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What alternative was there to slavery in the ancient world?

 
 
 
God forbid we be forced to uphold a system that benefits us, on the off chance that a situation where such an occasion arises!

That's totally like being forced to labor in a system from which you derive absolutely no benefit and quite a lot of harm!

Conscript armies are as obsolete as muskets. It isn't coming back.
 
Sarpedon said:
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Conscript armies are as obsolete as muskets. It isn't coming back.
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The US congress apparently disagrees with you, otherwise the Selective Service System would be eliminated rather than being funded. Mexico and Israel also disagrees with you - they maintain a conscript military. And there are probably other nations that conscript though I don't want to waste the time googling for them.

ETA:
O.K. I googled. Here's a link showing conscription status by nation worldwide:

http://chartsbin.com/view/1887

There are more than I thought.
 
And we all know that Congress has a knowledgeable, up to date, and realistic view of everything.

The fact that something is obsolete doesn't mean people don't still have it around. This would be clear to anyone who knows about military history. There are films, for example, of Chinese military units training with swords and spears in the early part of the 20th century, despite these weapons being obsolete for centuries. The gulf wars proved that a conscript army is no match for an army of trained specialists. Iraq's army was bigger than ours, and all conscripts, and utterly useless. Equipment and firepower are the deciding factors, and people professionally trained in their use vastly outperform conscripts. Even irregular guerillas these days are highly motivated volunteers, and routinely outperform unwilling conscripts. That underdeveloped countries still use it is no more significant than their use of out-of-date military equipment.

As far as Israel goes, they are a case where they are surrounded by hostile countries who's population exceeds their own by many times, and simultaneously occupies a country who's population is half its own. Bizarre cases lead to bizarre situations. Same applies to Switzerland and Mongolia.

Many countries use conscription as a way to control their population. Think of it as a 2 year-long brainwashing camp. This is especially true in Russia.
 
Sarpedon said:
And we all know that Congress has a knowledgeable, up to date, and realistic view of everything.

The fact that something is obsolete doesn't mean people don't still have it around. This would be clear to anyone who knows about military history. There are films, for example, of Chinese military units training with swords and spears in the early part of the 20th century, despite these weapons being obsolete for centuries. The gulf wars proved that a conscript army is no match for an army of trained specialists. Iraq's army was bigger than ours, and all conscripts, and utterly useless. Equipment and firepower are the deciding factors, and people professionally trained in their use vastly outperform conscripts. Even irregular guerillas these days are highly motivated volunteers, and routinely outperform unwilling conscripts. That underdeveloped countries still use it is no more significant than their use of out-of-date military equipment.

As far as Israel goes, they are a case where they are surrounded by hostile countries who's population exceeds their own by many times, and simultaneously occupies a country who's population is half its own. Bizarre cases lead to bizarre situations. Same applies to Switzerland and Mongolia.

Many countries use conscription as a way to control their population. Think of it as a 2 year-long brainwashing camp. This is especially true in Russia.
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There has been a lot of debate in the UK about conscription, since it was abandoned in the early 1960s; many on the right wing want to reintroduce it as a means to instil discipline and teach skills to young people, with the aim of reducing crime and unemployment.

The biggest opponents of conscription are the armed forces; the UK armed forces pride themselves on their professionalism, and have no desire to babysit a bunch of no hopers who would not have passed selection had they volunteered.

Conscription is very popular politically, but it is not valuable militarily for a modern armed force - it actually reduces their effectiveness, as resources are spent on managing large numbers of incompetent and/or unmotivated troops, instead of on improving the capabilities of a small number of well trained, well equipped, and highly motivated volunteers.

Indeed, there are reasons to suspect that the current US military could be more effective if it was smaller; But reducing the size of the armed forces would be politically difficult, and economically devastating, as the armed forces in the US play, to some extent, the role played by social welfare in the EU and other OECD nations.

The US doesn't need to activate conscription; it forces large numbers of unemployed young men to join up by economic, rather than legislative, means.
 
Sarpedon said:
And we all know that Congress has a knowledgeable, up to date, and realistic view of everything.

The fact that something is obsolete doesn't mean people don't still have it around. This would be clear to anyone who knows about military history. There are films, for example, of Chinese military units training with swords and spears in the early part of the 20th century, despite these weapons being obsolete for centuries. The gulf wars proved that a conscript army is no match for an army of trained specialists. Iraq's army was bigger than ours, and all conscripts, and utterly useless. Equipment and firepower are the deciding factors, and people professionally trained in their use vastly outperform conscripts. Even irregular guerillas these days are highly motivated volunteers, and routinely outperform unwilling conscripts. That underdeveloped countries still use it is no more significant than their use of out-of-date military equipment.

