01.08 Philosophy: The Value of a Slave

To many, slaves are considered owned property. Many take this to mean that those who prefer a Master-slave relationship see slaves as having no value or worth, as no more important than other property. This is not true in the vast majority of cases. In a Master-slave lifestyle sense, slavery is a consensual state where the slave willingly gives up his rights and becomes owned. In doing so, he agrees to be bound by his Master’s limits (if any), rules, expectations, desires, etc., and to put his Master’s wants and needs before his own. This does not remove a slave’s legal rights in the eyes of society and the law.

Many instantly assume that property must mean no value. Thus a slave who is property also has no value. This just is not true for either material possessions or slaves. Property, of any type, must have some value for a person to have purchased or acquired it in the first place and for them to continue to own it. Value is affected by such things as usefulness, aesthetic properties, need, price, how long the person had to wait before getting it, personal opinions, beliefs, viewpoints, emotional and psychological attachments, how well it works, and whether or not it makes the owner happy in some way. The more useful an item is, the more value it is in its owner’s eyes. Every possession a person owns has value for different reasons.

People in general, have value simply by being human beings. Such things that apply to objects also affect the value of people, to other people. But they also have the added areas of emotional attachment, interpersonal skills, compatibility, hobbies, intelligence, and suchlike. The better people get along with one another, the more value they have to each other. The more areas of compatibility between people the more value they have to one another. The stronger the emotional tie between people also makes them more valuable to one another.

Many believe that a slave is automatically of greater value than other possessions simply because they are human beings and people are more valuable than material possessions.

Some view slaves as pets. Pets are often valuable and well-loved members of the family or household. Slaves who are viewed as pets are also valuable members of the family or household. Because they are, in fact, people and not animals they are usually seen as more valuable than a real pet.

Experience is usually a catalyst for growth. In a slave, this means they have attained more personal growth than a slave with little or no experience at all. This growth affects such areas as the desire to please, the ability to please, training, attitude, behavior, abilities, and more. Thus these areas will be stronger in a slave with experience, thus increasing that slave’s value. A slave’s abilities are also varied, but included in this are such things as cooking, handling budgets; job-related abilities, or any other specific task the slave is capable of doing. Some slaves are even sent for tuition or additional training to handle a task for their Master or just to be able to do something their Master wants them to do. The greater the slave’s ability to grow and adjust, to be trained, the more valuable the slave is. The greater the slave’s desire and willingness to please, the more value the owner will place on that slave. For those who have emotional attachments to their slave, the deeper and more intense those emotions are, the more valuable the slave is to them. To those who live a Master-slave lifestyle, a slave is property but valuable property and is to be treated as such. Most Masters do not want doormats. They want intelligent, capable people as slaves.

How much value a Master places on those things varies with each person. But the more important these traits are to the Master, the more valuable the slave who has these traits will be. There are Master-slave relationships where love is not a part of the relationship. This does not mean there is no emotional attachment at all, but romantic love is not the basis for or a basic part of the relationship. In these relationships, the slave’s value is directly affected by the services he provides and how he provides those services. Since this relationship focuses mostly on the dynamics between the people involved there is more emphasis placed on the traits that are specific to a slave’s value and less emphasis on those for other property and people in general. His value tends to be strictly, or mostly, service-based. The better service the slave provides to his owner, the more value that slave will have to his Master. Every slave has value and worth as a possession, a human being, and as a slave. So just because a person is a slave, they are no less valuable than other people or material goods.