@alyx it was still the worst exemplar of slavery in recorded history, admittedly. most every culture has done it but there was very complex machinery regarding varying degrees of minimum expected treatment, people buying themselves out, etc, it was never good to be a slave anywhere but the bulk of the slave population was like, people who lost battles with that nation.

but.. yeah. it's frustrating to see shit like infowars talk half of the talk (repudiating big tech = correct and RMSpilled) but then they just use some other closed platform and its like you bitch you just replaced the known tyrant with someone else who doesn't have the juice to be the tyrant yet

@icedquinn
Regarding American slavery, the older I get, the less I think it's the worst example of slavery in human history. It's just that it's the most well documented practice of slavery we have.

There's too many examples in recent history of social phenomenon, of crimes or diseases that seemingly are at an all time peak in history, but in reality we only feel that's the case because we get way more information about these things happening that we would have even just 20 years ago. So I'm starting to think it's the same effect with American slavery.

We think Americans were absolutely awful because it was recent and everyone knows plenty about it, while the next example of slavery people are likely to think about is Egyptians building the pyramids, and how much do you think the average person actually knows about Ancient Egypt? I'm pretty sure it would be jack shit.

@alyx i think classical slavery was more of an indifference towards the slaves (they were tools) while southern chattel slavery had an explicit race component and this weird divine right to rule over all the negroes just because.

@alyx it also varies cause some societies they were mostly prisoners of war (the punishment for making someone have to invade your tribe) so the right to rule was established by literal might.

when you get in to slave breeding it starts to get a bit troubulesome.

i'm not entirely sure that serfdom or indentures are the worst thing but if i did bring them back for whatever reason it wouldn't be an inheritable trait.

@icedquinn
I'm not sure if the current consensus even still is that Egyptians used slaves to build the pyramids, but I know for certain they had families and it's not like those children were suddenly gonna be accepted in their upper classes. Don't think slave breeding was exclusive to Americans. In fact, I know there's a passage in the Old Testament that basically says: "if your master gives you a wife, and you make kids, you get to be a slave to your master forever".

@alyx it's not exclusively american but if someone starts a fight and loses and you keep them its

when capitalism gets involved everything goes to shit.

@icedquinn
The race and divine right components are not new. American South did it because it was in the Old Testament. And if it got written in the Old Testament, a couple of thousand of years ago, you better believe it was a common thing at that time and probably well before that.

@alyx i don't remember the part of the bible that allows most of that you can have indentures in christianity but there's a lot of rules.

@icedquinn
I think it's sometime after Moses. The divine right is the whole: "you are god's chosen people, now go to these other lands and conquer them, but take the virgin women for yourself, and also you're allowed to get slaves from countries surround you. You can't have slaves of your own people, cause you are superior, cause the whole god's chosen people thing". It also implies a bit of racism, considering Old Testament was all about the "these people are different than you, slaughter them", although yeah, racism as a concept didn't exist for millennia to come.