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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

Slaves have frequently been among the most high-status, most powerful people in their society.

The slave who manages an important man's affairs is himself an important man.

Concubines frequently wield power through their well-placed lovers. At the historical extreme, Wu Zetian was a concubine who worked her way up to being formally crowned emperor.

The Mamluk Turks were slaves. This didn't stop them from taking control of the government and even enacting a requirement that the Sultan be a Mamluk (children of Mamluks, not being slaves, were not eligible).

Chinese eunuchs were also slaves, and also took control of the government on multiple occasions.

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These are, IMO, exceptions. Most slaves probably got worked half to death, beaten, and generally abused. Certainly history tells us that many slaves simply died en route from where they were captured. I can't prove this, but it's much more likely than the fate of high-status slaves.

> Most slaves probably got worked half to death, beaten, and generally abused.

No, this is uncommon, for the same reason beasts of burden were generally not worked half to death, beaten, and generally abused. They are valuable.

That varies depending on time and place. There were islands in the Caribbean (IIRC) where slaves had a life expectancy of 3 years after arriving from Africa. After importations of slaves were banned, but slavery was not outlawed, the slave population was shrinking. Births could not keep up with deaths. Though, tbf, some of what I read about that surmised that slaves had to be using some form of birth control as well (as a form of protest to the brutal conditions).

Yes, I believe slave populations suffered horrific death rates almost everywhere in the new world except for the US south, where they flourished.

That was seen as a major problem by slaveholders, though, not a feature. If they'd known how to stop the slaves from dying, they would have.

Yes, I suppose so. That probably falls under "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."

Sorry, I wasn't looking to shoot you down. I read some very interesting research into this some years ago and I basically participate here to get some chance to talk with people.

So the fact that some slaves were treated well by their owners somehow makes it OK for one human being to actually own another?

Because what you just wrote sounds an awful like a defence of slavery.

What's awful about slavery is not the treatment of the slave. It's the fact that they are slaves in the first place.

I was under the impression I was responding to the question

>> How have slaves ever historically created leverage?

They do it in all of the ways that other people do.

> Because what you just wrote sounds an awful [lot?] like a defence of slavery.

I will note that in another thread from today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651019, you can see people speaking with approval of a company that funds training for its employees with a provision that, should they leave the company within a longish period of getting the training, they owe a large lump sum to repay the training costs. This differs in no way from a traditional contract of slavery, under which, if you want to leave your current employer, you must pay them a large lump sum.

Owing someone money if you stop working for them is in no way equivalent to being required to pay them money in order to be allowed to stop working for them.

We don't say someone who has taken out a loan is a slave to their lender. And giving that person the option to pay that loan off more efficiently via labour doesn't make it slavery.

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