Enslaving your neighbors is a great way to ensure that the drudge work gets done without inconveniencing your constituents.
In the preindustrial societies, slavery could certainly be profitable. In the modern economies, mechanization generally made forced labor economically inefficient. This is why most countries like DDR are no more and North Korea has become an outlier. Obviously, aggressive regimes may still prevail even against far more advanced neighbors if the latter are disunited or do not have a comparable military force.
The question is whether a big central government is the only thing that can protect us from such threats. Would not it be possible, for instance, to limit central governments only to the tasks that cannot be handled locally (e.g., military defense)?
I’m curious as to why this was downvoted? China is definitely at the industrial level and there appears to be strong evidence for forced labor driving parts of the economy, which seems a relevant counter to the suggestion that there’s not an economic incentive to enslave groups in the industrialized world.
Perhaps extracting forced labor from an internal group rather than captured neighbors is a more important distinction to some people?
In the preindustrial societies, slavery could certainly be profitable. In the modern economies, mechanization generally made forced labor economically inefficient. This is why most countries like DDR are no more and North Korea has become an outlier. Obviously, aggressive regimes may still prevail even against far more advanced neighbors if the latter are disunited or do not have a comparable military force.
The question is whether a big central government is the only thing that can protect us from such threats. Would not it be possible, for instance, to limit central governments only to the tasks that cannot be handled locally (e.g., military defense)?
Although this may become true as automation becomes able to do more things more cheaply, China seems to be a very strong counterexample at our current/recent technological level. Prison slaves, Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle, Laogai or “reform through labor” programmes, etc. America’s prison labor system is also quite scary.
I’m curious as to why this was downvoted? China is definitely at the industrial level and there appears to be strong evidence for forced labor driving parts of the economy, which seems a relevant counter to the suggestion that there’s not an economic incentive to enslave groups in the industrialized world.
Perhaps extracting forced labor from an internal group rather than captured neighbors is a more important distinction to some people?