Even the poorest of societies can avoid holding slaves or placing women or men in legally inferior roles.
To avoid having slaves, the poorest society could decide to kill all war captives, and to let starve to death all people unable to pay their debts. Yes, this would avoid legal discrimination. Is it therefore a morally preferable solution?
Since when has the institution of slavery been a charitable one? Historically, slave-owners have payed immense costs, directly and indirectly, for the privilege of owning slaves, and done so knowingly and willingly. It is human nature to derive pleasure from holding power over others.
I’m not sure about those direct costs. According to my references, a male slave in 10th-century Scandinavia cost about as much as a horse, a female slave about two-thirds as much; that’s a pretty good chunk of change but it doesn’t seem obviously out of line with the value of labor after externalities. I don’t have figures offhand for any other slaveholding cultures, but the impression I get is that the pure exercise of power was not the main determinant of value in most, if not all, of them,
I seem to recall someone arguing that, in combat between iron age tribes, it was basically a choice between massacre and slavery—if you did neither, they would wreck revenge upon your tribe further down the line.
This wouldn’t be charity, as I guess the winners did benefit from having a source of labour that didn’t need to be compensated at the market rate, but it would be a case where slavery was beneficial to the victims.
(I think Carlyle was wrong about other supposed cases of slavery proving beneficial for the victims)
One could argue that happened in Ancient Rome, with prisoners fo war as the main source of slaves. Also they/their descendants arguably benefited in the long term from being part of the larger more sophisticated culture, if they survived that long.
To avoid having slaves, the poorest society could decide to kill all war captives, and to let starve to death all people unable to pay their debts. Yes, this would avoid legal discrimination. Is it therefore a morally preferable solution?
Since when has the institution of slavery been a charitable one? Historically, slave-owners have payed immense costs, directly and indirectly, for the privilege of owning slaves, and done so knowingly and willingly. It is human nature to derive pleasure from holding power over others.
I’m not sure about those direct costs. According to my references, a male slave in 10th-century Scandinavia cost about as much as a horse, a female slave about two-thirds as much; that’s a pretty good chunk of change but it doesn’t seem obviously out of line with the value of labor after externalities. I don’t have figures offhand for any other slaveholding cultures, but the impression I get is that the pure exercise of power was not the main determinant of value in most, if not all, of them,
I seem to recall someone arguing that, in combat between iron age tribes, it was basically a choice between massacre and slavery—if you did neither, they would wreck revenge upon your tribe further down the line.
This wouldn’t be charity, as I guess the winners did benefit from having a source of labour that didn’t need to be compensated at the market rate, but it would be a case where slavery was beneficial to the victims.
(I think Carlyle was wrong about other supposed cases of slavery proving beneficial for the victims)
One could argue that happened in Ancient Rome, with prisoners fo war as the main source of slaves. Also they/their descendants arguably benefited in the long term from being part of the larger more sophisticated culture, if they survived that long.