[ExI] Slavery Now and in the Past (was: Health system, again)

[John Grigg]

Rafal wrote:
### First of all, you find absence of capitalism there. The government
will do whatever the power-wielders want it to do. If they can benefit
from slavery, government will support slavery. "The people", or at
least some of them, make up the government, so, just as you can't make
a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you can't wring honest laws out of a
government supported by nasty people.
>>>

The fictional nasty people of S.M. Stirling's Draka Empire alternate history
sf series is an example of this.  The Draka are in some ways the modern
equivalent of Sparta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination

The Draka Empire timeline as envisioned by the author:

http://users.accesscomm.ca/geis/draka/history.html

Taken from "Problems with the Draka timeline:
*6.* The Draka manage to develop technology and industry at a rapid pace,
despite having the worst sort of society for it. They industrialize despite
having cheap slave labor which can produce the products of early industry
more cheaply than early industry, and despite having the majority of their
population in such a state of low income that there is little internal
market for the products of industry (the Draka themselves will demand a lot
of goods, but mostly high-quality luxury stuff, not the basic products of
early industry). In addition they manage great technological development
despite the majority of their populace being kept in a delibertely
uneducated state (and brutally repressed at that), and the remainder of the
population emphasizing military prowess in the education system and in life.
I'm not saying that a slave society couldn't manage to tolerably keep up
technologically, but it is unlikely to become a world technological leader -
especially when starting essentially from scratch.

http://www.alternatehistory.com/gateway/analyses/Drakaproblems.html
A "realistic" timeline taking into consideration the above criticism:

http://www.alternatehistory.com/gateway/timelines/Alternatedraka.html

Will *our* United States, Europe and India fare better than the Alliance
did?  I hope so.

John Grigg
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