I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.)<p>I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively unlimited renewable energy that literally falls from the sky like manna. With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry in my opinion.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.)<p>More or less.<p>Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example).<p>Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization. Southerners would regularly complain about the hustle and bustle of the North, the size of the cities, and how hard regular (white) people had to work. The "Southern way of life" <i>was</i> a thing - a leisurely, agrarian society based on forced labor and land instead of capital.<p>In this regard it's a doubly fitting metaphor because much of the opposition to abolishing slavery was cultural and not economic.
> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery...<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US.<p>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.<p>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.
Slavery in Europe was replaced with a more efficient system in the Middle Ages.<p>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.
Ah, the master of bad takes is at it again.<p>> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point,<p>Except that of course it wasn't.<p>> and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said.<p>And many smart people do.<p>> There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild.<p>Yes, such as the one that wealth is not very good as a context free metric for societal success.<p>> With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick.<p>You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.<p>> 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.<p>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 <i>no longer slaves</i>.<p>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.
> You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.<p>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.<p>Because slavery was everywhere.
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.<p>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.<p><i>I can call my ma from up here. Hey, ma! Get off the dang roof!</i><p>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>>Except that of course it wasn't.</i><p>Except that it definitely was.
The south wasn't really situated for industrialization at the time. They didn't have enough rivers that could turn a water wheel effectively. (That's what I've heard anyway)
It's true the first mills were in the north because they had some good sites, but there are good mill sites throughout the South as well. More tellingly, when the first steam engines in the US were imported from Europe - they could have been just as easily installed in the South.<p>I think more importantly, steam mills solved for a problem the south did not have. If one was to tell a southerner, I have a technology that will save on labor costs, the southerner's response would have been "what are labor costs?"
Hmm, this doesn’t seem to be accurate. The missouri/mississipi rivers come to mind, as do many other river systems.
My impression was that there was a lack of fast moving rivers which were suitable for water wheels. You could make some elevation, or build a larger wheel, but that can become prohibitive for the volume needed for a real factory.<p>It looks like the south does have some suitable rivers, but you wonder why they exported their crops to the north just to buy them back again in their more processed form...that just doesn't make much sense from an economic standpoint. Clearly slavery wasn't a suitable replacement for the type of production work done in the north. It must have been a mix of social factors, combined with the fact that the north specialized in industry early on and you couldn't compete very well with the lack of expertise and lack of industry which supported the local industry in the south.<p>Anyway this is all just wild speculation. Take it for what you will.
Mississippi declaration of secession.<p>"“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world....Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”<p>Georgia<p>"“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories… is destructive of our rights and interests.”
The full preamble of the Mississippi declaration is fascinating, and further shuts down doubters that the civil war wasn't about slavery and racism:<p>> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin<p>Also, they clearly make the case that cotton was the most important good in the world, perhaps imploring the intercession of foreign powers.<p>I think it's worth pointing out though that these people were not being honest with themselves - nothing in their argument about the importance of cotton suggests it couldn't have been done with wage labor. They are dancing around the fact that only a very few benefit from slavery.
Technology developed after Smith's writing changed the calculus. The cotton gin made wide-scale cotton cultivation far more lucrative, and drove American slavery:
<a href="https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-slavery/" rel="nofollow">https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-...</a><p>Without the cotton gin, chattel slavery would have probably ended at least one generation earlier in the US
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- The difference between Ben Franklin writing about farming in the 1770s and the civil war was that industrialization didn't hit the US until the 1810s/1820s when the first steel mills and steam engines were set up.<p>- "These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine." The vast majority of immigrants to the US at this time WERE farmers who were not allowed to own land in Europe. The reason they came to the North instead of the South is because they were largely not allowed to settle anywhere East of the Appalachians in the South. The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time.<p>- At the outbreak of war, the Union army was almost entirely made up of American born volunteers. Later, immigrant brigades were enlisted, but most were highly regarded and commended and still made up less than half of the army.<p>- Your explanation cutely ignores the fact that Southern troops fired first in the Civil War
I liked it better when you guys called yourselves "Know Nothings". It made it easier to follow what was going on.
<i>These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine.</i><p>Please tell me more on your theories regarding these immigrants.<p>The only ones I'm aware of were Irish immigrants. Most of them were urban dwellers, not farmers. The Irish who were farmers were generally working on farms owned by the English.
What makes you think the newspapers of the day are all telling the truth? Does the media today tell the truth? Did newspapers disclose when the equivalent of a billionaire bought them out and drastically changed the editorial bias?<p>I'm not saying we shouldn't read historical documents. I'm saying to not apply the same skepticism you would apply to modern media to old media is a mistake.
ah yes the famine was because the people were lazy and did not want to farm. the history understander has logged on for everyone here!
