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HISTORIAN: Slavery’s Impact Is STILL With Us | Luke Thomas Gets Political · Luke Thomas Gets Political (LTGP)

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  Like slavery is not at all unthinkable.
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  Unfree and and not just slavery. This is
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  one of the really important things I've
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  learned about it is slavery is not a yes
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  no thing. It's not a binary I'm free or
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  I'm not. It is a spectrum of unfreedom
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  that goes all the way from
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  >> I think you could view an NDA I think
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  you could view an NDA or a non-compete
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  clause as tiny little manifestations of
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  unfreedom in a labor market. And it's
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  not that hard to see how tiny little
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  manifestations of unfreedom can become
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  defining. And that's what it's not like
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  shadow slavery, you know, this idea of a
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  person as property came into being fully
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  formed one day. There was a history to
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  that. There was a history to that in
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  many different times and places. And we
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  can watch it happen. And when we have
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  that perspective on it, I think
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  it makes sense to study slavery as a
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  broad and diverse phenomenon that that
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  slavery can be many different things. It
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  can look very different from place to
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  place and time to time. Like it it can
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  be, for lack of a better term, it can be
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  worse. There's no good slavery, but
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  there are definitely worse ones, you
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  know, like they if you were a mindslave
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  in the Roman Empire, your your life
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  expectancy was going to be measured in
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  months, maybe a year or two, right? And
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  they baked that in. They baked that into
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  the way they did business. They would
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  buy a batch of slaves and think, "We can
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  get six months out of these guys. We can
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  get a year out of them. We can get two
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  years out of them." And that was their
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  calculus.
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  And is that really really at a
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  fundamental level all that much
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  different than looking at a spreadsheet
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  and thinking how little can I pay these
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  people before they quit? How how much
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  can I squeeze these people? How much
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  work can I get out of them? How much can
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  I slash their benefits? And the thing
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  that slavery gives us if we're try if
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  we're looking at the vast world of
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  economic history, business, work, like
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  hard topics like these are like this is
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  not like soft like humanity stuff here.
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  This is social science. Like if we're
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  looking at those power is inseparable
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  from labor. Power is inseparable from
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  work. and slavery, studying it, what it
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  tells us is just how inseparable those
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  two things