Slavery engenders a culture of self-righteous laziness and entitlement in the slave owners and cynicism and internalized oppression (a “chip on their shoulder”) in the slaves.

Both of these persist for many generations post slavery. We are still dealing with them in the form of everything from police violence to far right and far left performative extremist ideologies re-enacting the drama.

I disagree with the people who say slavery is responsible for our wealth. We would be much, much wealthier and far less dysfunctional as a culture had it never existed.

One of the more intriguing ideas I’ve run across is that total slavery abolition is a major contributing factor to the industrial revolution by pricing all labor and incentivizing automation.

I wonder if Egypt and Rome would have industrialized and the solar system would look like the world of The Expanse now had slavery been abolished in the ancient world.