Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Slaves have poor motivation to improve their condition. They have little aspiration to improve their position, and practically speaking you can't beat a cook into making you a great dinner. You can beat them into cooking you A dinner by beating them if they don't cook; but if you're going to beat them unless the dinner is perfect they're probably getting beaten regardless. At which point there's no motivation to make a better dinner. Where a free chef who comes to my house is motivated to enhance his status, make a great dinner, get more business, etc.
Free labor typically provides for itself in the long run on a lower wage than it costs the slaver to feed and maintain his slaves. Chattel Slavery only works with continual infusions of fresh slaves from foreign parts, otherwise it doesn't tend to perpetuate itself well.
Of course slavery takes many historical forms, and we can debate details.
I have read (but not sure of its veracity) that people who owned slaves had a carrot and stick approach rather than a punishment only approach for motivating people. It's also why sometimes there was a price set that could earn you your freedom if you managed to pay it. It allowed people to tell their slaves to go off and labor on their own and earn money, of which they would take a cut, so that the slaves would do the maximally productive task.
Time on the Cross has details of this.
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