I still hold the (maybe naive) belief that the path from the slave empires of previous eras to today was a benign one. The many deficiencies, setbacks etc canno

I still hold the (maybe naive) belief that the path from the slave empires of previous eras to today was a benign one. The many deficiencies, setbacks etc cannot negate this relative ranking, even if (like Graeber and co might argue) we are conditioning on a particularly negative societal development some millennia ago. What is really disappointing is that today people have the illusion that somehow we have learned how to keep overbearing power concentration in check whereas it is manifestly not so. The informed and educated "middle class" that should know better (because it is its own existence that is at stake) is missing in action. [My take: A small fraction of it co-opted by the promise of joining the ruling elite, while the majority pushed down into the precariat] The result is that the same old monsters re-emerge, now in digital clothes.