In the latest from Anthropik, Giulianna Lamanna ponders the slave state (among other interesting things in the post).

In order for me to enjoy my Western luxuries, I have roughly 2.8 slaves. (The third is a part-time slave to someone else, possibly to another American who owns even more slaves than I do.) I don't know who they are. They live in Africa or South America or East Asia or someplace. They live like there's barely any Earth at all so I can live like a queen, with my computer and television set and CD player.

Who are they? What are their names? How would they spend their lives if the'd been born with all the wealth and opportunity I'd been born with? Would they be anarcho-primitivists too? Would they be like the people I routinely argue with, who hold up the products of their wealth - the things they can have because so many more people have nothing - as evidence that this culture is worth keeping?

This, to me, is the other side of the appeal of the anarchist/dropout coin. Of course none of us want ourselves to be forced into slavery (by whatever disguise or name it takes). But how many of us are willing to give up our slaves?

I, for one, would like to. That's one reason I quit shopping at Wal Mart, and started buying clothes at second-hand stores even though I could probably afford new ones. (Though I'm still far from free of dependence on the slave state, because, like Giulianna, I too have a tv, computer, and cd player. The idea of not buying new ones when the ones I have break down isn't easy, especially if I have the money for it.) This is also why I don't want to have tons of money either. Beyond a certain point, the only thing I'd really be able to use it for would be to enslave others, even if that enslavement is subtle, not obvious. No thanks, jack.

Now I recognize that I'm unlikely to break free of slavery completely in my lifetime. (Both of being a slave and using the products of slave labor.) But that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.