Mennonites and Slavery

[Josh]

Many socialists and Communists claimed that tenant peasants or urban labourers who must work barely scraping by and then spend all their money on rent is basically slavery/servitude. The capitalists had a lack of perspective on this problem, failing to see how the landlord-tenant relationship is a fundamentally exploitative and hostile one.

[AndersonD]

failing to see how the landlord-tenant relationship is a fundamentally exploitative and hostile one.

Indeed it is.
I have also been thinking about the exploitative nature of various companies and have stopped purchasing online. FedEx, UPS, and Amazon exploit their employees...stacking packages by hand in 90+ degree heat, low wages. My mom makes my clothes...for instance, Levi's are made in sweatshops in Pakistan, Carhart in MX

[Josh]

failing to see how the landlord-tenant relationship is a fundamentally exploitative and hostile one.

Indeed it is.
I have also been thinking about the exploitative nature of various companies and have stopped purchasing online. FedEx, UPS, and Amazon exploit their employees...stacking packages by hand in 90+ degree heat, low wages. My mom makes my clothes...for instance, Levi's are made in sweatshops in Pakistan, Carhart in MX

Amazon is exploitative to an extreme - even of their tech workers pulling $200k salaries. If they treat them poorly, imagine how badly line workers are treated. The drivers are under extreme stress to deliver really fast and are pressured to break traffic laws and do unsafe things on the road. This is a well documented problem.

One area of respect I have for groups like Delano is that they try to detach themselves from these worldly systems.

[Robert]

Amazon and UPS employees are quite well paid with a lot of benefits.

[Josh]

Amazon and UPS employees are quite well paid with a lot of benefits.

UPS, yes, Amazon, no.

[Neto]

re: ambient temperatures in work area - at what temperature does employment become "slavery-like"?

I worked in a shop (in Tulsa) where, when the outside temperature was over 100* F, it was around 110 to 120 inside, due to the steam-heated vats.
Then we spent 18 years in the Amazon, where daytime temperatures were usually in the 90's, and humidity in that range as well. (Self-imposed slavery?)
I think it comes back to choice. Does the worker in such situations "have a way out"? A family man working at near subsistence level does not really have a choice. The employer holds the control, both because he/she can "black-list" a former employee through bad references, or just because the worker has no recourse, because he cannot leave his current job to search for another, and the employer can punish him if he/she finds out he's been looking for different job while still employed there.

I don't know if the really long article I posted about life in the colonies prompted this turn in subject matter or not, but the reader can see that the landless people did not have free choice, even less so than the subsistence-level employee of today. And it is interesting (to me, at least) that the freeing of the surfs in Czarist Russia made the plight of the "Mennonite slaves" even worse.

[AndersonD]

Amazon and UPS employees are quite well paid with a lot of benefits.

In the past I took a nonchalant view towards UPS, Amazon and FedEx but as Josh stated, they are under an ungodly amount of pressure to perform. And UPS drivers make money, but they are putting their lives in danger which is unethical.

[AndersonD]

failing to see how the landlord-tenant relationship is a fundamentally exploitative and hostile one.

Indeed it is.
I have also been thinking about the exploitative nature of various companies and have stopped purchasing online. FedEx, UPS, and Amazon exploit their employees...stacking packages by hand in 90+ degree heat, low wages. My mom makes my clothes...for instance, Levi's are made in sweatshops in Pakistan, Carhart in MX

One area of respect I have for groups like Delano is that they try to detach themselves from these worldly systems.

Delano still requires the women to clean the latrines which is a form of servitude. It's one thing to defecate into a chamber pot, but another matter to make the women clean them out....very unfair.

[Ernie]

I never heard about Delano. Where can I read about this company and its business model?

[AndersonD]

I never heard about Delano. Where can I read about this company and its business model?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian ... prov=sfla1

I know very little about them other than details from a close friend who recently visited and the subject discussed was the lack of indoor plumbing, no screens on the house windows, the flies migrated from the outhouse to the bread in the kitchen. My friend is very enamored with them. Your bil in WF may have some knowledge of them.