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Comment by cynicalsecurity | Hacker News Reader

Employers are not always very smart. It took humanity half a millennium to realise slavery is inefficient and ditch it. Go figure.

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Slavery is unfortunately still a thing in too many parts of the world.

Including the US.

And 68% of American adults don't even know it [0]. Not to mention all the foreign slavery in the supply chain, or all the slavery we've directly enabled by 'toppling dictators' who wouldn't give us their shit.

0 - https://www.merkley.senate.gov/is-slavery-still-legal-in-the...

Slavery wasn't inefficient and was highly profitable for slaveholders.

Not contradicting the second part, but I want to emphasise that they are different things. Slavery (and capitalism) can be extremely inefficient and simultaneously wildly profitable.

Surely it's meaningless to compare the efficiency of slavery vs other systems, since your set of resources is completely different.

You could if you look at e.g. the crop yield (ceteris paribus). I don't know why you would, because what sane conclusion could you draw from it?

You could compare systems to identify which one produces the greatest profit from the least costs, which the main thing an entrepreneur cares about.

Except the slaveholders entire life revolved around managing slaves and worrying about slave revolts.

No. If you actually read the history, many slaveholder delegates management works to slaves

So not much has changed really?

Yep pretty much no difference between 1800s chattle slavery, and having to work in an office.

Not as profitable for robot owners today

Try 7 or 8 millennia. The Atlantic slave trade was just a rounding error in all the slaves that have ever been.

Is that why slavery was banned?

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