As we saw last week, Ancient Rome had a problem with slaves convicted of crimes doing the work of honest municipal slaves, receiving pay and benefits, and generally causing scandal by taking jobs from other slaves and foreigners. Still, rather than simply get rid of the illegal slaves (which would have exacerbated the chronic labor shortage), the Emperor Trajan came up with a solution.
The Romans were an eminently practical people. Trajan seems to have figured if an enterprising slave, even a convicted criminal, could show sufficient initiative to game the system without otherwise transgressing the law, that slave had earned the quasi right to become officially a municipal slave instead of doing it illegally.
After all, they were doing jobs no Roman citizen would do. If you got rid of them, no one would do the job unless you went out and bought a whole bunch of new, qualified slaves . . . and that could get very expensive — qualified municipal slaves (often what would today be considered middle and upper management and bureaucrats) were not cheap and often were not all that easy to obtain. Furthermore, if a private owner had a slave that valuable, he or she would not be willing to sell at any price (and had probably already made arrangements to manumit him or her, anyway, and even obtain a grant of Roman citizenship), and a common slave bought off the block at auction would either not be qualified ever, or could require a long period of expensive training to bring the slave up to speed.
So, yeah, sure, the convicted criminal slaves had done something illegal, immoral, and probably fattening (better food) by insinuating themselves into the ranks of the municipal slaves, but so what? The work needed to be done, they were doing it, so efficiency and practically demanded they be left alone. The Romans didn’t need an ideology. They needed results. Make it official and get on with business.
Fast forward to today. It seems evident both Pliny and Trajan would have been completely baffled at the antics of ICE and the goal of getting rid of every illegal immigrant, visitors overstaying their visas, people of the wrong political party, race, creed, color, or religion, or who mouth off against someone in power that seems to be the desire of the present administration in Washington, as well as to “create jobs” that no American citizen is willing or in many cases able, physically or mentally, to take.
Trajan
In the News from the Network from a few weeks ago, we sounded off a little about the situation. As we said,
• Deported Labor. The problem with the “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” ICE raids is twofold. 1) People are being arrested who aren’t guilty and without due process for those who may be guilty of something. 2) People who are not guilty of anything and are in the United States legally are not going out in public, showing up for their jobs, or even attending religious services for fear of being rounded up, thrown into a concentration camp, and deported. The situation has gotten so bad even so-called experts in the Dismal Science of Economics are becoming concerned it could have an adverse effect on the economy . . . as if decades of Keynesian lunacy weren’t already enough. They are claiming inflation could rise by 4% due to the massive deportations. According to Fortune magazine, “[Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi] says if Trump continues deporting immigrants at the current rate, inflation will go from 2.5% to somewhere close to 4% ‘by the time it hits its peak early next year.’ Zandi says his stark prediction is based on recent inflation data. ‘Foreign-born labor force is declining, and the overall labor force has gone flat since the beginning of the year,’ he added. ‘That’s causing tightening in a lot of markets, adding to costs and inflation.’” It also doesn’t help any when employers can’t find workers who will work for what they can afford to pay. The solution? How about stopping the weird assault on groups and adopting the Economic Democracy Act?
In response, one of our Faithful Readers asked, “What is a good solution for people who are here not legally and working but not paying state or federal income taxes, Social Rip Off Security, workers comp, auto insurance?”
To this we responded, “If they can be identified for deportation they can be identified for tax and other purposes, and given conditional green cards pending due process.” Our correspondent replied, “That keeps it simple. Elegant solution, actually.” And legal, as well. Naturally, we closed by pointing out it was similar to the Emperor Trajan’s response to Pliny. After all, there has to be something better than gangs of masked thugs kidnapping people off the street without probable cause, ignoring due process, and maintaining concentration camps on American soil . . . or anywhere else.
#30#
