Hacker News Reader

Comment by wins32767 | Hacker News Reader

"And just as a household needed slaves, so companies need staff. Permanent employees, like slaves, are far more desirable than outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought external contractors could never be relied on like members of the primary social group. They failed to turn up when instructed to, took liberties with their fees and, taking little pride in their work, carried out their tasks shoddily. With slaves, however, who were stakeholders in the system, the Romans could be sure that work would be carried out as they wanted it."

I'm not sure this is a helpful paragraph for convincing people to learn from Roman management practices.

View on HN

Slaves who worked in Roman households were effectively a highly-skilled and educated minority, who could indeed hope to earn enough to buy out their freedom. It goes without saying that this was not a meaningful possibility for the vast majority of slaves, who were forced to work under far more strenuous conditions.

Yep, they were basically the tech/finance/etc... workers of the time, in that they had the opportunity to buy their financial freedom.

Is this an attempt at humor? If so, it fell flat for me. Tech and finance workers are some of the most highly-compensated people in the world today. Comparing them to Roman slaves, who were considered property, had no freedom of movement, and were subject to brutal corporal punishment, shows a callous disregard for the real human suffering occurring around the world.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm making a relative comparison - tech and finance workers are to the average worker in the world what the intellectual or the higher household slaves in Rome were to the average. By the way, those slaves had freedom of movement and, especially later in Roman history, some legal protection, as well as in many cases the right to work for a wage outside of the purview of their masters.

I am trying to underlie the fact that we have many privileges and the ability to change social strata compared to the average working person, which is an interesting parallel. Of course even Roman slavery was horrible.

GPs point is that under "capitalism" everyone is effectively a slave - working on someone else's terms, and it's only a few elite jobs where you really make enough to potentially buy your way out of the system. It's an opportunity that people working in a coffee shop or something don't have.

(Edit- well nearly, the GP clarified his post in a sibling post)

Yes, this is essentially what I meant.

A lot of the employer's benefit to hiring external contractors stems from the ability to sidestep labor laws (e.g. benefits, minimum wage, overtime, etc...). In a society where you're just allowed to own slaves that calculus looks a bit different.

This. And/or not helpful in convincing people to work for a salary.

> "With slaves, however, who were stakeholders in the system,"

"With slaves, however, who's stakes were forcibly held by others in the system," FTFY

Household slaves could buy their freedom from their masters. Then they became freedmen, still allied and somewhat subordinated to their former masters, but their children were already full Roman citizens.

The prospect of manumission was a huge incentive for the slave to work harder and smarter. Some freedmen became very rich. The slaveowners could theoretically renege on their promise, but rarely did so, because they would lose the profit of their slaves believing them and working harder.

Romans were pretty Machiavelistic when it came to incentives. Their methods usually worked, even though they could hardly be described as morally sound.

was there a pricing structure for buying one's freedom, or was it up to each master?

There was an advancement ladder, starting with individual contributor levels from junior to senior, moving on to roles with more responsibility starting with principal to senior principal. The last levels were the director and senior director levels, after which you crossed into the freedom levels with two letter titles. /s

Once I saw this great documentary called A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. It does a great job of explaining the system and structure, and with colorful characters at that!

"Skin in the game" though it might be, these enslaved individuals only became stakeholders by force, and not by choice. I think the analogy to business is still act, but with a bit more of a sinister connotation.

> Household slaves could buy their freedom from their masters. Then they became freedmen, still allied and somewhat subordinated to their former masters, but their children were already full Roman citizens.

And that may not have been the perk it's sometimes made out to be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome

> However, the master could arrange that slaves would only have enough money to buy their freedom when they were too old to work. They could then use the money to buy a new young slave while the old slave, unable to work, would be forced to rely on charity to stay alive.[62]

Oh yes, slavery sucks regardless of time and place. And we haven't even touched the fate of non-household slaves.

Agricultural slaves, much more numerous than household slaves, had back-breaking work, but at least somewhat survivable.

Slaves sent to the mines or to the galleys (rowing ships) rarely survived for more than three years. It was basically a delayed death sentence.

Well it was kind of a social contract, and it was primarily the Greek slaves who achieved manumission, starting from a position of parity in cultural and racial perception (we're speaking purely in terms of their status in the Mediterranean as a people with greatness, with the legacy of a great history which in general is the consequence of being conquerors), and usually an advantage in most intellectual matters. In the intellectual the Roman shone in oratory, law, civil engineering, and others I forget. There are many where the Romans were considered the best. But Greek language was of greater prestige in the highest circles of Rome, for instance the last words of Gauis Julius Caesar were in Greek, tutors had to be Greek, and Greek slaves played, under working conditions enviable even by many Americans in the 21st century, an essential part in the production of the Aeneid, which was the equivalent of the time of a major motion picture, and which involved extensive cryptography. Cryptographic techniques of the time were used to conceal its true message for thousands of years, while ensuring there was enough fidelity in the whole work to ensure the message could be conveyed. What this meant in practice is the Greeks serving Virgil had to count sounds in verses by applying certain rules to the characters, and count with absolute certainty. Coming full circle, for such great undertakings that required such great secrecy to conceal the message from the Emperor the slave's loyalty could really only be bought with the sound promise of freedom.

You aren't the only person making this mistake but don't assume Roman slavery was like American chattel slavery. Roman slavery was still slavery and still had abuses but it was not "slavery till death, for all your generations". Nor were slaves mere physical labor. Slaves often ran businesses, engaged in basically white collar work, and often times were skilled craftsmen who exceeded their masters skill.

> Nor were slaves mere physical labor.

Some slaves were not mere physical labour. However, many famers and miners were still enslaved people, worked in far more brutal conditions without the hope of manumission.

> Some slaves were not mere physical labour. However, many famers and miners were still enslaved people, worked in far more brutal conditions without the hope of manumission.

Yes, exactly. For instance, slaves would be disfigured to prevent escape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome:

> As most slaves in the Roman world could easily blend into the population if they escaped, it was normal for the masters to discourage slaves from running away by putting a tattoo reading "Stop me! I am a runaway!" or "tax paid" if the slaves were owned by the Roman state on the foreheads of their slaves.[65] For this reason, slaves usually wore headbands to cover up their disfiguring tattoos and at the Temple of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, in Ephesus, archeologists have found thousands of tablets from escaped slaves asking Asclepius to make the tattoos on their foreheads disappear.[66]

I actually thought for a second this was a joke.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com