Very sound reasoning. By the very same reasoning, the debate about whether to abolish slavery (in the US) should still be in full rage. After all, who could definitely predict whether those poor people would be able to survive without their masters providing them food and shelter and protecting them from the harsh reality (with hardly a benefit for themselves)?
But I'm sure you will be able to demonstrate why this is not an appropriate analogy.
This same argument could be used to justify slavery. I'm quite unsympathetic to such arguments, especially when talking about the lowest classes of the society (as measured by wealth).
> MIT-like freedom is the "freedom to sell yourself as a slave".
I don't think this analogy is strictly wrong, but the tone is insensitive enough that it is unlikely to be persuasive to the people you are trying to persuade. (Also, some will feel that it diminishes the gravity of actual slavery.)
I agree with your point, but I think you would be better off stating it in a different way.
My point was that trying to paint slavery as being particularly objectionable in the face of just as seemingly reprehensible (but not at all in context) metaphors of child murder, is disingenuous and pointlessly selective. Child murder and slavery are horrible and I can't believe I actually have to specify this. They are both ongoing, so your argument from ancestry doesn't work. There's millions of slaves as we speak, many more ancestors of slaves and many who have had their children murdered. That doesn't somehow make those metaphors irredeemable when put in purely technical context, e.g. slavery as a relationship of total control and ownership by one party over another (actually just as applicable to S/M -- a consensual sexual practice, as it is to real-life slavery).
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