
Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists - gajju3588
http://aeon.co/magazine/society/what-roman-slave-owners-knew-about-managing-staff/
======
csallen
_> A comparison of the two is going to provoke, but similarities do exist. It
is an uncomfortable truth that both slave owners and corporations..._

It has always irked me that people are unable to differentiate between
_comparing_ two things and _equating_ two things. Despite being completely
different actions, it's commonly accepted to treat them the same. This leads
to all sorts of misconceptions and invalidates plenty of reasonable points.

It shouldn't be "provoking" or "uncomfortable" that _any_ two things share
some similarities, because _everything_ shares at least _some_ similarities
with every other thing. That doesn't mean other properties (e.g. the evils of
slavery) of those things automatically become transposable.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>That doesn't mean other properties (e.g. the evils of slavery) of those
things automatically become transposable.

And likewise, just because things aren't _exactly_ the same, doesn't mean that
don't share many properties.

You are playing word games and have failed to address any of the content.
Share owners, slave owners, the phrases differ by two letters. Western culture
is a direct descendant of Roman culture, it would be strange if there _weren
't_ large similarities, especially at the level of organizational
institutions. Why would you expect that the concept of people holding power
over other people through directing them on what to do would just vanish?

You would do better to point out the _actual_ differences than to fall back on
the claim that because a word is slightly different there _may_ be something
different between the two.

~~~
carsongross
_phrases differ by two letters_

Shit and salt differ by two letters as well. I don't see how that's relevant.

~~~
jsprogrammer
One would want to look at the etymological trees of the words 'slave' and
'share' to see if there are any intersections or common ancestors.

Unfortunately I don't know of any resources that have that capability. Do you?

~~~
TJSomething
Well, they don't. "Slave" comes from the Old Church Slavonic word for Slavs,
"Sloveninu," which is probably from the word "slovo," meaning speech, while
"share" ultimately comes from the Proto Indo-European root "skar-," meaning to
cut.

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exratione
History is largely outright violence and violent exploitation, and the early
growth in complexity in the ancient world is marked by the move from the
former to the latter. Primitive states massacred their enemies, their leaders
unable to apply force in any more sophisticated fashion. It required more
complex states to produce the ability to effectively enslave defeated foes in
large numbers instead, but once that was achieved states capable of it thrived
at the expensive of others.

There is little to chose from between Roman slavery and Medieval serfdom.
Long-term colonial economic exploitation had many of the same aspects even
where it wasn't outright slavery. The institution of slavery in its broadest
sense has proven to be very resilient. It is probably too soon to say whether
its comparative absence for a few centuries is a passing thing, or whether it
is in fact the symptom of another systematic shift in the sophistication of
states. If the latter, then the introduction of modern systems of banking has
an interesting parallel course in history. Consider all of the associated
means for better extracting wealth from populations without provoking
rebellion.

One might put forward an argument that suggests these advances make it more
practical for the elite to comparatively peacefully farm the local population
rather than farming other populations by making and enslaving enemies. Thus
more of the elites do this.

All of which still leaves us with a very long to go yet in order to become a
moral species. I don't see it happening without fundamental engineered changes
to human nature, and that isn't a near term thing. It is worth remembering
that a thin line indeed separates present elites in so-called civilized
regions from those who in the past massacred and enslaved. If today's leaders
found advantage in it, they would do it.

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vacri
_Did Julius Caesar take his legions off-site to get them to buy-in to his
invasion of Gaul? Successful leaders had to stand out from the crowd and use
their superior skills to inspire, cajole and sometimes force people to do what
was necessary._

So JC in the military behaved a lot like... officers in the modern military.
They don't fraternise with the enlisted folk, and are all about leadership. In
fact, they do _less_ bribing to get the common soldier to do what they want
than back in JC's time. Legionnaires were routinely offered loot and land in
return for service; it wasn't just "hey, that guy has a striking profile and a
commanding demeanour!".

The article has quite a romanticised view of Roman slavery - for example, the
treatment of slaves in the article is all about household servants. It doesn't
really discuss the treatment of slaves in the fields or in the mines, which
was pretty brutal.

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calibraxis
Knowing some authors, I suspect this author didn't write: "Roman slaveowners
were the first management theorists." Editors frequently write such things;
and that statement sounds extremely unlikely. (Otherwise, I enjoyed this
article.)

~~~
duaneb
Yea, especially when some of our earliest texts are of managers. More accurate
might be "earliest civilization in which we can find a wide breadth of insight
into justification, rationale, and advice for managing a labor force. What
have we learned since then?"

EDIT: Hell, one of the earliest hallmarks of "civilization" is social
stratification. I'm betting people have been theorizing about how to use human
labor (subjugated or otherwise compelled) far before the written word came
about.

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PhantomGremlin
I haven't seen any comments yet on the merits of a company having employees vs
outsourcing:

    
    
       And just as a household needed slaves,
       so companies need staff. Permanent employees,
       like slaves, are far more desirable than
       outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought
       external contractors could never be relied on
       like members of the primary social group.

------
Mikeb85
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

~~~
amelius
One can also apply that backwards: if there were computers back in that time,
one can be sure we would have had web-apps and APIs for dispatching slaves.

Unfortunately, we have never come up with a moral code for programmers, like
the Hippocratic oath which exists for MDs. And of course, a moral code for
managers would be nice to have too.

~~~
TJSomething
The National Soceity of Professional Engineers has a code of ethics I had to
learn in school:

1\. Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

2\. Perform services only in areas of their competence.

3\. Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.

4\. Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.

5\. Avoid deceptive acts.

6\. Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as
to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.

However, this is less applicable, because we rarely do anything that can
directly kill people on accident.

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littletimmy
The comparison between slaves of old and the wage slaves of today is a good
one. Regardless of the shiny veneer of amenity-laden offices and endless
vacation time, the fact remains that most people do a job so that they don't
starve to death. That is not free work, that is wage slavery.

~~~
Jimmy
Your thesis seems to be "If (if you don't do X, then you starve to death),
then X is slavery", but I don't think that's true. Think of small hunter-
gatherer groups that lived before the advent of agriculture. If they didn't go
out and find food, they would die. But it doesn't seem right to say they were
slaves.

~~~
littletimmy
Good point. But in the case of the hunter-gatherers a person is not working
_for_ someone else who will then provide him sustenance. That is not the case
with an office worker.

I agree with you in that the topic is more complex than I initially made it
seem. In the case of the office worker, hopefully the worker produces
something of which then the capital owner takes some and leaves the rest to
the office worker. That seems better than slavery, but only marginally. It
actually sounds more like indetured sevitude in a feudal system (i.e. plant my
land, we split the crop). We could debate whether that's slavery or not.

~~~
sliverstorm
You still have the option of working for yourself to provide your own
sustenance. It's called farming.

Maybe our ancestors were foolish to give it up- maybe it's the idyllic
lifestyle- but the fact is people voluntarily left it behind.

What are you really advocating? Post-scarcity?

~~~
littletimmy
Ah, that's a good argument. It _used_ to be that you had the option of
farming. Back in the old days where all land was not somebody's, you could go
into the wilderness and stake out a piece of land to live off like a
homestead.

This is no longer an option. Where are such pieces of land that I can go and
cultivate?

I'm an advocate of basic income. Or negative income tax if you want to call it
that.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's been a long, long time since there was an abundance of completely free
arable land that no-one had laid claim to. You aren't talking about "the old
days", you're talking about the prehistoric days when there were few humans.

Saying "farming isn't an option because you can't get land for free" is, IMO,
a bit of silly argument. Arable land is (just like everything else) a scarce
resource in a heavily populated world; it's not by someone's evil machinations
that you can't freely have as much of it as you please. That's not slavery,
that's competition for scarce resources.

If you did want to farm, it's (very roughly) $1k/acre in many places, and you
only need a couple acres to feed yourself.

~~~
ninguem2
You could still do it in the 19th century you didn't have a problem with
killing the natives.

~~~
sliverstorm
If killing people to take their land is valid, then by golly you can still do
it in the 21st century.

