Modern Day Slaves
What is the picture you see in your head when you read or hear the word slave? Do you envision an African-American on a plantation in the American South prior to the Civil War? Is it a vision of an African-American picking cotton? What do you see?
Today, most of us live as modern day slaves while being given the illusion of freedom. There are no slave masters with whips threatening to beat us if we refuse to work. Rather, the slaves work in office buildings, in cubicles, at restaurants, etc. We don’t look like slaves, but make no mistake, we are slaves!
Modern day slaves are not conquered peoples that were defeated in wars. Today’s slaves were enticed to enslave themselves, and a tool used to enslave is debt. The bait used is the “American Dream” of owning a house, the coolness of a new car, and the worst of them all is the insistence of getting a college degree.
I am not going to argue with anyone on this. What I am going to do is look at the results and where we are today. Everything that is funded primarily with loans will and has gone up significantly since loans became a primary source of funding! What do most people buy a home with? Cash or loans? What do most people buy a car with? Cash or loans? What about college education? Does $1.7 trillion in student loan debt answer your question? What about homes? According to Lending Tree, “American’s owe $12.52 trillion on 85.35 million mortgages.” The article can be found here.
Every single person that lives in the United States is impacted by debt. They may not have any personal debt but governments have non-the-less indebted them. We will delve deeper into this in future articles. For this blog post, we will focus on what our next step is on the Road to Complete Freedom.
Millions are quietly suffering behind closed doors while smiling in public. They entertain themselves as a way to escape the pain. Sports, television, social media, and movies provide temporary relief. Others get their relief from drugs, alcohol, and sex. These things provide temporary escapes, but do nothing to address the cause of the pain. This reminds me of my struggle with depression. No matter what I would do for temporary relief, the depression was there waiting for me when I came home.
You can’t talk about debt. “People that are in debt did it to themselves “Those kids chose to borrow money for school, and it’s not my responsibility to help them.” This last response comes from people often responding to governments creating programs to reduce student loan debt. Frankly, I’m not interested in governments helping either. They(government) are responsible for the mess we have. “Americans hold $1.77 trillion in student loan debt as of the second quarter of 2023, up 1.25% year over year. Of that total, roughly 93% are federal student loans.” See article here. Excuse me if I’m not interested in receiving help from the people that created the problem.
What I am interested in is solving this problem. Freeing people from one form of modern day slavery. I am creating a community with two goals, and the first goal is to crowdfund the hell out of debt. At the same time, refusing to use debt in any form if possible. Almost everyone that has the means to read this article has the capacity to give $1 a day, a week or a month. Through giving, we will eliminate each others debt. In the beginning, we may only be able to give enough to provide breathing room for an individual or family. Over time, we will grow this community to such an extent, that we not only give breathing room, we completely eliminate the individual’s or family’s debt.
As we are eliminating debt, we will seek others that have the skills to grow food and we will learn those skills and create communities that are no longer dependent on large corporations for a basic need such as food: the second goal. Our mission is Complete Freedom.
To grow this, I need your help. If you are in debt, tell your story using the contact form. Your story will remain confidential unless I am given permission to share it. If you you’d like to be a part of this community go here.
