> 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.

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.

Certainly. Once you're talking about a massive underclass with no real agency--whether literal slaves or not--there are all sorts of implications for the structure of that society. See SM Stirling's Draka books for example.

It's very unlikely that slaves would be able to cover any present-day jobs except very menial service tasks.

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.

This is actually completely incorrect. Slavery has and always will be profitable and it is still something being experienced by millions of people 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

Slaves did many skilled labor jobs back in the day. In Uncle Tom's Cabin (a book you really should read, but beware the purpose was to make you pick up your gun and march, so if you have those tendencies...) on of the important slaves held a good factory job.

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.

> I think you can find examples of slaves holding every position in society other than government leader.

Even that one seems available:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokollu_Mehmed_Pasha

That you can find some examples of a tiny minority slaves doing some highly-skilled jobs does not contradict the statement that it's unlikely that slavery as an institution would be compatible with a modern economy, even ignoring the obvious moral evil it represents.

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.

I think the point is more that you can't give a slave a truck with a tank of gas and expect to see either again.

Sure you can - so long as you have a police force that will check up on things once in a while. Or at least you have convinced the slaves that the police force will catch them and life will be worse after they are caught.

Up to a point, sure.

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...

Depends on the scale of the slavery. Once it’s systemic you can even have slaves even enforcing the rules on each other (see military conscripts).

Those septic trucks in dubai are surely not driven by arabs.

Just because someone is born into poor circumstances without many options for upward mobility doesn't make them stupid. Furthermore, truck driver isn't a particularly low skill occupation. I couldn't drive an 18-wheeler. Can you? And something like taxi driving mostly seems low skill because most adults in industrialized society have been driving since they were relatively young.

It's not a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote that I'm implying they're stupid.

I think it is. That was pretty much the impression it gave me.

The skill was in having a map of London in your head.