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walterbell
Article would have benefited from a discussion of transient/nomadic labor,
still used in modern times, e.g. [http://twc2.org.sg](http://twc2.org.sg)

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allochthon
Am I the only one to cringe at the attitude of the author?

~~~
calibraxis
One of my hats is manager, and I find it amusingly honest. My job is to
command, and they obey. Buying someone (chattel slavery) is worse than renting
them (wage slavery), but it's a matter of degree.

Ok, I admittedly expend serious effort at inverting my authority... which is
hilariously undermined by the devs I manage, because they're trained to be
obedient specialist cogs and it's like pulling teeth to get them to act
independently outside a narrow range. So there's pressures towards
authoritarianism. But I don't manage only devs (and I'm supporting non-devs to
become devs), so it's not all bad.

~~~
fsk
There are some differences between being a chattel slave and a wage slave.

If you have a chattel slave, you won't waste money investing in teaching them
new skills.

If you have a wage slave, why would you invest in teaching someone a new
skill? After they master the skill, you now have to pay them market rate for
that skill (or they'll leave). So why not just pay market rate from the
beginning rather than investing in training someone?

~~~
Gifford
A slave master is highly motivated to invest in a slave's skills, because the
master extracts the profit of that investment.

~~~
nandemo
That's what gp comment is saying. Rewriting it for clarity:

"If you have a chattel slave, investing in teaching them new skills is not a
waste of money".

------
brc
That's the sound of a long bow being drawn.

------
lkrubner
Every single sentence in this article is offensive, and the overall article is
also offensive. It also makes impossible generalizations such as this one:

"Most Romans, like Augustus, thought cruelty to slaves was shocking."

For a different perspective, I'd recommend some of Elaine Pagel's work on the
early Christian movement, in particular:

[http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Eve-Serpent-Politics-
Christianity...](http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Eve-Serpent-Politics-
Christianity/dp/0679722327/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1427669027&sr=8-10&keywords=elaine+pagels)

In "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity"
Pagel's makes clear that slaveowners could rape their female slaves. Some of
the early Christian leaders denounced this practice, and argued that slave
owners had no right to rape their female slaves. In this, the early Christians
represented a dramatic break with the culture of Rome. And this is also why
Nietzsche once referred to the early Christian movement as a slave revolt.

Unless you don't think that rape is cruel, it is accurate to say that
slaveowners believed in cruelty to slaves. From everything I've read, these
kinds of horrors were closer to the norm than the exception:

"Vedius Pollio, a rich Roman, once invited his friend the emperor Augustus to
dinner. The entertainment was interrupted when a slave broke a valuable
crystal cup. Trying to impress with his toughness, Vedius ordered the slave
boy be thrown to the huge moray eels in his fish pond."

And good god, let's not learn management techniques by studying dictators such
as this:

"But Augustus was not impressed. In fact, he was outraged at this novel form
of cruelty. He ordered Vedius to free the slave boy and told the other slaves
to bring all the crystal cups they could find and smash them in their master’s
presence. He then told Vedius to fill in the fish pond and get rid of the
moray eels."

This whole bit somehow succeeds at being innocent, stupid, shocking,
deplorable, wrong and offensive all at once:

"Most Romans, like Augustus, thought cruelty to slaves was shocking. They
understood that slaves could not simply be terrified into being good at their
job."

Here's a cold hard fact: if you are a slave owner, then you are cruel. It is a
simple matter of definition: to be a slave owner means that if someone does
what they wish with their life, you are prepared to beat them, torture them,
imprison them, or even kill them, to be sure they do not have the freedom to
do what they want to do with their life.

Any article that suggests that it is possible to be a non-cruel slave owner is
an article that does not understand what slavery is.

~~~
rewqfdsa
> Every single sentence in this article is offensive, and the overall article
> is also offensive.

While I can't say "this article is not offensive", since "offensive" is
subjective, I can say that if articles like this one violate your delicate
sensibilities, you are not a person who can particulate in a free exchange of
ideas. If everyone were like you, we would make no intellectual society at
all.

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gnu8
Whatever these morons have done to the links on their web sites has broken
command-click to open a link in a new tab. They need to buy some better web
development slaves.

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notastartup

        corporations want to extract the maximum possible value 
        from their human assets, without exhausting them or 
        provoking rebellion or escape
    

some continuously turnover people. their business relies on ripping people off
and exhausting them.