Everything you’ve described sounds economic, not cultural. Being able to lounge around while others toil for your gain is absolutely economic. And the data shows this: if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita than the north.
Maybe - a lot of the material wealth of the South was having a lot of land divided amongst fewer people. Enjoying more leisure has a nasty habit of not making people richer in the end.<p>Here's specifically what Adam Smith had to say in the Wealth of Nations:<p>> But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.<p>Later, to explain this trap of why people insist on owning slaves even if paying workers would be more productive in the long run:<p>> "The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen."
> Enjoying more leisure has a nasty habit of not making people richer in the end.<p>Human slavery might be one of the few exceptions to this. People can reproduce and create more people provided they are given the bare necessities of life. As long as you could keep the enslaved under control, you would have new slaves you could constantly sell and they mostly took care of themselves.<p>Honestly it sounds like a great life for an unambitious, lazy person. Maybe we’ll all be able to experience something similar when humanoid robots are commonplace in the future. Find an isolated piece of land with a few robots. Make them grow food and commercial crops. Raise some animals. Live a life of relative self sufficiency and leisure.
That's the dream. Except in the minds of those who aim to bring it about you are in some unmarked plot.
The issue (for the masters, and besides any ethical issues) is being a slave master is a very tenuous position, and prone to revolts.<p>Too capable (but also valuable!) slaves tend to be self sufficient and strong enough to throw you off.<p>Too weak (and therefore non-valuable!) slaves tend to be easy to control - but are a huge drain on the system, including ‘master’ management, which is often the most constrained resource anyway in any hierarchical system.
> if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita than the north.<p>In other words, if you remove the people that earned the least (close to nothing) the overall income per capita goes up? If you exclude the non nobles I am sure the middle ages had a very high GDP too
> Being able to lounge around while others toil for your gain is absolutely economic.<p>And being comfortable doing it via slave labor is cultural.<p>> if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita<p>If you exclude the murders, Ted Bundy was a really nice guy.
Prior to the steam engine, what sources of energy you have?<p>The wind and the water, both rather limited to specific activities (milling, sailing). And the power of human and animal muscle. Where the animals are stronger, but also much dumber, so most of the actual hard work has to be done by human hands.<p>Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour. Villeiny, serfdom, prisoners of war, slavery of all sorts, or having low castes do the worst work.<p>And given that humans are very good at rationalizing away their conditions, the cultures adapted to being comfortable with it, even considering the societal inequality as something ordained by the gods or karma.
> Prior to the steam engine, what sources of energy you have?<p>Oxen? Paid laborers? It's not like the American South was unique in needing farm workers.<p>> Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour.<p>The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished elsewhere.<p>> And given that humans are very good at rationalizing away their conditions, the cultures adapted to being comfortable with it, even considering the societal inequality as something ordained by the gods or karma.<p>Good, then we agree; it was at least in part cultural.
"Oxen? Paid laborers? "<p>In other words, animal and human muscle, we agree on that.<p>I didn't claim that <i>all</i> human labour was non-free, far from that. Every classical civilization had paid artisans and employees as well.<p>But the paid professions tended to be the skilled ones, and the non-free ones tended to be the arduous, backbreaking ones.<p>"The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished elsewhere."<p>Elsewhere where? If I look at the timeline of slavery abolition on Wikipedia, it seems that the South was not even the last holdout in the Americas, much less worldwide.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...</a><p>They were about as delayed as Russia. (Serfdom in Russia was not quite slavery, but brutal and backward nonetheless.)<p>And the timeline of slavery abolition seems to dovetail with the expansion of the Industrial Revolution across the globe quite tightly, or not?<p>"it was at least in part cultural."<p>Chicken, egg. This is a system stretching over millennia with endless feedback loops. Runaway slaves may become the masters (such as the Aztecs) and vice versa, developing their own justifications why it happened.
> This is a system stretching over millennia<p>not quite. 'Slavery' has been around that long. 'Chattel Slavery' started in the 1600s and peaked in the 1800s. So like, half a millenia.
