4 ms·

Welcome to the ancient world, where such things are common! Turns out the modern one made some sort of progress morally since then.

blfr 5y ago
Mao was starving the Chinese into the sixties, sixty years ago. Soviets maintained a massive system of forced labour into the fifties. So whatever moral progress modern world achieved it is pretty recent, and imho remains shaky, based largely on the fact that we're too wealthy thanks to tech to bother with more brutal forms forms of exploitation.
- lazide 5y ago
  looks at genocides, civil wars, etc. in the Middle East and Africa right now uh, maybe we just disrupted the market for slaves, so it isn’t so profitable it justifies the risk/backlash anymore (for all but a tiny subset anyway)? Which is good. Mass murder still seems to be on the menu though, unfortunately.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- theknocker 5y ago
  >I am a moron
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  That gets it slightly backwards. The decline of slavery has to do with the fact it kind of sucks as an economic system from a productivity and incentive standpoint. (The moral is a no, duh.) And that is before the economic effects of slaves as inferior to even free paupers, and overall efficiency. It literally incentivizes only working hard enough to not be punished and effort and investment of owners is into more slaves instead of improving productivity. Slavery is an economic trap of local maxima to the slaveholder. It is no coincidence that late abolishers are worse off than their neighbors who abolished earlier. Not bothering with slavery is what helped acquire technology to massively beat out the short term. In spite of the emphasis on lower per unit cost slavery also is terrible in an industrial context, especially in a war one. The gulags weren't closed from kindness but because they looked at the infastructure produced and saw how awful it was. Using it for war materiale you may as well not bother with any locks or posted guards and outright invite in any foreign spies and saboteurs you find because you have them all literally incentivized to work just good enough to make it appear initially good to inspection and then fail in practice. In all fairness to slavery it was the alternative to genocide historically. Yes, that previous sentence is horrifying on many levels. Genocide was the prior status quo and fights were over food supplies in the first place meaning displacement to a hostile undesirable wilderness or outright genocide were the common outcome for losers and being taken as a mate was "being lucky". Food was too expensive to keep non-working captives for anything less than a suitably huge ransom. Human sacrifice had a habit of appearing and then falling out of favor once slavery was instituted (seen well in early Chinese tombs). The implications of human tendencies towards rationalization to justify what they want are clear and disturbing.
kilroy123 5y ago
I'm convinced this is a massive step in humanity's evolution. While yes, there remains some underground slavery, and it is indeed terrible. The world uniting and deciding to end this terrible practice is a hugely positive step for our species.
ren_engineer 5y ago
how much "moral progress" is simply due to having choices due to technology? Pretty much every culture around the world in ancient times had some sort of moral explanation for why infanticide was allowed. Now that extra mouths to feed aren't an imminent threat of everybody dying, the practice is considered immoral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide we aren't genetically different from those people, we just happen to live in a time where we don't have to make as many tough choices
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  How does technology or lack therof explain 2000 crucifixions? I don't think anyone is claiming a genetic evolution. It has been a memetic evolution.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    By "explain" I hope no one hears "justify" (although someone will do it anyway): You see this with the Romans, too: they tell a city to surrender, it doesn't, the Romans conquer it and practice unspeakable brutality on whomever's left. So what's happening? They have very limited resources, you forced us to expend them, maybe lose some of our own soldiers, and waste a valuable campaigning season - ok, now you pay the price, and let this be a warning to the next city: if we tell you to surrender, you'd better surrender. What if the city does surrender? Are those people killed or sold into slavery anyway? I don't think historians bother recording those episodes.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      "What if the city does surrender? Are those people killed or sold into slavery anyway?" Typically, no. The attacker may leave the city entirely intact, or may place their own proxy government. They may take the elites of the city as prisoners, either as punishment or as insurance.
  - rfurmani 5y ago
    It's not quite so simple, since we are looking at single examples. Alexander was predated by leaders (Cyrus the Great) who ruled in a much more progressive gentle way. Recent history has shown major powers performing very cruelly (genocides under colonialism) and there's definitely at least minor world leaders who would want to be just as cruel. So the question becomes more of why was it effective and strategic to be cruel at that scale in the past but not in the present world, and I would attribute that to technology: better communication, travel, and interconnectedness of trade.
mr_toad 5y ago
The Ancients were amateurs when it came to slaughtering civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing

blfr 5y ago

Mao was starving the Chinese into the sixties, sixty years ago. Soviets maintained a massive system of forced labour into the fifties. So whatever moral progress modern world achieved it is pretty recent, and imho remains shaky, based largely on the fact that we're too wealthy thanks to tech to bother with more brutal forms forms of exploitation.

