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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery...

Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild. With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick. And it can't really be a social thing because it is clear from history that societies tolerate slavery if it makes sense.

And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.

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Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity.

Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US.

It's worth noting that Adam Smith did not think total abolition was possible. One of his concerns about free markets was that people deeply desired control of other people, and slavery would increase as a byproduct of wealth.

And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat.

This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.

Rental versus outright purchase is a weird transition. I have this idea for a faction in a post apocalyptic setting that started out as a libertarian community that idealized a society with zero slavery but found it constantly hiding in arrangements like the one you describe, so they made it very explicit and transactional instead: every member of the community is a central bank, and the currency takes the form of small clay discs with a number and a thumbprint. Anyone can mint their own money, but anyone can redeem money for hours of slave labor with the issuing party. And of course there are rules limiting what slaves can be compelled to do, like no minting more hours and no demanding a specific slave.

For some reason this concept is very sticky to me. I actually think it could work as a low tech monetary regime in a grid down scenario.

> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point

Would note that New World-style chattel slavery doesn't seem to have broadly historically precedented.

True, but if your point is that most slavery regimes throughout history were less awful for the slaves, it's also worth remembering that most accounts of those regimes weren't written by the victors of a war that saw the other sides slavery practices as justification for said war.

> if your point is that most slavery regimes throughout history were less awful for the slaves

Not at all. The fact that we have practically zero first-hand accounts from the slaves of antiquity speaks volumes to their treatment. My point is on scale (and with that, the institution's effect on the societies that hosted it).

Slavery in Europe was replaced with a more efficient system in the Middle Ages.

So calling it a constant throughout history is only true in the way that slavery still exists today, in that you could find it somewhere on the globe.

That’s partly true, but it’s also the case that medieval Europe didn’t have any convenient sources of slaves. Conquests had dried up, Europe was effectively surrounded by stronger neighbors, and instead of being able to take their neighbors as slaves many of their neighbors were taking Europeans as slaves.

That didn’t change until the Age of Sail opened up new frontiers and the wheel turned again.

Ah, the master of bad takes is at it again.

> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point,

Except that of course it wasn't.

> and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said.

And many smart people do.

> There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild.

Yes, such as the one that wealth is not very good as a context free metric for societal success.

> With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick.

You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.

> And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.

Yes, they relied on the misery of others to drive their former wealth, but they are not the important people in that story. The important people are the ones that were no longer slaves.

And never mind that many of those former slave owners did just fine economically afterwards, after all, they already were fantastically wealthy so they just switched 'business models' and still made money hand over fist.

>Except that of course it wasn't.

Except that it definitely was.

no.

It really comes down to granularity at the end, and whether you attempt to look as closely as possible or you accept a certain lack of fidelity because it makes the abstraction work for you.

In this case, I frequently hear people talk about how "the greeks and romans had slaves! and they were white! See, it's fine!" but that fails to take into account that there's a gigantic difference between slavery-as-a-legal-status like they had (entered into by contract or as legal punishment, exit conditions, no real social meaning), and chattel slavery based on race (the 'fuck you got mine' of ethos). I think the idea is that if you squint real, real hard; you can make it look like "not being racist" and "human rights" are somehow newfangled, 'woke' ideals, which is the kind of hilariously wrong misunderstanding we once saw embodied by cletus the slackjawed yokel.

I can call my ma from up here. Hey, ma! Get off the dang roof!

Slavery as we talk about it has been around since roughly the 1600s, and even then didn't peak until the 1800s. Everything prior to that was a totally different beast. and a quick sidebar - wth is supposed to be wrong with being alert to your surroundings? Do we really value being asleep that much?

I don't see much difference when you consider the condition of farming and mining slaves in Roman society.

Slaves were spoils of war since before the Republic.

Even if a slave had valuable skills, and were treated better, they had no legal recourse against a Roman citizen. Their owner could sell them like chattel, break up families (slave marriage had no legal basis) and kill them outright.

The highly skilled could enter into a kind of indentured servitude. That's a separate category.

You hear romantic stories about household servants gaining high esteem and a few being granted or buying their freedom. These were the exception, against the backdrop of menial labor.

> You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.

It's not just a war. The British Empire declared for moral reasons slavery illegal, and slavers could be hunted for bounty like pirates. The only place that remained in the Empire with slavery was India, because the British felt that the Indian culture could not be disentangled from slavery.

Because slavery was everywhere.

> Ah, the master of bad takes is at it again.

Peace and love to you too, brother.

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