more than you morally sell yourself into prostitution. Slavery is worse, in fact, due to the irrevocability of it (a hooker can change her mind day to day provided she hasn't simultaneously been enslaved also). And unlike a hooker, a slave condemns his or her offspring to the same lack of freedom. There is no moral way to sacrifice one's freedom irrevocably. That is as evil as taking one's freedom. Ayn Rand, unbeliever though she may have been during her natural life, was miles ahead of some of these goofball theologians in her excplicit condemnation of involuntary servitude or of the voluntary abidication of one's essential rights.
And each of these slaves, facing the same choice, decided they would rather live as a slave than die. They each had the choice, at any time, of ending their slavery through death (either self-inflicted or by rising in rebellion). They each took the option they preferred out of a set of admittedly lousy choices.
Similarly, millions of people left rural areas to work in the "dark satanic mills" of Dickensonian 19th Century England, under conditions so terrible that book after book was written condemning the system -- a system that provided BETTER conditions and reliable access to food than the rural areas these people left.
And in modern days, people have condemned the overseas "sweatshop" factories that "exploited" Third World people -- sweatshops that people flocked to because they provided better conditions than the alternative.
There is a whole spectrum of slavery. The US was built up under a system of "indentured servants", where the poor of England volunteered to become servants for seven years in exchange for their sponsor/master paying their passage to America. At the end of seven years they were free, and their master was obligated to furnish them with tools and supplies so that they could set themselves up independently.
Interestingly, blacks coming over were initially only servants for seven years, until Anthony Johnson sued to have his servant become his lifetime slave
According to the earliest known court records, slavery was first established in Virginia in 1654, when Johnson convinced the court in Northampton County that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor, .. a black man.The amusing thing is that Anthony Johnson, the founder of black slavery in Virginia, was himself a black man who came over as an indentured servant.