lazide 5y ago
looks at genocides, civil wars, etc. in the Middle East and Africa right now uh, maybe we just disrupted the market for slaves, so it isn’t so profitable it justifies the risk/backlash anymore (for all but a tiny subset anyway)? Which is good. Mass murder still seems to be on the menu though, unfortunately.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
theknocker 5y ago
>I am a moron
Nasrudith 5y ago
That gets it slightly backwards. The decline of slavery has to do with the fact it kind of sucks as an economic system from a productivity and incentive standpoint. (The moral is a no, duh.) And that is before the economic effects of slaves as inferior to even free paupers, and overall efficiency. It literally incentivizes only working hard enough to not be punished and effort and investment of owners is into more slaves instead of improving productivity. Slavery is an economic trap of local maxima to the slaveholder. It is no coincidence that late abolishers are worse off than their neighbors who abolished earlier. Not bothering with slavery is what helped acquire technology to massively beat out the short term. In spite of the emphasis on lower per unit cost slavery also is terrible in an industrial context, especially in a war one. The gulags weren't closed from kindness but because they looked at the infastructure produced and saw how awful it was. Using it for war materiale you may as well not bother with any locks or posted guards and outright invite in any foreign spies and saboteurs you find because you have them all literally incentivized to work just good enough to make it appear initially good to inspection and then fail in practice. In all fairness to slavery it was the alternative to genocide historically. Yes, that previous sentence is horrifying on many levels. Genocide was the prior status quo and fights were over food supplies in the first place meaning displacement to a hostile undesirable wilderness or outright genocide were the common outcome for losers and being taken as a mate was "being lucky". Food was too expensive to keep non-working captives for anything less than a suitably huge ransom. Human sacrifice had a habit of appearing and then falling out of favor once slavery was instituted (seen well in early Chinese tombs). The implications of human tendencies towards rationalization to justify what they want are clear and disturbing.

kilroy123 5y ago

I'm convinced this is a massive step in humanity's evolution. While yes, there remains some underground slavery, and it is indeed terrible. The world uniting and deciding to end this terrible practice is a hugely positive step for our species.

ren_engineer 5y ago

how much "moral progress" is simply due to having choices due to technology? Pretty much every culture around the world in ancient times had some sort of moral explanation for why infanticide was allowed. Now that extra mouths to feed aren't an imminent threat of everybody dying, the practice is considered immoral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide we aren't genetically different from those people, we just happen to live in a time where we don't have to make as many tough choices

s1artibartfast 5y ago
How does technology or lack therof explain 2000 crucifixions? I don't think anyone is claiming a genetic evolution. It has been a memetic evolution.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  By "explain" I hope no one hears "justify" (although someone will do it anyway): You see this with the Romans, too: they tell a city to surrender, it doesn't, the Romans conquer it and practice unspeakable brutality on whomever's left. So what's happening? They have very limited resources, you forced us to expend them, maybe lose some of our own soldiers, and waste a valuable campaigning season - ok, now you pay the price, and let this be a warning to the next city: if we tell you to surrender, you'd better surrender. What if the city does surrender? Are those people killed or sold into slavery anyway? I don't think historians bother recording those episodes.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "What if the city does surrender? Are those people killed or sold into slavery anyway?" Typically, no. The attacker may leave the city entirely intact, or may place their own proxy government. They may take the elites of the city as prisoners, either as punishment or as insurance.
- rfurmani 5y ago
  It's not quite so simple, since we are looking at single examples. Alexander was predated by leaders (Cyrus the Great) who ruled in a much more progressive gentle way. Recent history has shown major powers performing very cruelly (genocides under colonialism) and there's definitely at least minor world leaders who would want to be just as cruel. So the question becomes more of why was it effective and strategic to be cruel at that scale in the past but not in the present world, and I would attribute that to technology: better communication, travel, and interconnectedness of trade.

mr_toad 5y ago

The Ancients were amateurs when it came to slaughtering civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing