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Google’s Search AI Says Slavery Was Good, Actually
(futurism.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Slavery is not good for the economy... Think about it, you have a good part of your population that are providing free labour, sure, but they aren't consumers. Consumption is between 50 and 80% of GDP for developed countries, so if you have half your population as slave you loose between 20% and 35% of your GDP (they still have to eat so you don't loose a 100% of their consumption).
That also means less revenue in taxes, more unemployed for non slaves because they have to compete with free labour.
Slaves don't order on Amazon, go on vacation, go to the movies, go to restaurant etc etc That's really bad for the economy.
That really bad for a modern consumer economy yes. But those werent a thing before the industrial revolution. Before that the large majority of people were subsitance/tennant farmer or serfs who consumed basically nothing other than food and fuel in winter. Thats what a slave based economy was an alternantive to. Its also why slvery died out in the 19th century, it no longer fit the times.
I wish it did die out in the 19th century. We have more slaves now than ever.
There being more slaves now then ever is heavily disputed. There is also the fact that was little more than a billion people in the world when the trans-Atlantic slave trade stopped, so there would have to be 8 times as many for slavery to be as prevalent.
Yes, I agree, our per capita slave figure has to be much lower these days, mathematically speaking.
Even one slave is a slave too many, and knowing there are still so many (whatever figure we put it at) is heartbreaking.
Things like the cocoa plantation slaves and the slave fishing ships have people kidnapped and forced to work for nothing. Actual slavery by any definition.
Of course, when I said it died out I didn't mean slavery was entirely gone and doesn't exist at all. I mean it died out as a prevalent societal structure.
100s of people in slavery on a cocoa plantation is of course awful, but it shouldn't obscure the fact that there used to be vast swathes of land where slaves outnumbered free people and their children were born into bondage - that is what has died out.
I understand your wider point and I agree with it.
But I think the point I was making actually supposts what you were saying upthread.
The agrarian model of the cocoa industry is economically reliant on slavery. 2.1 million children labour on those plantations in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, and a significant number have been trafficked or forced.
And isn't the economy much better now than before the industrial revolution?
Obviously, but my point was that slaves weren't economically terrible in an agrarian peasant/serf economy, which everywhere was before the industrial revolution.
Look at the Saudi, China or the UAE, it's still a pretty efficient way to boost your economy. People don't need to be consumer if this isn't what your country needs.
China has slavery? Also Saudi Arabia and the UAE import slaves, which is better for the economy than those people not being there at all but worse than them being regular workers.
Muslim and christian minorities are forced to work in camps to "re-educate" them to be good chinese citizen.
Oh yeah fair enough.
True consumers are only 1 pillar of gdp.
Those are very specifics examples, with two of the biggest oil producers, and the factory of the world. Thus their whole economies is based on export, so internal consumption isn't important.
Moreover what proof do you have their economies wouldn't be in a better shape if they didn't exploit some population but made them citizen with purchasing power?
2/3 of the people living in the Saudi Emirate are immigrants whose passports have been confiscated, they work in factory, construction sites, oil pit, and all other kind of manual jobs. Meanwhile the Saudi citizens occupy all the well paid job that require education, immigrants can't apply to those. If they didn't use forced labor, there simply wouldn't be enough people in the country to occupy all the jobs. Their economy could not be as good as it is right now.
Because their GDP comes from exporting a very rare and valuable natural resource. This is a rare case in the world, and not the one I was talking about.
Plus who's to say they wouldn't have a better economy if those exploited people could consume more?