Every stable society cultivates a “Happy Consciousness”: the conviction that its
basic institutions are sound and that only their implementation needs reform. This paper
argues that the Happy Consciousness of contemporary market societies conceals a
structural flaw analogous to slavery in the antebellum South. That flaw is the employment
relation, understood as the voluntary renting of human beings. Orthodox economists such
as Samuelson and Knight openly describe wages as rentals for persons. Yet the legitimacy
of renting people is almost never debated, and the paper examines how this blind spot is
maintained.