The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence

by Gary A. Haugen

the fundamentals of bonded slavery are exceedingly simple. You use a loan to lure someone to work for you under conditions in which 1) they cannot leave until they repay the debt, and 2) they have no say in how much they get paid for their work. Under such conditions, it’s impossible for them to pay off the debt because the lender simply never pays them enough to pay them back—and they can’t go anywhere else to earn money to pay it off. And, if they can’t leave, they have to “buy” food and shelter from the lender to stay alive—at whatever price the lender sets and as part of a debt that accumulates in perpetuity. There is just one essential ingredient to the whole scheme: the over-arching threat of force to keep them from leaving—which is legitimated because they have “taken the lender’s money,” and he is just restraining them from “stealing.”