The anarcho-capitalist camp—Rothbard, for example, analyzed this issue in detail in “The Ethics of Liberty,” explaining the impossibility of defending a slave contract within libertarian theory.

анонимный вопрос

In the final paragraph of the post from July 30, I do indeed mention voluntary private slavery in passing, but in an extremely narrow sense. If there exists a methodology that allows for complete control over a person’s actions through some mysterious subconscious manipulations, yet all these manipulations are non-violent, then the person is de facto enslaved and, from the perspective of an external observer, completely voluntarily performs any actions required by the manipulator.

Such things are the subject of horror stories about the coming dominance of big data, which will compile a full profile of every person and allow for ideal influence over them, so that under this influence, they might go to the polling station to vote for you, go to the store to buy your product, or dance on the Maidan.

In my view, such a dystopia is the flip side of the utopia of a bright communist future, where abundance is ensured by a planned economy managed by benevolent supercomputers—and it has just as much chance of being realized on a global scale. However, I cannot rule out isolated cases of gaining complete control over human motivations through non-violent manipulations, which is why I mentioned them in my analysis of the concept of free will.

This has nothing to do with Rothbard’s argumentation regarding the impossibility of libertarians defending a slave contract, given the absence of a contract.