The Importance of Independence I: Framing the Issue

According to Amartya Sen, a man named Kader Mia went to a riot-plagued and hostile part of the city of Dhaka to find work during the civil strife near the end of the British occupation of South Asia in 1944.2 His wife told him that it was too dangerous, but he went because he had no food for his children. He was stabbed and died from his wounds. The penalty of his economic unfreedom turned out to be death.3 What Kader Mia found in the labor market was unusual, but the unfreedom that compelled him into the marketplace was not. Hunger made Kader Mia unfree to refuse whatever employment happened to be available at the time. Billions of people worldwide face hunger if they refuse whatever employment is available. Most of them are not forced to accept an imminent risk of death in the marketplace, but many of them are forced to accept a lifetime of the worst working conditions, lowest pay, and lowest status in jobs that require them to serve the interests of at least one person who controls access to resources. Throughout history, economic deprivation has forced people to accept slavishly long, difficult, humiliating, dangerous, or low-paying jobs; to prostitute themselves; to beg; and to sell themselves into indentured servitude. Although some people have done some of these things voluntarily, economic deprivation has clearly forced reasonable people to do things they should not do and would not do if they had the power to say no.