Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane
In terms of character morality and traits which go along with them, there should probably be some way of representing slaveowners who have attitudes resembling "I'm feeding my slaves, that's like a wage, they're better off under my care, and would not be able to provide for themselves trying to work as free agents, and if I gave them money they would spend it irresponsibly" who were didn't work their slaves hard or hit them, and whose slaves in turn did no revolt because they were better compared to other potential owners. This is in a way, how parent/child attitudes sometimes work regarding unpaid labor.
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Honestly I suspect most slave owners are no worse than most employers. Maybe better - it's not like slaves can't take the starve option in the choice between work or starve too, they're just "lucky" enough to have somebody who thinks their labor is valuable enough to try to stop them.
The fact is that in a lot of societies the list of rights "free" wives have that slave concubines don't is pretty slim, and the only real alternative to slavery for male criminals or defeated enemies is death. Modern economies generate huge surpluses and allow amazing levels of labor mobility and yet poor women with no real skills or ex-convicts still often have to do things that are not a whole lot better than slavery.
I'm not sure slavery is objectively all that much worse a method of structuring social relationships than a lot of the systems we still use. Sure slavery with no controls on its worst abuses can be pretty horrible - but unregulated capitalism doesn't have a terrific record either, and domestic abuse is still a thing. We've just decided slavery is evil and so focus on those worst cases - it's maybe not so different from the demonization of capitalists/communists in that more recent split in economic models. A slave society probably doesn't *have* to be much more evil than a capitalist or communist one does.