As far as Israel goes, they are a case where they are surrounded by hostile countries who's population exceeds their own by many times, and simultaneously occupies a country who's population is half its own. Bizarre cases lead to bizarre situations. Same applies to Switzerland and Mongolia.

Many countries use conscription as a way to control their population. Think of it as a 2 year-long brainwashing camp. This is especially true in Russia.
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One thing is necessary and that is limited opportunity for the young.

That is necessary to have a successful military without conscription.

If young people have choices fewer will choose the military making conscription necessary.
 
I never have been in the military and probably never will. I am over 40 and have a bad knee. The only way I'd go is if drafted and it would probably be only if we were at war with the whole world.

I admit I would be scared to join and go get shot at and shoot others.

I wish all peoples and nations the best, but think none of them are worth dying over.
 
The more interesting aspect of this question is what is the point of 'what if' questions, and do they even make sense?

What were the alternatives to slavery? I'd argue that there were none, because slavery is what actually did happen. It's unlikely that it's predominance throughout history was a conscious decision of anyone in particular, it was just the natural result of power dynamics in various societies.

It's like asking what were the alternatives to the nuclear family in the 20th century. There weren't really any because people were forced into conforming to that reality.
 
rousseau said:
The more interesting aspect of this question is what is the point of 'what if' questions, and do they even make sense?

What were the alternatives to slavery? I'd argue that there were none, because slavery is what actually did happen. It's unlikely that it's predominance throughout history was a conscious decision of anyone in particular, it was just the natural result of power dynamics in various societies.

It's like asking what were the alternatives to the nuclear family in the 20th century. There weren't really any because people were forced into conforming to that reality.
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I think you make a good point.

Look at somebody like Jefferson. Talking about unalienable rights and owning slaves.

Even though he in principle opposed it, and was highly intelligent and knew other options were available, his existence depended on it.

How could we expect lesser men to end the practice if they too benefited from it?

Once implemented it has a momentum of it's own.
 
untermensche said:
ronburgundy said:
For the kind of concentrated wealth that allowed some people to sit around and think about nature, philosophy, and science, thus leading to the Enlightenment, industrial revolution, and the foundations of modern constitutional democracies, and consumer cultures? Maybe, or at least something not far from slavery.
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Those are unintended consequences of creating wealth to establish a military.

But I don't see how anybody can say slavery or near slavery was necessary.
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I don't see how anyone can say that either, because it doesn't have any meaning, just as "slavery wasn't neccessary" has no meaning. Necessity is a type of relation between things. Thus, without specifying "for what?", either statement is like saying "Slavery was a cause." or "Slavery wasn't a cause." They mean nothing and cannot be true or false without a referent.

The fact that Enlightenment thinking was an unintended byproduct of wealth concentration is irrelevant to my point. Without that wealth concentration, it doesn't likely happen. So, anything that was critical to that wealth concentration was critical to the Enlightenment. A person is very limited in how much wealth they can acquire via their own labor alone. Thus, taking the fruits of others labor is critical to large accumulations of wealth. Either theft or slavery is how that happens.
 
the alternative was genocide - systematically executing all of your prisoners of war along with most of your criminals and debtors.
 
Really? That's the only alternative you can think of?
 
Sarpedon said:
Really? That's the only alternative you can think of?
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me? no. that's the only alternative that the entire human race has ever come up with. and trust me, the genocide alternative was tried and tested.

Some post-conquest sources report that at the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs sacrificed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. This number is considered by Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, to be an exaggeration. Hassig states "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[39] The higher estimate would average 14 sacrifices per minute during the four-day consecration. Four tables were arranged at the top so that the victims could be jettisoned down the sides of the temple.[40] Nonetheless, according to Codex Telleriano-Remensis, old Aztecs who talked with the missionaries told about a much lower figure for the reconsecration of the temple, approximately 4,000 victims in total.

Michael Harner, in his 1977 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, estimated that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. Victor Davis Hanson argues that a claim by Don Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is "more plausible
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Ahem: other alternatives: assimilation (quite common). overlordship (where one group simply rules the other, as in Norman England, Yuan China and many others, often leads to assimilation of one or the other group). Caste system. Coexistence with political power sharing: (eg. The Austrian Empire becoming the Dual Monarchy Austro-Hungarian Empire, The dual monarchy of upper and lower Egypt, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, England of Magna Carta, even the different Leagues of Ancient Greece)

Again, genocide, like slavery was quite common, but not the only alternative.
 
How about just being nice to people and just not killing or enslaving them at all?
 
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