Go Long Chain Makers
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Leonardo da Vinci Head of a Woman 1470s This is turning into a very rewarding series, it opens up vistas I could never have dreamed of. First,
[See the full post at: Go Long Chain Makers]Another one pounded out of the ball park Ken!
The Predator Class will do whatever it takes to maintain their position at the top. However, it may not come to physical slavery. If it is still financially possible, robots will replace enough workers so that there will be a massive surplus of labor and thus continued strife for the working classes. Population control by war anyone?
If you look at the situation from a distance, we are not much different from the animal kingdom, where the most powerful always rule the clan and Mother Nature determines the population carrying capacity. In my weaker moments I sometimes wonder if religion wasn’t invented to smooth this fact over.
“The president known as Old Hickory outlawed chattel slavery. Not necessarily because he so loved his African constituents, who were politically considered to be two-thirds of a person, but in hopes they would do what they could to hinder the Confederate war effort.”
Maybe I am missing something, but I thought Andrew Jackson was Old Hickory. He died around 1845. Also, the Constitution found slaves to be 3/5 of a person in determining U.S. House representation.
With my nitpicking done, I have to say it was a thought-provoking article. It’s all about net energy. Slaves gave antebellum “civilization” some of that. The cornucopians think electricity will give modern society a whole lot more of it. I am skeptical.
Not mentioned is military service, a form of indentured servitude that survives today. Add a draft (for both genders?) and presto, coerced servitude. In the name of Homeland Security, to prevent and quell uprisings? To keep the “have nots” in their designated places (once they become too numerous to ignore)?
Conditions in “Third World” countries could provide glimpses of the rest of the world’s future. Shantytowns, household servants galore (for the privileged class), and people willing to work for a pittance to scrape by.
I recall a stunt by “The Yes Men” where the speaker impersonated an official from the WTO. He gave a talk about slavery being economically inefficient, with the present day practices of paying low wages, and letting the workers feed and house themselves, being less costly for the employers.
Found it:
I think (I tell myself) it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said something like, “A man’s mind, once expanded, never returns to its original dimensions”. Apart from a great societal amnesia it will be difficult to go back to a situation very like the past when we think of slavery. Our societies do and should know enough to reject this form of living.
Given there is more than enough weaponry and know-how I personally expect something more violent all across the globe unfortunately.
Great read Ken, once again very much on the same page. I didn’t self identify as a wage slave until after I left the U.S. and reflected back on my working life.
One reason I have no pension is because I was a very bad wage slave and refused to take shit off of management. I told my boss on my very first job (18yo) to go to hell and walked out.
I had many careers over my 40 years of working and generally excelled at what I did. However, that didn’t count in the wageslavery world of the U.S.. Politics uber alas; ability be damned. It’s the hubris of wealth and power.
I live in Thailand under a military junta: Very few can understand why I prefer it to living in the U.S.; in fact I’ve been roundly attacked and criticised for criticising the U.S.’s increasingly fascist policies and militarized police and corrupt to the core government. I’ve been here for 14 years and been through 2 coups with no effect on our lives what-so-ever.
I have health insurance for $12/mos. and through my civil servant wife, I have access (for free) to the same hospital in which Thailand’s beloved King Bumipol was cared for.
Thai’s have huge amounts of freedom. And I get the benefit daily.
Usian’s are ill with poor education, no critical thinking skills, thereby very susceptible to the lies and propaganda blasted at them 24/7. Usian’s quality of life is incrementally stolen from them and they are so beaten down they have lost the will and wherewithal to fight back.
I found it interesting you ended with, ok, bring it on.
I fully understand why. None so blind eh?
Cheers and keep writing.This is on wealth – from the eastern bloc (at least one representative), as requested. The first 20 yrs of my life were spent in two socialist countries, incl. USSR (later, Canada and US). I used to think that socialism was very good for children and the old people. Maybe less so for ambitious young folk… Looking back at the life in socialism, I have to say that – compared to many people in the US – we were VERY rich – even the poor among us. It is, of course, all about how one defines wealth. If it is the amount of material possessions – then capitalism likely wins. But everything else… well, there’s no comparison. What we had – and today that seems to me like a giant luxury – is a lack of concern about money. That is, the constant worry about how much money one has, is it enough to afford the latest “in” thing (or keeping up with the Joneses), can I pay all the bills… etc. (And yes, not all socialist countries were the same (Romania, part. in the 80s, was a different matter)). But generally, we had a place to live (the village folk lived the best), more than enough to eat (and the food was fresh and of high quality – no high fructose corn syrup for the commies – we could not afford it), energy that was subsidized (yes, all that Soviet gas and oil were provided to the socialist countries at a deep discount), education was good and free (this is what got the socialists – most people were too well educated), health care was free – but not fancy by any means, there was mostly free child care, transportation was free or subsidized, retirement at 55 for women with kids, 60 for the others.
