Modern Slavery

With as late a POD as possible, have slavery an acceptable institution in the vast majority of the world, including major "free" nations (like the US, or an analog).

Restrictions:
1) slavery shouldn't be race based.
2) technology should be similar to OTL.
3) don't have one slave owning society just conquer the world, there should be many nations, on par with OTL.

My guess is that, in a high tech society, most slaves would be in the service industry. Garbage men, cleaning ladies, maids, butlers, exotic dancers, prostitutes (legal or otherwise), etc. There would also likely be laws ensuring certain working conditions for slaves, mainly because, without, technological progress would be slowed.

Given your restriction the only real professions left would be exotic dancers and prostitutes. In all other cases it would be far less expensive to simply pay someone wages. About the only thing that a person can be physically forced to do in a satisfactory manner fairly cheaply is to have sex. Even there, once you add the cost of health care, it becomes far less expensive, and certainly much less socially disruptive, to have some sort of legalized prostitution and/or voluntary concubinage.

The only time slavery works as a major form of labor is when you have a really extreme labor surplus and people will voluntarily work hard for no more than bare subsistence. Or you can have a sort of controlled genocide where you work people to death thru exhaustion, bad food and poor health care. The period of death can be from a few months to several years, this depending on the cost of the slave. Otherwise, the cost of making the slave work is alwas less than just paying him.

Slavery and high technology, which you require, are almost absolutely antithetical. Technology consists almost entirely of one form or another of labor saving device. Why would any society with slavery put almost their entire impetus of effort into devices to save labor?

hmm... maybe you could extend the ancient practice of debt slavery into the modern world? People who default on debts serve a period of slavery to pay it off? That'd put a new spin on bankruptcy....

David Howery said:

hmm... maybe you could extend the ancient practice of debt slavery into the modern world? People who default on debts serve a period of slavery to pay it off? That'd put a new spin on bankruptcy....

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Chain gangs and the like aren't hugely different from slavery

Wombat said:

Chain gangs and the like aren't hugely different from slavery

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I can't buy a chain gang member and beat him/her if he/she refuses an order.

Debt was one of the more common ways a freeman could become a slave. Far more common, however, was to take a child, usually a daughter.

Debt slavery in the ancient world had a limit, usually 4-6 years. OTOH, if the debt was paid by giving over a child, that child didn't ever become free, IIRC.

Status Symbols

If you have the Gov'ts in the 1700's start taxing Slaves as "Real" property you can get more and more slaves freed [cheaper to free them than pay tax]

this leads to the very rich having Slave servants [Butler, Maid, Valets, Chuaffer] as status symbols, but with 99.9% of the former slaves freed the abolishinists lose most of their reason for exsisting, so slavery is never outlawed.