Mike Leung of Abolish Human Rentals interviews David Ellerman, theorist and activist for economic democracy.

"Why abolish human rentals? Can the problems with the human rental contract (employment contract) be fixed simply by legislating and enforcing better treatment and compensation for workers? By analogy was there anything wrong with slavery that couldn’t be fixed by legally requiring the benevolent treatment of slaves combined with effective enforcement of those laws? Or was there something else wrong which required the abolition of slavery under any conditions? "The ownership or rental of humans both seek to violate the same inalienable rights, namely a person’s of decision making authority and responsibility for their actions. The issue at stake is the legal non-personhood of the slave or employee. While the specific treatment of people matters, we must also ask whether the structure of working relationships is internally consistent with people providing labor. In the case of both human ownership and human rentals they are not."

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