This is not to take away from the stress and precarity of their situation, but materially, almost everyone in the US is better off than almost everyone in ancient rome.
I do think the fact that you decided to counter and declare that the US meets the incredibly low bar of "better living conditions than ancient Rome" is an interesting point to reflect on, and probably relates to the previous poster's point.
Or for the fate of one of the real slaves.
What is different today, is that slavery is mostly viewed as a bad thing. That is a accomplishment, but it doesn't mean we got rid of the misery.
It's less bad now, but being a miner is not much better nowadays, even more so since most of the mines are in poor countries with little care for the workers and rich countries would prefer not to think too hard where the iron for their eco-conscious steel bottle is coming from.
And with that said due to the level of influence from the unions, also have great safety ratings compared to other regions. Though admitedly still quite dangerous, but less so than cinsteuction, agriculture and warehouse work (3).
(1) https://www.minerals.org.au/news/australian-mining-provides-...
(2) https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/industry_business/minin...
> In 2019, the country was the 2nd largest world producer of gold;[1] 8th largest world producer of silver;[2] 6th largest world producer of copper;[3] the world's largest producer of iron ore;[4] the world's largest producer of bauxite;[5] the 2nd largest world producer of manganese;[6] 2nd largest world producer of lead;[7] 3rd largest world producer of zinc;[8] 3rd largest world producer of cobalt;[9] 3rd largest producer of uranium;[10] 6th largest producer of nickel;[11] 8th largest world producer of tin;[12] 14th largest world producer of phosphate;[13] 15th largest world producer of sulfur;[14] in addition to being the 5th largest world producer of salt.[15]
Disasters happened infrequently, but when they did, they were ugly. A spark at a wrong time in a wrong place, and sixty fathers would never come back home again.
Mining is freaking dangerous. The forces of nature involved are enormous, and human is but a small ant facing them.
To me, Tulsa is either 24 hours away, or the place Chandler went to for Christmas in Friends.
It is not about the 1921 massacre of 300 blacks in Tulsa, but that serves as the backstory.
Both shows are first rate TV.
The environment is much better, though. The air is mostly clean, while it smelled like burnt tires in my childhood.
Also, neighboring Poland has undergone an economic boom in the last 30 years, and the network of connections between the region around Ostrava and Poland is becoming very helpful to the local economy.
"Into the truck, Then into the bath, Ground to dust And then in a flash, Turns into fire That turns into ash, Hey, coal miner."
it's allright there are rough aspects but in the end it's worth it, especially since bitcoin is doing well
I don't believe that. People who work in any activity will always learn what's dangerous and take precautions to avoid dying. 2,000 years is not as long a time length as we sometimes think, people then were pretty much exactly like us, except for their culture. And I don't think there's any culture where people don't tend to try to not die.
> These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no"
Huh, that's new to me. Did enslaved women have some kind of legal right to opt out of the mines, or was it just that other uses were found for them?
In a fairly graphic comparison, Seneca recorded the suicide of a German slave who was being trained as a gladiator for animal fights. He took advantage of the only freedom he was given to choke himself to death on a xylospongium, one the communal sponges the Romans used instead of toilet paper. Think about how you’d get into a state of mind where that seemed like the best option.
It did if they earned the rudis.
Also bear in mind at the time a military enlistment was a 25 year commitment. And a legionary didn’t really have more rights than a slave practically speaking. Both were in the manus of their legal superior.
Plus women were more suited for sex, these were not enlightened times so rape of slave women was not frowned on.
House and urban slaves weren't much worse off than a regular citizen, having a good chance of manumission (release), after which they became freedmen - still not full citizens, but their children would be, and some freedmen became very rich.
Given that those slaves are the ones that we know the most about (from both archeology and written sources), it skews our perception of Roman slavery to being more benign than it actually was.
Rural slaves which worked in agriculture were worked very hard and they were much more numerous than house slaves. Not an enviable fate, though one must admit that ancient agriculture was a backbreaking work regardless of personal status.
Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. Few of them would last more than five years. Ancient Rome had very extensive mining operations and mines "ate" men by the thousands. These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no". Mining safety back then was basically zero.