> In other words, animal and human muscle, we agree on that.<p>Sure. My objection is to the slavery bit, not the "humans doing work" bit.<p>> But the paid professions tended to be the skilled ones, and the non-free ones tended to be the arduous, backbreaking ones.<p>There were plenty of non-slave manual laborers throughout history. Doubly so for <i>chattel</i> slavery of the sort practiced in the South.<p>> Elsewhere where? If I look at the timeline of slavery abolition on Wikipedia, it seems that the South was not even the last holdout in the Americas, much less worldwide.<p>What we'd now call the developed world.<p>That article lists many restrictions and abolitions of the practices hundreds of years prior to the 1860s. The Russians you mention managed it in 1723; Massachusets deems it unconstitional in 1783. By the 1860s still having it as a properous nation was pretty weird.
> The Russians you mention managed it in 1723<p>In 1861.
"What we'd now call the developed world."<p>The developed world of now is much more extensive than the developed world of the 1860s, and the South was very backward until the 1950s or so. In the 1850s, it was seriously lagging behind the North in industrial power, which is one of the reasons why they lost the war. This would point to a yet another chicken-and-egg problem. Nonfree labour tends to cement premodern societal and economic structures, which perpetuate existence of non-free labour, unless disrupted from the outside. The Islamic world didn't give up slavery voluntarily either.<p>I am not sure if we can call the South of the 1860s "developed", even relatively to the rest of the Western civ. By what criteria?<p>"The Russians you mention managed it in 1723"<p>Serfdom in Russia was abolished after the Crimean War, and the Tsar used the money gained by the Alaska Purchase to pay off part of the due compensations to the nobles.<p>Yes, these institutions were not equal. Different cultural and historical development. Still, a Russian serf of the 1850s was a very non-free person, tied to the land and dependent on whims of his lord or lady. Few would care if a drunk noble whipped him to death, even though <i>theoretically</i> he should not be doing that. A rough equivalent in category.
Like trying to assess the economy of the Third Reich while omitting that whole pesky war thing
> if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita than the north.<p>That doesn't tell the whole story though. If you own 100 slaves, you need to spend nonzero resources maintaining them, or else they will starve and then you have zero slaves. So the owner has less wealth than the equivalent person in the North that has the same income but zero slaves. You can't directly compare GDP per capita excluding enslaved people.<p>I do agree with your broader point about usage of labor and how being able to have leisure via slavery is economic.
Except that slaves also make new slaves that can be sold.<p>I really dislike this idea that slavery was just a cultural aberration and not economic. For one thing, that lightens the moral stain of slavery adjacent activity, most notably colonialism and the exploitation of the colonies. This never went away. Economic colonialism exists to this day. We just call it “outsourcing”, “offshoring” and “subcontracting”.
Offshoring generally improves the lives of the people who get the offshored jobs. Usually foreign companies pay more and have better working conditions than the local companies.
Yeah, that's a lie. It's propaganda.<p>Consider as just one example the lawsuit over <i>child slavery</i> against Nestle, etc [1]. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Nestle can't be held responsible for the child slavery even though they have full knowledge of it happening. Go figure. In fact, that's what they pay for.<p>The whole shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is incredibly dangerous for those involved and couldn't possibly be done in any developed nation.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/m...</a>
It's worse than that because it takes something that should beg the question what modern things we peddle today because they make $$ are in fact morally wrong into a trite "hurr durr past people bad we smart now" that nobody learns anything from.
There is certainly a cultural component. A very good book named Albion’s Seed traces the waves of early American immigration. The North was mostly settled by dissidents pre-ECW. The South was mostly divided up into estates and settled by post-ECW lords that mirrored the social structure and power dynamics they liked.
> …if you exclude the enslaved…<p>If you ignore the part that makes you wrong, then you are right.
> if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita<p>Yeah because your "capita" is severely undercounted.<p>If I exclude every who dont live in New York, USA has astonishing GDP per capita ... because I am assigning each person production of many. Same thing.
If you own a lot of slaves your life is better than the freemen who own less/none, much less slaves. However society overall could be muca better even if for you personally it is worse
I am quite hopeful. One benchmark that was passed only very recently was Levelized Full System Cost parity in Texas. That is, the total cost of generating electricity via renewables, importantly, including storage and infrastructure costs became equivalent to other options.<p>I don't think this gets talked about enough because its truly a milestone.<p>It's still more expensive in colder places, but the math is changing very fast.
> <i>With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry</i><p>Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.
That’s true today, it wasn’t true when Germany was heavily subsidizing solar to get economies of scale going.<p>Solar is historically a great example where public / private collaboration actually had a place. Even if today it’s time to let market forces work.
Solar is just one technology. Decarbonizing successfully requires still further huge investments in batteries, modular nuclear reactors, CO2 removal, zero-carbon steel production, aviation e-fuels, non-fossil plastics, etc. But yes, hopefully we've unlocked enough economic advantage with just that one technology to get us 90% of the way there just on the basis of economics. (If the current administration doesn't find some way to sabotage it.)
