It is an age-old question: which is worse, slavery, or death?
In South America, the textile mills ran through slaves at such a rapid pace that they kept having to constantly import new ones from Africa. They would lose not just appendages but whole entire limbs to the machines, and people only have so many of those! Ofc the capitalists could have made improvements to the machines but… why bother, when slaves were fairly cheap?
In North America, working in the cotton fields was much more bearable - an Irish indentured servant might not be able to handle it, but someone with skin adapted to that level of sun had fewer problems with it. Yet, arguably this became even worse than the textile mills, bc it allowed a stable population of the slaves, which led to a generational form of slavery where these were thought of not just as people who were slaves, but as closer to cattle that could be bred as such. The “three fifths of a person” rule is quite illuminating as to how they were thought of: not even merely one notch down, but barely more than half, as in looks like a person bodily (e.g. opposable thumbs) but isn’t one, not really.
But now with Globalization and Automation, instead of finding new groups of “other” people (even robots), it will be basically all of us who are fair game to become enslaved. Already we are dividing up into those who show a willingness to exploit others vs. those who will be trampled upon - i.e. the only other option to being a slave is to become a slaver, aka there are far worse things than death:-(. ☠️
It is an age-old question: which is worse, slavery, or death?
In South America, the textile mills ran through slaves at such a rapid pace that they kept having to constantly import new ones from Africa. They would lose not just appendages but whole entire limbs to the machines, and people only have so many of those! Ofc the capitalists could have made improvements to the machines but… why bother, when slaves were fairly cheap?
In North America, working in the cotton fields was much more bearable - an Irish indentured servant might not be able to handle it, but someone with skin adapted to that level of sun had fewer problems with it. Yet, arguably this became even worse than the textile mills, bc it allowed a stable population of the slaves, which led to a generational form of slavery where these were thought of not just as people who were slaves, but as closer to cattle that could be bred as such. The “three fifths of a person” rule is quite illuminating as to how they were thought of: not even merely one notch down, but barely more than half, as in looks like a person bodily (e.g. opposable thumbs) but isn’t one, not really.
But now with Globalization and Automation, instead of finding new groups of “other” people (even robots), it will be basically all of us who are fair game to become enslaved. Already we are dividing up into those who show a willingness to exploit others vs. those who will be trampled upon - i.e. the only other option to being a slave is to become a slaver, aka there are far worse things than death:-(. ☠️