Okay, so here's some context:

As many of you know, I collect those little figures for the purposes of painting and gaming. You may have seen the ones I made of characters from the fed. Now, there is a certain range of these figures in particular that I collect that are no longer produced by the company who makes (made) them. Naturally, these are fairly rare - not that rare, but rare enough to be occasionally expensive on ebay if you're not smart.

Anyway, there are a number of unscrupulous sellers on ebay who buy up stock of these figures and then sell them off at extortionate prices on the basis that they are really rare (i.e. they lie in the descriptions). Examples include something that was originally sold for about £4 and is being listed with a "Buy it Now" price of £23. Needless to say, this is annoying - no one will pay those prices, but there's only a limited number of these figures around and the more these ebay stores buy, the less there will be available at reasonable prices.

So, on another forum connected with these figures, someone decided to do something about it. Their plan was "we get together, but £x00 into this scheme, buy up as much of the stock as we can and then sell it back to the community at a reasonable price". I pointed out that this was stupid - none of us were altruistic enough to put money in we wouldn't get back just to help out collectors of these figures. Given that the whole point of the plan was essentially for the people involved to lose money, it was fundamentally flawed. The solution, I explained, was simply to never buy from the unscrupulous sellers so that simple market forces make them drop their prices - it's the basis of capitalist economics: supply and demand.

Fast forward a few weeks and now the guy who proposed this plan has gone and done it by himself anyway. He bought up the stock, beating the unscrupulous sellers who were bidding on items with the intent of selling them on for more money and has opened his own ebay store. However, because it was expensive for him to win all these auctions, the prices he's selling them for are only fractionally less than the very sellers he was trying to beat...






So now there's another store selling this stuff at high prices no one can afford! It's exactly what I said would happen. What's more, because it's still cheaper than the unscrupulous sellers, there's nothing to stop them buying his stuff now anyway and putting it in their own stores for higher prices. At best, he's just delayed the inevitable.

So fucking dumb.

Oh God, that reminds me. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on TV last night. I know Michael Moore is a dick and everything, and he's kind of shady with facts and all, but some of that stuff is crazy. Couldn't anyone have stood up when all of this nonsense with Bush (by which I mean "his entire presidency") was going on and said "now seriously, can we actually think for a second?" Just to draw attention to it or something? It's like an entire government fell asleep. I wouldn't mind, but the USA has a fucking shitload of bombs and stuff.

My point exactly.

The thing was, no one was defending it exactly, but they were offering excuses and platitudes that amounted to stuff like: "slaves weren't that badly treated" and "in the ancient world, slavery was perfectly normal". Now, as someone who feels strongly about this, it's hard not to read comments like that in anything but the same way you might read "I'm not a racist, but..."

To me, any kind of pragmatic excuse related to the reality of slavery as "not that bad" ignores the fundamental moral issue of what slavery represents: the dehumanisation of an individual and reduction in status to property. The value with which said 'property' is treated is irrelevant: valued property is still property and, when applied to a human being, such a practice is repulsive in the extreme.

It's a shame really, because I quite liked that forum, but I'm not comfortable interacting with people who display such a woolly understanding of ethics and morality.

Well my point is that slavery, by the bare bones of it, is not something I would rank on the list of evil. Was it wrong? Yes. But evil? Not in my mind. Sure, people did evil things as a result of or during the practice of slavery, but when I think of evil I don't see slavery. I see genocide, rape, sadistic torture, murder in various forms (killing for the sake of killing, the killing of an innocent, etc etc.).

Also there is the premise that man's definition of evil is based solely off of his/her culture, experiences, upbringing, religious background. The Aztec's, for example, performed living human sacrifices. To the Spanish, this was a horribly evil, and therefore, sinful act. Yet the Aztec's viewed it as a religious practice that was widely accepted. The rain god Tláloc was given sacrfices of children, who were made to cry during their death as homage to the mighty rain god. Evil? By our Western eyes yes. But was it evil to them?

Such factors must be considered when we declare with absolute conviction that said practice is, without a shadow of a doubt, evil. Nothing wrong with having views, or feeling strongly about a subject by any means. But to say that anybody with half a brain agrees that said act is evil, what does that say? That all those who feel differently from you are less intelligent? That they are idiots, or stupid? Dangerous line to straddle. Were the Greeks, Romans, Sumerians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Vikings, Aztecs, Mayans, Incans, Ancient Africans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Native Americans, Medieval Europeans, and countless other cultures; were they evil or stupid? Certainly many were from our modern view, but what did their culture say of the practice? Calling them evil makes it too easy for us. Would our views on slavery be different if Aztec culture was the modern one? Or the Greek?

And again I state, I am not defending the practice of slavery, but one can not look at the past (or even the present) with eyes of superiority. Just remember, the Christians have been doing that for centuries.