So, today on here I have read a thread concerning the high density of slaves (relative to population) in certain older societies, and contrasting that to, as Buckminster Fuller called it, the "energy slaves" we have today in the form of our per-capita energy usage, having replaced human labor with energy-powered machine labor.
(Primarily fossil-fuel energy, which is a problem.)
Now I don't want to derail that thread in the service of my own point, so I'm going to start my own here.
Namely, I am going to take a moment to observe that the decline of slavery and the rise of the energy-powered machine roughly coincide in history, and that this is no coincidence.
And we should take this as a very pointed warning for the future.
Because humans do not, by and large, enjoy going gentle into that good night, and because one of the most blatant correlations in all history is that between per-capita energy usage and quality of life.
....well, then, we should expect certain other alternative energy sources to come back in a big way.
Yes, I'm talking about the return of slavery. Because the thing about slavery, you see, is that while it's nowhere near as efficient as industrial energy, it requires little complex infrastructure or technical knowledge, and can be practiced effectively on the small scale. All it actually *requires* is ethically-challenged human beings, a resource that has never been in short supply.
Now, myself, I don't really have to care all that much about this issue. I and my loved ones will be safely dead, and if there's an afterlife, I'll be looking up from some netherworld delivering sarcastic commentary.
(I'm gonna be a big hit down there, 'cause dead people are mostly old, and old people do love bitching about how their descendants fucked everything up by the numbers.)
So it's not like I have to worry about operationalizing the plan involving wearing a leather posing-pouch as I round people up at rebar-sword-point and force them to walk the treadmill powering my k8s cluster.
But those of you who have children and would prefer them not being slaves or slavers - both being _real_ shitty lifestyles - might consider taking a moment to be appropriately terrified, m'kay?
(Also, build fission plants.)
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The conclusion which is fairly easy to reach is that if (a) we fail to adequately manage the energy transition away from fossil fuels in a way that preserves per-capita energy usage and preferably also preserves the ongoing secular increase in per-capita energy usage; or (b) are big enough fools to succumb to degrowth ideology and assume that people will, in fact, be satisfied to replace it with a secular settling for less...