It's just a shame that they didn't end up enjoying the spoils very long. They had very good panels that were researched and produced in Germany but they got completely wiped out by cheap Chinese products
Wait, which part is China and which is Europe? Solar didn't win in China because of social pressure, but also not because of market forces. It did win because the CCP made energy independence a political goal.
It's a cute ideal, but you can't disentangle government from the energy sector. It's too big.<p>How do markets build infrastructure as large as an LNG terminal without the government tipping the scales with various guarantees? How do you build a literal coastline of refineries without government clearing the way with permissive regulations? How can you say "let markets figure it out" when the US military is the acquisition department of Halliburton's Iraqi joint venture?<p>Pretending "markets can figure it out if we just remove government subsidies" is hopelessly naiive. Geopolitics is mostly energy policy.
If we let the markets have their way, Earth becomes unhabitable. Coal and oil plants aren't being shut down. In fact, we have more than ever with additional ones on the way.
It's because "free market" is and always has been a misnomer. Free to ignore externalities, yes. But our shared ecosystem is not seen as a market participant, so it can't charge the true cost of burning hydrocarbons.
We'd also still have industry dumping raw waste directly into our waterways. I'm not so sure that this wouldn't have killed more people faster than unregulated coal/oil plants.
I've read somewhere how the English people industrialized because they had problems that could not be fixed by human or animal power. Mines became too deep, pumping too hard. The ancient greek knew about steam engines, but had no use for them. The English did, in their mines. Necessity as mother of invention. Then machines freed us from hard labour and gave us free time.
> belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous<p>On the contrary, historians broadly agree that industrialization (particularly the advent of the cotton gin) actually turbocharged the human trafficking industry in the US. The cotton gin moved the bottleneck for textile production onto enslaved people, since there was no automation available for planting, cultivating, or harvesting the cotton.
My impression is that slavery was economically disadvantageous the whole time, but persisted in the South because of the relative power of the slaveholders.
> still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically...<p>not crazy especially as slavery was supplanted by debt, which is in a way fractional slavery (minus the chattel part ofc)
So solar energy falls from the sky, but what about the resources it takes to make the panels?
Even if global greenhouse gas emissions immediately and permanently stop, climate change won’t. We have many years of further warming ahead of us due to the greenhouse gases already dumped into the atmosphere.
It was a socially-driven movement, but economics made it feasible for social concerns to win. The lesson is that you need both, and this is especially true when time is short.
Re: slavery: I've wondered before if the arrow of causation might go both ways. Slavery has existed throughout history. With slaves, what's the incentive to industrialize? You have "free" and captive human labor. But take that away, and suddenly the idea of machines doing stuff for you seems a lot more compelling.<p>Slavery also displaces industry in the economy. Slave-driven industries compete with industrial development for investment funds and production driven by slave labor can compete with mechanized production. But if labor is suddenly expensive, mechanized production has an advantage, and if former slaves are now getting paid there are also more customers for the output of that production.<p>So industrialization may have played some role in abolition, but did abolition also drive industrialization? Slavery was abolished in Britain in the early 19th century and Britain was also the cradle of the industrial revolution, which started to hit very shortly after. America did not explode industrially until after it abolished slavery.<p>If we'd abolished slavery in Roman times we might have terraformed Mars by now.
Slavery was ended in the USA by the Civil War veterans.
What will come with the approaching boom of guilt-free energy is public support for doing more things with more energy, and instead of stagnated per-capita energy use a return to more-than-linear energy usage growth.<p>With that you get flying cars, space tourism, AI, cities in deserts with free water through desalination, better indoor climates with freer ventilation with the outside, cities skies free of ICE smog and probably a whole lot of things which are hard to imagine.
I hope you are right. My fear is that it could allow unrestricted limits to tear down the rest of nature.<p>Alternatively, it could mean that we would no longer need to do that as a lot of materials that are restricted by energy costs become viable. If energy is almost free you can extract a lot of trace materials from almost anywhere.
It depends how you look at it<p>> <i>Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively unlimited renewable energy that literally falls from the sky like manna</i><p>China has solar panel production on lock. Nobody is going to make money there.<p>So from a western point of view, there is only a LOT of money to be <i>lost</i> by going solar. Anyone that invested in oil and gas, coal and even to a lesser degree nuclear is NOT going to go quietly.<p>Hence all the climate change denial and anti-renewable rhetoric from the current US regime<p>(To be clear I personally have my roof covered in panels and also hope like mad we can get everyone on board)
Why though? For a business owner I can’t imagine a better situation than his workers working for free and having to do 16 hours a day under pain of death. This probably wouldn’t work with 80% of the populace enslaved but would work very well with 10-15% enslaved.
