Prenatal Debt Slavery – Get on it Vatican!

In today’s world we still have one seemingly possible way of becoming a slave. Eliminating the current situation of tax serfdom has to be our priority, of course, but it is no reason for neglecting other terrible side-effects of state action. One such effect is debt slavery. And the debt slavery which results directly from state action is the enslavement of the young and the unborn – people who are not allowed to make decisions for themselves. If I decide to make myself a debt slave, so be it. I may deserve it. But forcing someone else to become such a slave is another thing entirely. The state borrows money and uses its future income (in the form of IOU’s) as collateral. This means that responsibility for money spent today is deferred onto people who will have to pay it off in the future. Children being born with into debt are essentially forced to pay for the folly of their ancestors. In private relations such a scheme would be unacceptable. I cannot buy a car by giving the car dealer a piece of paper which says that in twenty years my son will pay for it. Not only does it sound ridiculous, it is also deeply immoral. Some people have told me that I am not correct and that the current situation is more akin to when a parent dies and leaves his child a house with a mortgage on it. But this is not right either. Firstly, when a parent buys a house I don’t think he/she expects that the child will have to pay for it. It is more of an accident that the parent died before he was able to pay the whole thing off. Furthermore, an inheritor of a property with a mortgage can choose to not pay it and forfeit the property to the lender. Our children will not be able to do that with the state (at least not legally). And lastly, what we are leaving our children here is analogous to me leaving a useless wooden shack with no plumbing to my children only for them to find out that there is a million dollar mortgage on it – an amount that is multiple times the value of the shack. No reasonable human being would be expected to take such a deal; forfeiting the property would be a much better idea. The children are not obliged to pay off my debts because they did not voluntarily accept responsibility for them. This is all very clear.
There is also another moral argument to be made here, and another opportunity presents itself for me to lobby the Catholic Church, of which I am now a former member but still a great fan. So, if Catholics are so against abortion, which they claim to be, why don’t they oppose taking away other rights of the unborn? The right to life is important, but the right to life is not really anything other than the right to upkeep our bodily functions and our body is also part of our property. After all, what use is the right to life if the life we live is that of slavish servitude and dependence? The right of private property is an important part of the Catholic tradition. Therefore I think the Pope should condemn all public debts as stealing from the unborn, an action equivalent to abortion.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."