Sure, but not the weird directions you're going with it. I thought it was pretty clear from that admittedly brief post that it's not some sort of 1-to-1 correspondence. The appropriate response would have been to ask "in what ways do you see capitalistic economic systems as analogous to slavery?" and perhaps also "in what ways do you see them as different?" (because there's that too).
In what ways is it analogous? The end-goal of capitalism is all about profit. If something isn't profitable, you don't do it. Without regulation - either by law or by social norms - all sorts of ethnically questionable behaviors are justified in the name of profit. Sometimes, the results of that look analogous to slavery. As an example, in the past there were basically no worker protections for folks: no limits to working hours, no overtime pay, dangerous working conditions, child labor, no minimum wages, no benefits, etc. In many respects, it was human slavery in all but name. It was certainly abusive, at any rate. No surprise, folks rebelled, formed things like labor unions, and laws were passed to curb the worst impacts of unregulated capitalism. Things like minimum wage laws, the 40 hour work week, and so on. Unfortunately, this made operating costs more expensive and some companies reacted by moving operations overseas. Why deal with expensive regulations and labor laws domestically when you can outsource to places that still allow exploitation and pittance wages?
The struggles of industrialization and capitalism are really important lessons from history to remember. Many of the protections that were fought for are taken for granted now; we forget that lassies faire capitalism was downright awful for abusing humans as resources. There are other important lessons from history about the importance of regulating capitalism, but I think that human labor laws are most relevant to the OP's topic. When I read the OP, @Vouthon, minimum wage laws came to mind. The profit-driven fixation of capitalism is bad enough, but it's worse when those profits are not shared equitably. Profits get funneled up to the management, not given to the poor (aka, the workers who do most of the actual work). The inequality here is the worst it's been in decades in my country, and it makes these words from the Bible very timely.
Thank you for being more elaborate. I can see some analogy to slavery but as with comparisons between any arbitrary subjects, we easily draw similar traits yet that still doesn't make a direct comparison.
What I see is an indirect comparison between, specifically yesterday's Capitalism and Slavery. Even then, today's Capitalism has grown ethically and morally to provide better working conditions so many of your points I feel have been addressed already.
Still I do not see a direct comparison between the core components of Capitalism and Slavery.
I think the two main components of slavery is freedom or specifically lack of freedom and the property ownership of human beings. These are the mandate of a slave system. Without those components, a country or system cannot implement pure slavery. The system has to be able to systematically remove freedom from specific people and enable property ownership of people to others.
As you say, a simple definition of Capitalism is profit driven. Capitalism does not force people to become property. People enter contracts that forces them to do things, but it was their volition to enter that contract in the first place. People just have to be smart enough to understand the value of the contracts.
I respectfully fail to see any direct comparison between the two. I could make similar indirect comparisons with slavery and communism by simply focusing on similar traits.
No doubt, there's still inequality in Capitalism. There's still much more room for improvement. As you compared yesterday's Capitalism to today's Capitalism, I think you've shown that Capitalism doesn't have some innate ceiling to prevent further improvements. It allows other sociology to exist in parallel like welfare. Again, by and far, Capitalism offers the best life factors for its citizens across the board. It's not perfect, but its still better. I've taken notice of many of the Scandinavian states and other welfare states like Canada. One can't deny their success. Pure Capitalism doesn't seem to be the solution but without it, states just will not be successful enough to support other ideals. I actually do support a Utopian ideal, but the state still has to be able to produce enough in order to support its people. Someday, I probably will change my ideologies when I feel technology has caught up enough to actually make it tangible.
