this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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I firmly believe that every single bronze age civilization was no less morally apprehensive than what we have today with capitalism and wage slavery. Ancient egypt is no better—the pharoahs were slavers who had a happy set of cattle at their disposal as far as im concerned, just like employers do today in capitalist nations. If you are employed and love your employer for giving you everything you need and no worries, live that life my friend, but you would be a slave. Egyptians didn't have that choice tho
you're stretching the term "slavery" beyond what is acceptable in the context of historical discussion.
The inequality is one of the core principles of society. And even if the society was magically equal, your freedom would end where other's freedom would start.
Your definition of slavery is also quite useless simply due to the fact that everyone is a slave by your logic, as everyone has some kind of social obligation they are ought to fullfill, be it for the money or otherwise.
Do we tho? Not having to work is a privilege. Without a job you'll most likely die a slow miserable death if you don't have that privilege, as we no longer raise our food, collect our drinking water, or build our own houses. Not to mention, we still have to pay taxes.
By the way, according to what i heard, working on a pyramid construction was exactly the last case — a form of tax payment.
Anyway, considering that workers were well fed, receiving meat, beer and bread in greater quantities than any peasant of the day would dream of, as well as they had medical care for their conscription period, one might hypothesize that most people of the time would've jumped on an opportunity like that.
Your argument is neither constructive, nor it helps to represent reality better, let alone do so historically correct.
Thank you for this, this is a much better way of outlining what bothers me about the weird pyramid-builder's rights movement that seems to always crop up in these posts.
You can make great arguments for better social welfare and support systems in today's world without trying to drag invented-ghosts out of the deep-past from ages that are so far removed from modern values and standards that it may as well be another planet.
I guess the Pharaohs actually did achieve some form of immortality if those giant stacks of rock get people on the internet 4000 years to confront their own poorly-framed social arguments.
i no longer firmly believe it
We. Don't. Know.
I don't disagree with your ideas abstractly and broadly but I am more focused on material outcomes and the current world, and my knowledge of history and pre-history is enough to know that I don't know a lot, which means others probably know even less, so I reject deep-history societal comparisons for any purpose other than curiosity and scientific interest.
Humans have historically been slavers as leaders. I demand the necessary incredible evidence to believe the pharoahs were truly benevolent. I am okay with us not knowing for certain if they were horrible god-emperor slaver tyrants or just your run of the mill god-emperor slaver tyrants, but I demand the necessary evidence that they werent slaver tyrants. Humans are humans, no matter the time period, and human leaders are slavers historically
Who's saying that?
When did normal discourse become this binary and un-nuanced?
I require more evidence than we currently have to believe the pharoahs werent slavers is all. I firmly believe those farmers were enslaved, and equally those that built the pyramids were enslaved as well. I dont see any reason to believe they had anything we would consider today not slavery.
I woll grant you they might not thought of themselves as slaves, but employed people today with student debt or mortgages dont think theyre slaves either, but I firmly disagree as well on that front.
My definition of slavery is a big tent. We already have terms like chattel slavery to describe the specific kind of slavery that happened in the colonial period that continues to this day and still enslaves people in places around the world away from western eyes
It's a little late in the game to advocate for the rights of the pyramid builders. But you do you.
Im only looking back and history and seeing enslavement happening is all, just like people in the future will hopefully look back on today and be like "wow all those americans were enslaved and didn't even know it!" ya know? No doubt in my mind that the pharoahs wanted to make slavery look appealing as possible, all good employers incentivize hard work ethic, comraderie, overtime etc. Still enslavement imo if youre the bottom rung (the labor forcr)