I doubt that it is possible for anyone to say how they would respond to either of the poll questions if they had actually been born and raised in a slavery-oriented society. And even if the questions are about how people would respond if parachuted into the body of someone in such a society while retaining their current knowledge and attitudes, then I would expect the answers to depend quite strongly on various detailed aspects of the target societies.
I think you're right---but it is interesting to see what people think. Thought experiments can be fun; they can also be very disturbing in their implications for our modern society.
I think evolution has effectively ended for Homo sapiens.
Almost anyone who can survive a few hours after birth can live to breeding age.
This means there is no longer any selection pressure. Except perhaps teen-aged boys with fast cars, although simply having that car with a back seat may accelerate their gene propagation.
I've done some genealogy. Before modern medicine, 20% to 30% of children died before age five.
Not that I want children to die! But what does that say about the future of our species?
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has fourteen children. So he is evolutionarily "successful", while I, who decided there were too many people and got "the v" before having any children, is unsuccessful.
Are there any instances of social insect slavery in which the slaves are of the exact same species (and mutually fertile with) the slavers? And are not the instances where they are not more analogous to human use of domestic animals than to human-on-human slavery?
I see human-on-human slavery as more like a version of dominance hierarchy that occurs in many species, with the usual sexual restraint of submissives supplemented with added factors of direct service (like grooming and food gifts) and socially reinforced - as may happen for examples in some packs of canines or primates where loyal lieutenants may often enforce the leader's rights (until they don't).
I'm not defending slavery or racism or attacking taxation. Slavery, caste systems, social credit systems and commensurate compensation for work by themselves all have problems as motivators to get folks to take out the trash, change bedpans, and weed gardens (or do great music, science, or substack articles for that matter.) US race-based slavery was a uniquely evil form that inspired even worse German updates. At least the ant slavers weren't hypocritical. But lumping together all the more-or-less escapable or mitigatable forms of social organization and coercion with nightmares of oppressive control doesn't explain how I can get my kid to clean their room or our kitchen.
Hooray! Another important topic approached with your usual humor and flair. But I wonder whether the hazy definition of "Slavery" is doing your subject a disservice. All societies above the most rudimentary involve a differentiation of roles adhered to through some combination of coercion, monetary or non-monetary compensation, pride, tradition or lack of imagined alternatives. One of Marx' more naive utopian visions involved citizens moving easily and happily between roles of farmer in the morning, carpenter mid-day, teacher afternoon, factory worker evenings, etc, etc. I think we've discovered pretty definitively that outsourcing our less desirable but essential work to the other side of tracks or the other side of the world is not maintaining either sustainable local societies or a sustainable world. "Slavery" in one sense or another is an answer to "How ya gonna keep him on the farm once he's gone to see Paree."
Indeed. One rather shit option. I think the words "commensurate remuneration" can do a lot of heavy lifting here; and it's difficult to look at our current society and interpret its current level of function as fair in such terms. Look at the asymmetric voting in response to my polls above :)
The problem with designating people as untermenschen is that it's your head that ultimately often ends up on the end of a stick as a rather amusing lollipop. It's usually just a matter of time, after fun with machine guns, sickles, imprisonment and societal violence. The details may vary. ICE may play a role, as may gangs and heavily armed civilians :)
This observation aligns with two other ideas. The first comes from MMT: that money is a construct built around bookkeeping rather than tokens of exchange; the second is of billionaires (who almost universally pay little or no tax) as social parasites: it is difficult to see their remuneration as even vaguely commensurate. The role of a government taking in tax is to *destroy* money, not 'fund spending'. You can always afford to pay e.g. farm workers a living wage; you can avoid 'adverse consequences' through the redistribution entailed in taxing appropriately. That, or lollipop time!
Those poll questions are difficult to answer. I know what my answers would be from a modern perspective, but if I’d been steeped in a different cultural era, who knows.
How many of us really have the fortitude to stand up and say “I’m Spartacus”?
I doubt that it is possible for anyone to say how they would respond to either of the poll questions if they had actually been born and raised in a slavery-oriented society. And even if the questions are about how people would respond if parachuted into the body of someone in such a society while retaining their current knowledge and attitudes, then I would expect the answers to depend quite strongly on various detailed aspects of the target societies.
