why is slavery wrong?

Answer 1

If you need telling, you need help.

Answer 2

The question is wrong. But that's the case for a lot of ethical questions. The big moral issues aren't really about good and evil; rather, they're about survival.

In order to be rational, a moral system must, at least, not lead to the extinction of its own practitioners. Moral systems that do cease to exist... and they sometimes carry whole nations into the grave with them. One of the cleverest ways to wage war is to infect your opponent with a moral system that, like a virus, gradually withers the enemy's collective strength, making conquest much easier.

Slavery isn't so much "wrong," then, as it is usually "bad" for the aristocrats. The slaves might actually be benefiting from conditions better than they could have provided for themselves. Indeed, slavery can be the enslaved people's only alternative to extinction. The biggest danger from slavery is the threat to the master class, who at the least become less fit over time: less able to provide the labor necessary to their own lives from among their own folk.

Worse, there's always the threat of a slave revolt in which the slaves win and exterminate the aristocrats. That's exactly what happened in Haiti in 1791. Haiti was once a very prosperous French colony called San Dominique. It was the jewel of the Caribbean islands. The French were prosperous, the slaves weren't too badly off, and the society was orderly.

Then the French revolution happened, and subversives from France (who, in fact, were mostly not French themselves), instigated a slave revolt in San Dominique. The revolt was successful, and every last Frenchman, woman and child was slaughtered. Afterward, the former slaves renamed the country Haiti and tried to form a republic... with predictable results. If you are familiar with the political and economic situation in Haiti, you know what I mean.

With the exception of a few slaves who became powerful after the rebellion, most of them would have been better off if the French had remained in charge, if the rebellion had never happened. The French did for the slaves what the slaves could not do for themselves: provide an orderly and prosperous society in which even the slaves obtained some relative benefit, although not as much as the French aristocrats did.

Slavery is something that should be avoided because it never has a longterm positive survival value for the master group.

Answer 3

Each one has the divine right to be their ownself. However there are two things which are commonly mixed up
(i) If someone is not able to do anything by their own, making them to work for someone efficient is one aspect. The good thing should be that the helper / worker needs to be given relavent respect n remunaration for this work. This is OK if values exist on both sides ... means ... the worker / helper should also realise that the first person is going to depend on the helper and he should stand to the expectation

(ii) Due to selfish motives / dominating tendencies / corruption policies , some like to force others to be as slave, be it in house or in bussiness or in office ... Slavery is a forcible thing

If moral values exists then the word 'slavery' can be replaced by the word 'support'

Answer 4

Unlike others who have answered this, I think this is a good question. Yes, of course it is wrong, and we all know that. But why is it wrong? The reasons are obvious, but they are so obvious that many people can't even name them. Sometimes it is good to ponder things like this, just to make sure that we and our descendants know why these things are like they are (why slavery is illegal), and nobody starts to believe that it's so only because it's customary or something.

So basically slavery is wrong because we believe that every human person has all the rights to his own body and mind, that everyone should be born free, and nobody should be able to own another human person. We believe in basic human rights, regardless of legal jurisdiction or other localizing factors, such as ethnicity, nationality, and sex.

Why do we believe in these rights? Why we want them to apply to all? It's not so easy to answer to that one, but I would say: Because we are humans, and we can easily imagine what it would be like to born without those rights, and what it would feel like. I hope the fact that many people take these rights for granted doesn't make it harder for them to imagine a world without, and thus pave the way for new violations of those same rights.

Answer 5

Ptr_tape's is the most thorough answer! if i were you i d give him the 10 points.
but there's something i want to say about this issue, which is if somebody, say 200 years ago, in any place on the planet asked this question, the answer would be totally different (that's include famous and respectable people all over the world back then)
i wonder does that mean that ethics are a relative issue.

Answer 6

Because its wrong.
America is based on freedom of choice. You get to vote, you can be whatever you want to be. The Constitution thrives on it. Slaves have no choice as to what he/she is doing, what they've become.
Think of Conan the Barbarian. He would have never became a warrior if he had never was inslaved, and forced to work and battle through his whole childhood.
I think on terms of slavery as in illegal terms, hiring a butler to do your cleaning, cooking, is not slavery. He/She chooses to work, gets paid, blah blah blah the end.

Answer 7

Because slavery is using people you idiot!!
People aren't animals and you really really need some help.
I can't believe you are asking this!!!
How about you go work in fields for hours upon hours in sunlight and see how you like it !

Answer 8

would u like it if your boss whipped when u made a mistake at work?? would u like 2 not get paid 4 the backbreaking work you just did, then go 2 ur shack and eat barely anything?? because that is what a did had 2 do and that sounds wrong 2 me.

Answer 9

because you are taking away ones rights to live and prosper, putting them under some false rule to allow another to prosper at the hands of unpaid labor. This is self explanatory, to most people i would think. God bless

Answer 10

Because they are Humans not Animals, and as humans they have rights. It's one thing for them to work in jobs like cleaning you're house and stuff like that, but it's another to enslave them.

Answer 11

of course it was wrong. I feel it was more a capitalistic venture more so than one based solely on hatred but Greed can manifest in many ways...