> For a business owner I can’t imagine a better situation than his workers working for free and having to do 16 hours a day under pain of death<p>you really can't imagine a better situation than humans owning humans?
Slaves aren’t free.<p>You still need to feed them, clothe them, and house them.<p>You need to do basic medical care.<p>And now you have the problem that most of them would happily murder you in your sleep/if your back is turned, or run away never to be found. So the tend to be a pretty big security risk.<p>Oh, and also they’re slaves so good luck getting them to care about their work - way worse than a typical new hire retail employee even. So you need to do heavier supervision.<p>Oh, and you had to pay to acquire them - instead of give them an offer and pay them after they’ve worked for you successfully. So add that to the ‘risk’ pile.
Which is funny because we've had an environmentally and economically optimal source of power since the 50s (nuclear) which we deliberately phased out due to panic cycles.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.)<p>I also never found the economic argument entirely convincing. If slavery were so economically disadvantageous in an industrialized society, why are there still slave labor in industrialized countries around the world today?
There’s an effort to whitewash the horrors of chattel slavery that is really disgusting.<p>Estimated on the economics of slavery (that I’ve read anyway) seemingly ignore that slaves can make new slaves.<p>This is the dark side of slavery that seems to be rarely discussed. That is, the mass rape of slaves over centuries by their owners.<p>There was even an economic incentive for this because lighter skinned slaves were more desirable for domestic labor. By the 19th century this had gotten so absurd that some slaves were almost indistinguishable from white people due to generations of repeated rape, basically.<p>There was a book whose name escapes me that analyzed the records of one of the largest slave markets and it found that the price of girl slaves went way once they started menstruating. This was advertised. Why do you think that was?<p>We would line in a very different country if, after the civil war, every slave owner was strung up from a tree and their estates were redistributed to the formerly enclaved.
> We would line in a very different country if, after the civil war, every slave owner was strung up from a tree and their estates were redistributed to the formerly enclaved.<p>Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. A country that would just kill a significant share of its citizens for something that used to be legal very recently is not going to end up just fine. Moreover, due to normal distribution of human traits the next generation would have the same percentage of 'evil' with or without your <i>well-intentioned</i> genocide.. go figure.
> the dark side of slavery<p>oh mate
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> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement.<p>I really don't understand why you're bringing slavery in a discussion about hydro. Why not bring Gaza? And Iran? This is a tech site after all: so, sure, bringing slavery in a talk about solar energy makes sense.<p>Note that the abolition of slavery is unrelated to industrialization: the islamic republic of Mauritania was the last country to officially abolish slavery and they did it in the 1980s. And it's very well known that slavery still persisted long after that and there are still people owning slaves today (not too sure why the other comment mentioning it was downvoted).<p>At this point I think people are just insane: they'll use any excuse, on any unrelated subject, to bring it the issues of slavery, patriarchy, Gaza (but not Iran), etc. But as soon as you point out actual patriarchal societies operating today or actual slavery still happening today or people having actual sex slaves in western countries (e.g. several members of the UK parliament are now running an enquiry into a gigantic gang-rapes operation with <i>thousands</i> of victims and an attempted cover-up by the authorities and the findings are beyond belief).<p>"Won't hear, won't see, won't speak -- shall only mention slavery, the patriarchy, Gaza and shall downvote".<p>HN is truly lost.
Is this a joke comment or do you not realize that people were treated like chattel slaves while working in the first factories?
> I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change.<p>I'm struggling to understand the level of completely irrational rejection of reality in all these comments.<p>Emissions continue <i>rise every year</i>, we are already locked into extreme climate change, multiple nations are engaged in military conflicts to capture oil, we globally use more fossil fuels <i>every</i> year.<p>Companies are starting to convert <i>jet engines</i> into natural gas powered generator for AI data centers [0]<p>So far we've continually used 'green' energy to supplement the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. We have far more EVs on the road than we did a few years ago and are using <i>more</i> oil than before in the US (and producing more than we <i>ever</i> have).<p>We are already out of the standard IPC scenarios and potentially on track for a 'hot house earth' future [1].<p>It is quite clear that we are ramping up for global war over natural resources (largely fossil fuels) and we will burn the planet to the ground chasing the last drop of oil.<p>0. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-jet-engines-are-powering-data-centers-b1c587a9" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-jet-engines-are-...</a><p>1. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of...</a>