Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [709]

Anyone KSF hired would have a hard time living on the salary offered. In not very much time, I think the new hires would be in debt to the company. That’s an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder. Debt slavery. That might work in Christopher Donner’s America. Labor laws, state and federal, are not what they once were. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 709

Note

Lauren’s economic reasoning rendered as a compressed four-beat chain: salary → debt → holding → harder work. The flat, hammered declaratives (“Debt slavery.”) do the work of an indictment without raising the voice; the closing clause about labor laws quietly relocates the horror from a villain to a timeline.