[ExI] future of slavery

[Mike Dougherty]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 5:13 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> It is worth noting that even if the slaves are 100% happy with being slaves,
> they are very likely to be moral patients (given that they have to be
> intelligent, able to think about other minds and their own) - hence you are
> not morally allowed to mistreat them. But since their values can be set,
> mistreatment might also be odd: freeing such a slave mind might be
> mistreatment until its values are changed (and even then, one might argue
> that you act against their past interests in almost the same way as
> enslaving a free agent breaks their past interests in being free). Setting
> values that are likely to be frustrated seems to be a bad thing.

How do you classify so-called "proles" who know no better than to
follow their herd according to programming (either direct or memetic)

Is it wrong for rational intervention to convince the
government-assistance recipient to not want the blinged-out Escalade
because it costs them their quality of living in the pursuit of
perceived status among peers?  I know that's not technically slavery.
It might be argued as an addiction.  Maybe it's just a case of
misplaced goals.

Where's the line drawn between responsible stewardship of this class
of people and farming/exploitation of a demographic?