Programmers can't work if you drug them
But they can work if they are kidnapped, imprisoned, threatened with force, afraid of police, disapproved of by much of the population, etc.; almost none of what's special about (many) prostitutes' situation couldn't happen to software developers. So Viliam's thought experiment is a good one: what would and should we do if it did?
I'm not sure it's so obvious that people wouldn't be calling for criminalization it, say, half of all software was made by imprisoned blackmailed kidnapped slaves. (Note: I have no idea what fraction of prostitutes are actually in such a situation and wouldn't be surprised if anti-prostitution campaigners exaggerated it on account of disapproval with a different real source.) So I don't find Viliam's thought experiment conclusive.
Programming involves a lot of judgment. Enslaving programmers would lead to the programmers programming very inefficiently on purpose, and there would be no way for the slaveowner to punish only the programmers guilty of slacking off. The slaveowner could try to punish all programmers who don't produce much, but the slaveowner can't tell the difference between a slacking programmer and a programmer just given a difficult or inappropriate job, so in the long run that wouldn't work.
Also, the mental activity involved in programming doesn't work well if the programmer is psychologically stressed by other things, and enslavement and blackmail tends to cause such stress.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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