Debt-Bondage, Ancient Rome, and the Incentives of Lenders and Borrowers

Debt-Bondage: the archaic system of ensuring cheap labor for the landowning gentry.  In return for subsistence, poorer citizens became indentured servants of the landowners.  One of the main issues that generated the Struggle of the Orders.

     Most people would object to the idea of debt-bondage, where the poor would initially take loans to avoid starvation during bad times, and when they were unable to repay the loan (the nobles might make it hard to repay) they became something of a slave to the lender.  Ask most people whether debt-bondage should have been banned, and they would have said yes.
     Just like people say there should be minimum wages, and price controls, and paid maternity leave, and regulated payday loans...
     Their wish would be granted in 320-330 BC, when Roman conquest brought in slaves from new territories, making nobles less reliant on debt-bondage as a form of cheap labor.  Did the peasant who would have normally gone into debt-bondage benefit from this?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Now it may have been harder for peasants to get loans.  In the past landowners would have lowered their interest rates in hopes the peasant would take a loan, some of which would default and earn them slaves.  Now they will charge higher rates because they are in less need of slaves.  Moreover, when peasants needed the noble's help to avoid starvation, now that they had to compete against imported slaves, the peasants may have simply starved, as the noble was unwilling to loan them money for food.
     The situation is similar to immigrants into the U.S.  Unskilled labor may be harmed, as the supply of unskilled labor is now higher, pushing wages down.  Conversely, the income generated from immigrant labor may increase the demand for other more pleasant jobs, allowing unskilled labor access to better employment.
     Economics rarely provides certainty or easy answers, which is one reason I respect it.