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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1295 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026

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.

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Have people looked into how necessary slavery was in historical civilizations? While industrialization seems to have ended the necessity of chattel slavery, though not necessarily all coerced and semi-coerced labor, in a country it seems the past required more coercion. An example is that sugar farming is so horrific once Haiti/St Domingue ended slavery, it basically stopped since no one was willing to do it without being forced to. I'm curious how much more economically diversified empires like the Romans and Chinese required slavery.

Mining was also a pretty rough profession for a long time.

The word "necessary" might be doing a lot of the lifting either way. It definitely makes some industries more profitable for the owners, but how "necessary" is it for that industry to be more profitable?

For something like salt mines maybe it matters a lot since salt was used to preserve food, and food preservation was very important for armies and power projection.

But for something else like tobacco production in the Americas .. the industry wasn't necessary at all. It was a luxury good that caused long term medical problems. Sugar is probably similar as well.

Yeah, I was thinking about levels of necessity too. Coal mining was possible without slavery and people were distressed when this nightmare job was taken away. Orwell quote, just because the writing is good:

“…each man is shifting coal at a speed approaching two tons an hour. I have just enough experience of pick and shovel work to be able to grasp what this means. When I am digging trenches in my garden, if I shift two tons of earth during the afternoon, I feel that I have earned my tea. But earth is tractable stuff compared with coal, and I don’t have to work kneeling down, a thousand feet underground, in suffocating heat and swallowing coal dust with every breath I take; nor do I have to walk a mile bent double before I begin. The miner’s job would be as much beyond my power as it would be to perform on a flying trapeze or to win the Grand National. I am not a manual laborer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pitch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner, the work would kill me in a few weeks.

--Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

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