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A comment on Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II. Parent comment

Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by bluGill on Friday July 15, 2022 @10:37AM (#32108637)
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.

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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by davidgay on Friday July 15, 2022 @04:44PM (#32112600)
> 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

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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by qsort on Friday July 15, 2022 @10:48AM (#32108738)
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.

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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by BurningFrog on Friday July 15, 2022 @10:59AM (#32108861)
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.
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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by bluGill on Friday July 15, 2022 @03:02PM (#32111650)
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.
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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by BurningFrog on Friday July 15, 2022 @06:13PM (#32113332)
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...

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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by kortilla on Friday July 15, 2022 @07:45PM (#32113934)
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).
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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by qikInNdOutReply on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @11:05AM (#32152527)
Those septic trucks in dubai are surely not driven by arabs.
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