Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists

<i>&gt; A comparison of the two is going to provoke, but similarities do exist. It is an uncomfortable truth that both slave owners and corporations...</i><p>It has always irked me that people are unable to differentiate between <i>comparing</i> two things and <i>equating</i> two things. Despite being completely different actions, it&#x27;s commonly accepted to treat them the same. This leads to all sorts of misconceptions and invalidates plenty of reasonable points.<p>It shouldn&#x27;t be &quot;provoking&quot; or &quot;uncomfortable&quot; that <i>any</i> two things share some similarities, because <i>everything</i> shares at least <i>some</i> similarities with every other thing. That doesn&#x27;t mean other properties (e.g. the evils of slavery) of those things automatically become transposable.

History is largely outright violence and violent exploitation, and the early growth in complexity in the ancient world is marked by the move from the former to the latter. Primitive states massacred their enemies, their leaders unable to apply force in any more sophisticated fashion. It required more complex states to produce the ability to effectively enslave defeated foes in large numbers instead, but once that was achieved states capable of it thrived at the expensive of others.<p>There is little to chose from between Roman slavery and Medieval serfdom. Long-term colonial economic exploitation had many of the same aspects even where it wasn&#x27;t outright slavery. The institution of slavery in its broadest sense has proven to be very resilient. It is probably too soon to say whether its comparative absence for a few centuries is a passing thing, or whether it is in fact the symptom of another systematic shift in the sophistication of states. If the latter, then the introduction of modern systems of banking has an interesting parallel course in history. Consider all of the associated means for better extracting wealth from populations without provoking rebellion.<p>One might put forward an argument that suggests these advances make it more practical for the elite to comparatively peacefully farm the local population rather than farming other populations by making and enslaving enemies. Thus more of the elites do this.<p>All of which still leaves us with a very long to go yet in order to become a moral species. I don&#x27;t see it happening without fundamental engineered changes to human nature, and that isn&#x27;t a near term thing. It is worth remembering that a thin line indeed separates present elites in so-called civilized regions from those who in the past massacred and enslaved. If today&#x27;s leaders found advantage in it, they would do it.

<i>Did Julius Caesar take his legions off-site to get them to buy-in to his invasion of Gaul? Successful leaders had to stand out from the crowd and use their superior skills to inspire, cajole and sometimes force people to do what was necessary.</i><p>So JC in the military behaved a lot like... officers in the modern military. They don&#x27;t fraternise with the enlisted folk, and are all about leadership. In fact, they do <i>less</i> bribing to get the common soldier to do what they want than back in JC&#x27;s time. Legionnaires were routinely offered loot and land in return for service; it wasn&#x27;t just &quot;hey, that guy has a striking profile and a commanding demeanour!&quot;.<p>The article has quite a romanticised view of Roman slavery - for example, the treatment of slaves in the article is all about household servants. It doesn&#x27;t really discuss the treatment of slaves in the fields or in the mines, which was pretty brutal.

Knowing some authors, I suspect this author didn&#x27;t write: &quot;Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists.&quot; Editors frequently write such things; and that statement sounds extremely unlikely. (Otherwise, I enjoyed this article.)

I haven&#x27;t seen any comments yet on the merits of a company having employees vs outsourcing:<p><pre><code> And just as a household needed slaves, so companies need staff. Permanent employees, like slaves, are far more desirable than outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought external contractors could never be relied on like members of the primary social group.</code></pre>

Plus ça change, plus c&#x27;est la même chose...

The comparison between slaves of old and the wage slaves of today is a good one. Regardless of the shiny veneer of amenity-laden offices and endless vacation time, the fact remains that most people do a job so that they don&#x27;t starve to death. That is not free work, that is wage slavery.

Article would have benefited from a discussion of transient&#x2F;nomadic labor, still used in modern times, e.g. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;twc2.org.sg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;twc2.org.sg</a>

Am I the only one to cringe at the attitude of the author?

That&#x27;s the sound of a long bow being drawn.

Every single sentence in this article is offensive, and the overall article is also offensive. It also makes impossible generalizations such as this one:<p>&quot;Most Romans, like Augustus, thought cruelty to slaves was shocking.&quot;<p>For a different perspective, I&#x27;d recommend some of Elaine Pagel&#x27;s work on the early Christian movement, in particular:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Adam-Eve-Serpent-Politics-Christianity&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0679722327&#x2F;ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1427669027&amp;sr=8-10&amp;keywords=elaine+pagels" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Adam-Eve-Serpent-Politics-Christianity...</a><p>In &quot;Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity&quot; Pagel&#x27;s makes clear that slaveowners could rape their female slaves. Some of the early Christian leaders denounced this practice, and argued that slave owners had no right to rape their female slaves. In this, the early Christians represented a dramatic break with the culture of Rome. And this is also why Nietzsche once referred to the early Christian movement as a slave revolt.<p>Unless you don&#x27;t think that rape is cruel, it is accurate to say that slaveowners believed in cruelty to slaves. From everything I&#x27;ve read, these kinds of horrors were closer to the norm than the exception:<p>&quot;Vedius Pollio, a rich Roman, once invited his friend the emperor Augustus to dinner. The entertainment was interrupted when a slave broke a valuable crystal cup. Trying to impress with his toughness, Vedius ordered the slave boy be thrown to the huge moray eels in his fish pond.&quot;<p>And good god, let&#x27;s not learn management techniques by studying dictators such as this:<p>&quot;But Augustus was not impressed. In fact, he was outraged at this novel form of cruelty. He ordered Vedius to free the slave boy and told the other slaves to bring all the crystal cups they could find and smash them in their master’s presence. He then told Vedius to fill in the fish pond and get rid of the moray eels.&quot;<p>This whole bit somehow succeeds at being innocent, stupid, shocking, deplorable, wrong and offensive all at once:<p>&quot;Most Romans, like Augustus, thought cruelty to slaves was shocking. They understood that slaves could not simply be terrified into being good at their job.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s a cold hard fact: if you are a slave owner, then you are cruel. It is a simple matter of definition: to be a slave owner means that if someone does what they wish with their life, you are prepared to beat them, torture them, imprison them, or even kill them, to be sure they do not have the freedom to do what they want to do with their life.<p>Any article that suggests that it is possible to be a non-cruel slave owner is an article that does not understand what slavery is.

Whatever these morons have done to the links on their web sites has broken command-click to open a link in a new tab. They need to buy some better web development slaves.

<p><pre><code> corporations want to extract the maximum possible value from their human assets, without exhausting them or provoking rebellion or escape </code></pre> some continuously turnover people. their business relies on ripping people off and exhausting them.