And yes – we lacked in the material goods department … but we had TIME. We had lots of time to forge friendships, travel, read books, go to theater (subsidized) and cinema, garden, cook, visit with family, learn languages, study music, do sports, develop hobbies, talk with neighbours and friends met in the street, organise field trips, sing, and – of course – think about the things we were missing that the Westerners had. Like fancy cars, nice clothes, … and all else. As someone said – people like stuff. Socialism was not about a lot of stuff – it tried to do something else, but few of us understood it. We were, to be fair – also under a tremendous pro-western and anti-socialism propaganda – day in and day out. I know, I was there. The struggle to destroy socialism in the socialist countries was real, persistent, and vicious. I fell for it then – and only today I finally see it for what it was. The wealth that was accumulated by the people was stolen (Yeltsin, anyone?) – in that sense, the West won. Today, I remember fondly – the luxurious feel of a life in which money (and worry about money) did not predominate. It is not a luxury I can afford now…Since the discussion is about slavery in the USA, let’s make one thing quite clear. Black Africans (yes, there are many non-black Africans) were chosen to be slaves in the USA, the Caribbean and Brazil only after it was found that Whites and the “Indian” natives were suscepbtible to malaria and did not last long in the sugar fields.
Africans from West Africa are largely protected against malaria – because of their sickle-cell trait.
Protective Effect of Sickle Cell Trait Against Malaria-Associated Mortality And Morbidity
The whole idea that it was racism is nonsense – it was good business.
Here is a good explanation:
<i>The first slaves were conquered new world natives, but the “Indians” had no immunity to European diseases. The second wave of slaves were European whites, but the Europeans had no immunity to malaria and yellow fever. By default slavery fell to blacks, many of whom had immunity to malaria and yellow fever. Thus, a black workforce could survive the infected environments and newly created wetlands in which to raise sugarcane, wetlands that were ideal homes for malaria and yellow fever bearing mosquitoes. Mann, of course, is merely reporting, not justifying black or any slavery.</i>
so called east,
Several years ago I attended a church conference that my wife was invited to. Just by accident we were seated across the dinner table from a Lutheran minister from the former East Germany. When he mentioned where he was from I said, “My God, how terrible for you!” He looked at me like I had lobsters coming out of my ears. He proceeded to educate me on both the benefits and disadvantages of living in East Germany. Among the advantages were freedom from economic worry-as you so eloquently described. Of course, we all know about the lack of personal and economic freedom there, but do we really have freedom here?
As you may know, we are working 10 acres in a generally sustainable design with an aim for self reliance and an ability to shut the gate for 12 months if necessary as a transitional stage.
Several people with whom I have talked about this have been surprised to hear that I give us less than a 20% chance of coming out the other side in one piece and that, further more, if we get it right, our grandchildren MIGHT have a half chance of living a reasonable life. The downside of that will be that they will be slave owners.
If we get it wrong, they will be the slaves. Its not a popular perspective, but I can’t see how it can be any different.
Peak energy=peak waste=peak economics=peak belief.
We don’t see this because we don’t see our belief system (the real one, not the supposed one we talk about ‘for show’). I would reverse the order of that in causality, but we’re so far from understanding that it’s probably more helpful to ‘walk it back’.
Just a brief note on this relative to the recent series of articles (and followup comments): The focus on “wealth” is misplaced. Our culture is simply confused. Energy facilitates waste. Economics tells us how to go about it (via profit seeking). We rationalize it in “wealth” terms. If humans don’t wrap their heads around this, they’ll likely waste their way to extinction. So, rather than chase wealth, the sane approach is to end waste, starting with economics. The most direct, simplest, least suffering way to do that is to end the cultural belief in the concept of exchange, which is the root cause of our societal dysfunction (including slavery past and present).
This is all appreciated. There are many forms of slavery, and both the native American captive slaves and the European indentured servants had high death rates.
Most Europeans did not survive their terms of indenture. Sometimes, over half died on the boat over, just for starters.
I have seen the hypothesis supported that racism was a construct to enlist the class of former white slaves to control the class of hereditary black slaves. It makes sense…
Here is How Debt Conquered America, excellent historical perspective and analysis:Michael Hudson, Economic Historian, says debt slavery is where we are headed. David Graeber in “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” said this is the first time in history that debtors have virtually no advocates from the religions. They’ve been co-opted. The “Profit Motive” religion says the spreadsheet made me do it, its just business. In this respect, it is not a failure of capitalism, because power and domination can become the currency in any economic system. The Soviet socialism proved that, as well as a variety of undemocratic states.
As for slavery, What is modern slavery? Information about the 20.9 million in slavery from Anti-slavery International in the UK
For a far out perspective consider the Urantia Book history of Earth where slavery was an improvement over the initial practice of killing all members of the conquered enemy.
Aggressive war and slavery are gross methods of “stealing the fire of others”. Fire is energy. Since it became possible to put the energy of coal to work via steam engines and later petroleum, that energy has enabled more mechanical and electronic slaves so more of the population can be kings and queens, princes and princesses. The dungeons aren’t completely empty as more wants arise out of addiction to products of the built environment, toys that become necessities.
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