[thaumasiotes]

> Forcing someone to do community service, ugh. Its tough work, IMO, because you do what other people don't want to do, and you need to act socially or physical labor (I'm bad at both, and I'm clumsy). It is never intellectually challenging. People like him would've fared better with a community labor which is intellectually challenging, or just some administrative job at e.g. the tax dept. Which is boring, but at least not very socially demanding.

To get useful labor from a slave, you need to either give them an incentive to do good work, or you need to be able to tell the difference between good work and bad work. A job at the tax department fails that second criterion, and the fact that the labor is conceived of as a punishment rather than a job we want somebody to do prevents an incentive from being offered.