Paul S Person wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:24:04 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D|Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:21:35 -0000 (UTC), James Nicoll wrote:
Five Classic SF Tales of the Nanny State Gone Mad!
Will we allow the intolerable tyranny of rules and regulations to
get in the way of progress (and profit)?!
I remember an economic argument about the use of animals to power
preindustrial machines (carts, mills, ploughs etc), in that it was
cheaper to run them to death and buy new ones, than to expend cost and
effort to give them longer, more comfortable lives.
Over here in reality, livestock was often too expensive not to care
for. Also, given proper care, it replaces itsel, so when it dies you
have a younger one you already own. Animal husbandry is a very ancient
science ("science" here being used in the sense it is by, say, Plato.
Carpentry was another.)
The same applied to human labour (e.g. slavery, general low-wage
labour without union/legal protections) as well.
IIRC, even Marx (in /Das Kapital/, as printed in the collection known
as the Great Books of the Western World [1] asserted that slaves were
treated reasonably (thus, those doing the heavy labor often ate better
than their supervisors, because they needed to)
Was he talking about the classical world? It might be true there, butYes, he was talking about the classical world.
not in the Americas. Caribbean slaves didn't have enough children to >replace the dead, though things were somewhat better elsewhere.
Slaves who were gladiators were fed a diet high in meat and garlic,
which latter was supposed to confer strength.
, except those miningIndeed
silver or gold, which were indeed treated deplorably because
everything they dug out was literally wealth for their owner.
Also because troublesome slaves were sent to the mines to die.
Engels was writing /after/ the start of the factories. Things had
[1] I put it this way because appears that this is part one of (IIRC)
three. But I am no expert on this topic.
And down to the start of the factories, most owners/lords/bosses knew
that they had to pay/leave enough for the workers to raise a family
and so replace themselves. [2]
Engels in "The condition of the working class in England" disagreed.
A few clever chaps like Robert Owen understood, but others simply drew--
on the seemingly endless supply of displaced agricultural workers as
they were made redundant or impoverished by enclosure of common land.
That said, he also documented the changes to the conditions you list.
Perhaps the problem was that the factories produced too much wealth
too quickly, so that it was like having a gold mine.
[2] Think of Ford's vision: a mass-produced car tha even his employees
could afford one. But if they could afford a car, they could also
afford to raise a family and so replace themselves.
The other advantage of good wages was efficiency. Keeping a worker for >twenty years meant far higher productivity that hiring forty workers
over the same time to do the same job. Ford shocked the business world
when he introduced a $5 per day wage in 1914. It proved good for business.
In some ways a more successful Robert Owen, not distracted by the
latter's utopianism and spiritualism.
In Rome, I understand that slaves were fairly expensive, and given
a certain amount of care and maintenance - perhaps on the level of
a horse.
I have read that the Caribbean and South America, African slaves
were primarily used in sugar plantations, and tended
to have short lives. Brazil alone had 4.8 million imported.
In the US south, 'only' about 390k slaves arrived by direct import,
but there were about 4 million slaves by 1860. As brutal as
American slavery was, it was more survivable than that in Latin
America.
On 8/31/2026 11:49 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Pigs are interesting because there are many kinds and they run the
whole range.
I ate bacon this morning with my waffle.
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/31/2026 11:49 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Pigs are interesting because there are many kinds and they run the
whole range.
I ate bacon this morning with my waffle.
It was likely from a giant 500 lb pig bred for high volume meat
production. In China they tend to use smaller (but still huge) pigs >commercially.
Bacon from smaller pigs is different. And bacon from wild pigs is way
more different. And there are tiny pigs for apartment use in Hong Kong.
They are all wonderful!
Pigs are interesting and friendly animals, and they are clearly intelligent
and social much in the same way dogs are. I feel bad eating them, but
they are so delicious I do it anyway.
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/31/2026 11:49 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Pigs are interesting because there are many kinds and they run the
whole range.
I ate bacon this morning with my waffle.
It was likely from a giant 500 lb pig bred for high volume meat
production. In China they tend to use smaller (but still huge) pigs commercially.
Bacon from smaller pigs is different. And bacon from wild pigs is way
more different. And there are tiny pigs for apartment use in Hong Kong.
They are all wonderful!
Pigs are interesting and friendly animals, and they are clearly intelligent and social much in the same way dogs are. I feel bad eating them, but
they are so delicious I do it anyway.
Sadly you cannot do the plant tour in Smithfield, VA any more and see them making bacon and ham. Smithfield Packing doesn't even make a real Virginia ham any more, although Edwards down the road from them do.
--scott
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