Ignoring the obvious moral question, in a primarily agrarian economy slave labor is useful because it's relatively easy to control and there is no need for specialization. OTOH in an industrialized society you wouldn't want slaves even if you could have them.
Really? Leaving aside the moral issues most associated with slavery specifically, there is a huge demand in modern industrialized society for all sorts of low cost human labor. If middle class-ish people in the West could hire more people for the equivalent of a couple dollars an hour many would absolutely do so.
Cleaning houses, mowing lawns, sure. But you wouldn't even get as far as a taxi/truck driver, which is one of the least qualified jobs today.
>Cleaning houses, mowing lawns, sure. But you wouldn't even get as far as a taxi/truck driver
Again I see how one might expect this to be true but it isn't.
some industries where slavery is widespread:
- Sex work - ocean fishing - mining
I'm sure there are others
Of course most slaves were just hard labor, but they did hold other positions. I think you can find examples of slaves holding every position in society other than government leader.
Also, just by the way, we ought to be able to talk without implying that other people have "those tendencies". There is simply no reasonable way a comment about the structure of an industrialized economy can be constructed as "having those tendencies". Appending "slavery = bad" to every comment is tiresome, there is such a thing as context.
But I think there is a point when it makes more sense to just pay the guy a wage, instead of running a big expensive police state controlling everything...
Even that one seems available:
They absolutely could if there was any political desire to allow temporary low skilled immigration. In practice this doesn’t seem to be compatible with democracy. Singapore is not a shining light of labour rights or democracy but their government does have to pay attention to public opinion which is why they use less migrant labor than the Gulf monarchies.
In its essence slavery is an exchange of labor deal where the buying party has it way better than the selling party.
No, it's the notion that you have second-class citizens or even non-citizens with limited legal rights enforced by the state, said limitations usually being in the realm of property rights, personal freedoms, etc. At least that is fairly easy to define, whereas "grossly under compensating someone" is a vastly more nebulous term (who decides what is and isn't "under-compensating"?)
At its essence slavery is complete ownership of another person. Whether or not you put that person to "work" is a separate issue.
Try starting with the textbook definitions. Pretty much the defining factor of being a slave is that you are owned by someone else and have to follow their orders. You can be highly compensated and still a slave (see the myriad of anecdotes about “kind” slave owners who paid them well).
If a gang of armed men kidnap, brand, and return you, you're enslaved.