[sigmaxipi]

>if you lived at the right point in time and weren't a slave You've just excluded the majority of Athenians[1]. If you generalize "slave" to "bottom Nth percentile of the population, the conditions are much better now than they were before. While someone low on the social pyramid in ancient Greece probably had no chance of contacting someone like Plato, many more people in modern times would be able to write a letter (or email, tweet, forum post, etc) to someone famous and actually receive a response.

[1] "According to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) numbered 40,000, making with their families a total of 140,000 people in all. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens, numbered a further 70,000, whilst slaves were estimated at between 150,000 to 400,000.[7] Hence, approximately a tenth of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens#Geographical_...

[cafard]

Right, but there was some distinguished metics, e.g. Aristotle.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

The contentious question is: for every Aristotle in the top 10%, how many were in the bottom 90% that were denied that possible future by force?

[batista]

>The contentious question is: for every Aristotle in the top 10%, how many were in the bottom 90% that were denied that possible future by force?

And the even more contentious question is: how many are in the same place today? Lack of money when growing up and circumstance can be equally as brute as force to deny someone his "possible future" as anything else. How many readers does HN have that are San Francisco natives and how many that are, say, from Mississippi or Alabama combined?

With ~2 million people in jail, some million homeless and several tens of millions eating with coups and soul kitchens, one of basic differences now is that we have the luxury (hypocrisy?) to blame them instead of some institution like slavery.