Looking back at history, Slavery or forced labor without payment has been around seemingly forever in one form or another. Is there anyway the world could have developed into what it is today without it? I mean developed in terms of advances, growth from physical labor used to build things and where might we e (macro economically speaking) if all the labor utilized had to be paid for and if slaves were never a commodity for trade? Where would our penal system be if we never made slaves of captured enemies. I would assume this question has limitless potential, but so does the intelligence I have seen on this board so far :D

It would have, just a lot slower. A LOT slower, if you count peasants as slaves, which they effectively were...

Not in this form, of course. This form HAS slavery, after all.

Could they have built a civilization? I have no doubt they could, without any forced labor.

The world would certainly be much better off, considering that slavery is a terrible econmic policy.

I'm pretty sure the world couldn't have evolved into what it is today without abolishing slavery.;)

Historically doing away with it has always come with a hike upwards in production and profit.:goodjob:

Question is if slavery is a necessary step? Dunno really.

Question is if slavery is a necessary step? Dunno really.

You wrote that in so much of a more concise manner than myself :goodjob:

Well, you should really remember that being a slave wasn't much different to being a peasant, or even an early industrial age worker. So I wouldn't discount those under my defintion of slavery.

What does it matter?

Slavery to me is like ritual human sacrifice or divining the future from entrails. It's a discredited practice.

What does it matter?

Slavery to me is like ritual human sacrifice or divining the future from entrails. It's a discredited practice.

Funny, because it essentially exists around the world, still.

So do ritual human sacrifice and reading entrails.

That doesn't make them acceptable behaviour.

There would always be the alternative of very cheap labor as the US did for large projects like construction of the Transcontinental Rail Road in the hiring of Chinese and Irish immigrants. This form of labor would in many cases be more productive though than slavery seeing as they would always have that motivation to earn more money. Slavery might be seen as very productive because it brought many people together to accomplish an economic goal or fill a specific type of labor that was needed, but there would have been plenty of suffering people in the world willing to come work for a small price and still accomplish the same if not more than what the slaves could.

The world would certainly be much better off, considering that slavery is a terrible econmic policy.

Is it? Please elaborate.

Looking back at history, Slavery or forced labor without payment has been around seemingly forever in one form or another. Is there anyway the world could have developed into what it is today without it? I mean developed in terms of advances, growth from physical labor used to build things and where might we e (macro economically speaking) if all the labor utilized had to be paid for and if slaves were never a commodity for trade? Where would our penal system be if we never made slaves of captured enemies. I would assume this question has limitless potential, but so does the intelligence I have seen on this board so far :D

Probably our current world would be completely different without slavery having never existed. On the other hand, I find it hard to envision how it couldn't have happened. Historically, slavery started disappearing when industrialization allowed machines to do more efficient work than human manual labor alone. This made it more cost-effective to free slaves, since you had to support slaves in their entire existence (food, clothes, housing, etc), whereas a machine just needed servicing occasionally. This means that slaves served the same purpose, in ancient times, as factories do today. Without that degree of productivity, you couldn't get strong and powerful states. Nor could you get states as stable. The only alternative I could imagine is collectivization. But then you still wouldn't get states as powerful as have existed, nor the technological and cultural strengths.

What luiz meant when he said slavery is a terrible economic policy is this: Because slave labour is very cheap, this leads to free native workers seeking employment not being able to find jobs. One example is the growth of latifundia after the Punic and Macedonian Wars. Slaves were exploited on large estates, so the normal farmers could not compete with such low production costs. This lead to poverty, drift to the cities, esp. Rome, social tensions, even the Social War I guess. Similar to what we have in the Western world today, esp. Germany: jobs go to foreign countries where the workforce is cheaper, and native workers cannot find employment.