[customguy]

> To think that slavery, ancient or modern, is caused by relative wealth differentials reveals an abysmal ignorance of both history and human nature.

I claimed no such thing, you read way too much into your missing the point.

> if the Vikings (or whoever) caught you alone, or outnumbered and overpowered your hired guards

Wait, I thought it was just because "some people do evil things", nothing to do with relative power?

[rmunn]

I'm deliberately giving an illustration that shows that relative power throughout most of history had to do with physical strength and weapons, rather than money.

And if you didn't mean that slavery is caused by relative wealth differentials, then saying "... the people who treat them like slaves have even more. It's all about the relative difference between people who are alive today ..." was a very poor way of making your point. So what was your point that I missed, then?

[customguy]

That in this context, it's about the wealth that leads to "having economic power over the people around you". That is zero sum, and the general rise in absolute living standards is as relevant to that as a comment about apples is in a discussion about Apple.

[rmunn]

Ah. When that one commenter said "Wealth is having economic power over the people around you", I ignored him, because that's a ridiculous definition, not to be taken seriously. Any argument that arises out of that definition is inherently flawed, since one of its premises is false; it would be like saying "Since the moon is made of green cheese, therefore X". The definition of wealth that nearly everyone agrees with is, well, I'll just cite the opening line of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth because it's a pretty good summary: "Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions." Or, to put it in simpler terms, wealth is the stuff you have that you can use to satisfy your desires. Anyone trying to make it about economic power over people is trying to redefine the standard definition for his own purposes... and that's usually a big red flag warning you of a bad argument.

[customguy]

it is simply one meaning of the word, and you talking about something else instead a waste of time.