Based on the evident historical record, without the environmentally deleterious bounty fossil fuels facilitated, most of us would be conjuring up creatively compelling excuses for why forcing your neighbor to work for free is the Moral thing to do.
I can’t speak to every era, but in the middle ages, about 75% of us would have been serfs: not tradeable individually, but bound to a plot of purchaseable land. No way most of us would have been spending our time innovating arguments for the moralilty of slavery.
Arguments for the morality of slavery come down to us from the words and images of the past. Who made the words and images that survive? Mainly slaveholders and serf-owners. As you point out, those who didn’t subscribe to a pro-war, pro-slavery morality selectively died out or became enslaved until the economy made the institution of slavery obsolete, and they lost the ability to transmit their moral views into the future.
I can’t speak to every era, but in the middle ages, about 75% of us would have been serfs: not tradeable individually, but bound to a plot of purchaseable land. No way most of us would have been spending our time innovating arguments for the moralilty of slavery.
Arguments for the morality of slavery come down to us from the words and images of the past. Who made the words and images that survive? Mainly slaveholders and serf-owners. As you point out, those who didn’t subscribe to a pro-war, pro-slavery morality selectively died out or became enslaved until the economy made the institution of slavery obsolete, and they lost the ability to transmit their moral views into the future.