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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

For whom, and according to what value system?

The histories I've read of the early middle ages corroborate much of your intuition. Trade collapsed; many luxury goods became impossible to obtain at any price; illiteracy rose; population declined and many citizens died from famine and plague.

But there's often a trade-off between freedom and convenience, then and now. The Roman empire was built upon large-scale slavery and wealth inequality. If you were a member of the elite, then yes, the collapse was terrible; you lost access to all the privileges of the empire. If you were a slave, you probably ended up somewhat better off, becoming either a peasant or a bandit. Not being able to obtain pottery or steel doesn't matter much if you couldn't afford it to begin with, and dying at 40 from starvation is an improvement on dying at 25 in the arena.

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> If you were a slave, you probably ended up somewhat better off

Slavery continued to exist in Western Europe after the fall of Roman empire until at least year 1000 AD.

In other former parts of Roman Empire such as Northern Africa slavery continued to flourish almost until the 19th century.

The number of people in slavery would have still decreased. The fact that it continued to exist is immaterial to the point being made.

> The number of people in slavery would have still decreased

On what basis are you making this assumption? "The fall of Rome" was not an anti-slavery uprising. It was gradual disappearance of the central authority (and all its benefits such as roads, law and order etc).

About 10% of England's population entered in the Domesday Book (1086) were slaves. Compare that with the Roman Empire where slave population (including Rome and all provinces) are estimated at 10-15% of the total.

The biggest buyer of slaves going down would decimate the market, no? I would imagine it would have played exactly like abolition of slavery in Britain or US. There was still slavery across the world, but the number of people that suffered from it went down.

What if you were a peasant? Did your life get worse?

Probably somewhat better, in the sense that your imperial overlords became spectacularly ineffective at taxing you.

Except the local abbot would happily take 1/10 of the fruits of your labor, the landlord even more, and you stood no chance seeking better fortunes away because roads were in disrepair, infested by robbers and patrolled by mercenaries tasked to kill any fugitive...

But you died of famine and disease more often - population went way down. It became harder to trade even the most basic foodstuff, since simple roads to the closest market became unsafe. Eventually feudalism happened and a lot of simple peasants were literally enslaved to the land.

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