[mattmanser]

History completely disagrees with you though. The Roman empire. Biggest, most successful, longest lived empire that ever was? Built on slaves. The net benefit to them of using slaves vastly outweighs any downside that you can point to.

Almost all slave rebellions ended in failure, I'm aware of one example of success in the millenia of slaves, Haiti.

A friend of mine once said slaves became obsolete with the advent of harnessing fossil fuels. Before that, to get the raw power to do great things, it was all run on slaves.

Tragic, but I certainly believe it was true.

[mafribe]

   Almost all slave rebellions 
   ended in failure,

Interestingly most slave rebellions were not about the abolition of slavery as an institution but about flipping the slave/slaveholder role.

An interesting recent example of this phenomenon is the religion Rastafarianism where the notion of paradise is a state of affairs where whites are slaves to blacks.

   example of success in the millenia of 
   slaves, Haiti.

Success in the sense of formal liberation of slaves and abolition of slavery, yes, very much. Success in the sense of creating a viable society? Hmmm ...

[jl6]

> An interesting recent example of this phenomenon is the religion Rastafarianism where the notion of paradise is a state of affairs where whites are slaves to blacks.

Are you sure about that? Sounds like you might be stating the position of an extremist subset of Rastafarians.

[drieddust]

Exactly yet we believe unrest will bring revolution.