I think you're right---but it is interesting to see what people think. Thought experiments can be fun; they can also be very disturbing in their implications for our modern society.
I think evolution has effectively ended for Homo sapiens.
Almost anyone who can survive a few hours after birth can live to breeding age.
This means there is no longer any selection pressure. Except perhaps teen-aged boys with fast cars, although simply having that car with a back seat may accelerate their gene propagation.
I've done some genealogy. Before modern medicine, 20% to 30% of children died before age five.
Not that I want children to die! But what does that say about the future of our species?
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has fourteen children. So he is evolutionarily "successful", while I, who decided there were too many people and got "the v" before having any children, is unsuccessful.
Are there any instances of social insect slavery in which the slaves are of the exact same species (and mutually fertile with) the slavers? And are not the instances where they are not more analogous to human use of domestic animals than to human-on-human slavery?
I see human-on-human slavery as more like a version of dominance hierarchy that occurs in many species, with the usual sexual restraint of submissives supplemented with added factors of direct service (like grooming and food gifts) and socially reinforced - as may happen for examples in some packs of canines or primates where loyal lieutenants may often enforce the leader's rights (until they don't).
I'm not defending slavery or racism or attacking taxation. Slavery, caste systems, social credit systems and commensurate compensation for work by themselves all have problems as motivators to get folks to take out the trash, change bedpans, and weed gardens (or do great music, science, or substack articles for that matter.) US race-based slavery was a uniquely evil form that inspired even worse German updates. At least the ant slavers weren't hypocritical. But lumping together all the more-or-less escapable or mitigatable forms of social organization and coercion with nightmares of oppressive control doesn't explain how I can get my kid to clean their room or our kitchen.
Hooray! Another important topic approached with your usual humor and flair. But I wonder whether the hazy definition of "Slavery" is doing your subject a disservice. All societies above the most rudimentary involve a differentiation of roles adhered to through some combination of coercion, monetary or non-monetary compensation, pride, tradition or lack of imagined alternatives. One of Marx' more naive utopian visions involved citizens moving easily and happily between roles of farmer in the morning, carpenter mid-day, teacher afternoon, factory worker evenings, etc, etc. I think we've discovered pretty definitively that outsourcing our less desirable but essential work to the other side of tracks or the other side of the world is not maintaining either sustainable local societies or a sustainable world. "Slavery" in one sense or another is an answer to "How ya gonna keep him on the farm once he's gone to see Paree."
Indeed. One rather shit option. I think the words "commensurate remuneration" can do a lot of heavy lifting here; and it's difficult to look at our current society and interpret its current level of function as fair in such terms. Look at the asymmetric voting in response to my polls above :)
If people actually do want to eat, then they have at least two options in keeping people on the farm: effective slavery or commensurate remuneration. (There will be other, more creative options too). We can only hope that we've moved on a bit since WW 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Ya_Gonna_Keep_%27em_Down_on_the_Farm_(After_They%27ve_Seen_Paree)%3F )
The problem with designating people as untermenschen is that it's your head that ultimately often ends up on the end of a stick as a rather amusing lollipop. It's usually just a matter of time, after fun with machine guns, sickles, imprisonment and societal violence. The details may vary. ICE may play a role, as may gangs and heavily armed civilians :)
This observation aligns with two other ideas. The first comes from MMT: that money is a construct built around bookkeeping rather than tokens of exchange; the second is of billionaires (who almost universally pay little or no tax) as social parasites: it is difficult to see their remuneration as even vaguely commensurate. The role of a government taking in tax is to *destroy* money, not 'fund spending'. You can always afford to pay e.g. farm workers a living wage; you can avoid 'adverse consequences' through the redistribution entailed in taxing appropriately. That, or lollipop time!
This was an interesting one!
Those poll questions are difficult to answer. I know what my answers would be from a modern perspective, but if I’d been steeped in a different cultural era, who knows.
How many of us really have the fortitude to stand up and say “I’m Spartacus”?
A gutsy take on a difficult subject...still thinking about how I'll respond to your poll questions!