Slavery was not "necessary" for human development, did not "work" as a basis for "civilization", was not "efficient", and was not "revolutionary" as already explained. Rejecting your bizarre cultural relativist arguments to the contrary is not a "war path".

Sorry, they didn't have Universities back 10,000 years ago. No one taught them of better alternatives. What they did for a million years was to eat that guy; some genius figured out that maybe keeping him alive and making him work is a better choice. If they didn't make that advance back then, you and I would likely had been dinner.

Has it ever occurred to you that some people are not capable of the rational thought required to create, live in and sustain the world you're talking about? Take a look at the majority of people in this country - are they capable of rational, logical, unemotional thought, even some of the time? And its even worse in most of the rest of the world.

Ewv, you seem to be on some kind of a war path. No one is advocating slavery here, so please relax. I am simply acknowledging the fact that slavery was an economic and cultural system that was necessary for human development. Assuming that homo sapiens began from an animal existence, where a fallen enemy is eaten, as most carnivores do, eventual technological progress made slavery feasible and it was a revolution in human development. Most animals remain at low societal development, being able to hunt or graze just enough food to feed themselves and some of their young. Ants have a very high level of societal development, as exemplified by the fact that some of them have slaves. Of course, eventually, slavery became ineffective and was replaced by other systems, although we sometimes fall back to it. Some modern humanoids fall back even further, by eating their fallen enemies. The vilification of a stage of human development is ridiculous; do you vilify chimpanzees who sometimes eat their enemies? Who knows, one day they may learn to vote and create governments - should their cannibalistic stage be castigated?

Calling slavery an achievement is disgusting. Primitive brute force among savages was never "revolutionary".

Slavery versus each person finding his own food is logically a false alternative. It leaves out division of labor, even if only within a family or small group with minimal trade in a primitive "economy",

I have read history. The existence of slavery does not make it the base of civilization.

Injustice is not a "part of humanity", somehow inherent. It is the result of irrationalism. Better ideas and rational thinking are a matter of choice. How soon current primitive conditions take to change depends on the spread of the right ideas and the choice to accept them by enough people to stomp out those primitives who don't respect the rights of individuals.

If you know anything about Ayn Rand you know why slavery does not work. It is not subjective or a matter of "efficiency", let alone "may be" only "inefficient".

It did not "work" for 90% of human existence and technology was not required to make anything else feasible. Humanity remained in stagnation for millennia under primitive beliefs and tribalism. Freedom and the recognition of rational thought made tecnhology possible, not the other way around.

The Constitution already prohibited cruel and unusual punishment. There was never any question of putting people into slavery as punishment for a crime. They are two different concepts.

Slavery and involuntary servitude can only be supported by ignoring what the Constitution is for. There is no Constitutional authority for enslaving people. The thirteenth amendment nailed that down with a clear prohibition once they didn't have to politically contend with the slave interests.

That isn't to say that it can't be or hasn't been ignored, for example, with military conscription. But that is in spite of the Constitution by those who don't care what it was for, not in accordance with it.

The fundamental unifying issue was freedom of the individual. It came with their Enlightenment background and they didn't have to argue about it. The Declaration called it self-evident. That is why most of the debate was about how to keep the government under control. When they were doing that that they were already independent of England.

It's science fiction, not a situation. Robots do what they are programmed to do in accordance with programmed decision criteria.

Technologically and socially, slavery was revolutionary. When a single human could grow, collect or hunt food to feed only one person (basically, animal-like existence), the captured tribes make efficient dinners and are not worth keeping alive. When the technology and the social structure evolved that a single being could feed more than himself, it made slavery an economically viable alternative (to being eaten). How's that not an achievement?

Suggest you read history rather than wishing it were so.

We can make judgements as to how well slavery worked or not, or that other systems maybe more efficient. But you can't make (and support) a statement that slavery does not work. It worked for 90% of human existence, before other systems were developed and the technology to make them feasible.

There have also been, and continue to be, wife masters and husband slaves. That part of humanity is not about to change anytime soon.

If you thought monticello was interesting, then you should love the Thomas Jefferson Hour. I suggest going first to Itunes to see a list of podcasts with the main topic for a heading. Pick the topic on which you would like Jefferson's opinion.

If a federal or state judge were to impose slavery rather than prison as punishment for a crime, it would be constitutional, according to the explicit wording of the 13th Amendment. There are no laws presently that permit such a punishment, but that doesn't mean it is unconstitutional.

I agree actually. Perhaps it was that to reach the consensus needed to start a new country, the biggest unifying issue was just independence from England- leaving the lofty goals of individual freedom as secondary

What do you think about the IROBOT situation where we design smarter and smarter robots such that they think on their own and eventually seek to be free of human control ?

The bulk of slavery was brute physical labor; anything better was a function of the master, which could not be counted on. Those who worked for men like Jefferson were relatively better off, but Jefferson himself, as well as other abolitionists, sought to end it for good reason.

That was not an achievement. One was slavery for producing food and the other was slavery for the next meal. Who knows which came first in what parts of the world.

The founding fathers sought a proper government in principle to protect the rights of the individual. England was certainly on their minds as the latest example of what not to do, but they had positive principled goals far beyond that.

You don't have to read much to see that the whole process deteriorated. See Arthur Erkirch's The Decline of American Liberalism in particular. I remember the deterioration jumping out at me, though without the understanding I have now, in high school history where it all seemed to go down hill after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, with none of the history living up to the ideal we had been lead to expect. I kept waiting for the good part but it never came. Ayn Rand explained why and what is required to get back on the right track.

No, it isn't semantics. Borrowing money from someone who expects you to pay it back is a different concept than making someone a slave. A slave has no rights. When you borrow money you retain all your rights and agree to abide by property rights to repay the debt. A violation of the contract that could lead to court action is not the same concept as slavery.

Slavery has never worked as a social system, for the reason you just gave.

Punishment for a crime is not what is meant by slavery. A better example would be military conscription as involuntary servitude, but that was done in spite of the 13th amendment, not in accordance with it.