Slave Markets

I have an unsightly little thought with which to almost end this year and portentous decade. It's occurred to me with increasing frequency over the past few months.

And it is this: is capitalism even possible (or, if capitalism is the only viable economic system for large-scale urbanized populations, is civilization even possible) without slavery?

For large economies, including capitalism, have never yet existed without slavery. Even some smaller scale tribal economies and societies used slavery, if they did not absolutely depend on it.

But even today, with all the mechanization--including actual robot labor--that you might think would end this need--there is still slavery, and much of our economic life apparently depends on it. This is often characterized as child labor, but children and other more or less helpless groups are only among those exploited to such an extent that the term "slave" functionally applies.

All this of course raises moral questions, when we unknowingly (yet, how else are they so cheap?) buy clothes and other products made by slaves. But the dirtiest big secret may be that a world organized like ours, with the numbers of humans involved, cannot function as it does without slavery. And just what does that say about our pretensions and evasions. As well as our future.