Green Grace's Claim that the People of Meereen weren't always Slavers - Truth or a Lie?

[Craving Peaches]

It is possible to have artistic and cultural achievements without slavery.

If the argument is that these don't count because at some point in the past people there owned slaves or had contact with people who owned slaves, I think that's a bit tenuous to be honest. The works were created without slavery.

If the argument is that you can't have these things without some sort of underclass, that's different. Serfs are not slaves. Working class people are not slaves etc.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Craving Peaches said:

It is possible to have artistic and cultural achievements without slavery.

If the argument is that these don't count because at some point in the past people there owned slaves or had contact with people who owned slaves, I think that's a bit tenuous to be honest. The works were created without slavery.

If the argument is that you can't have these things without some sort of underclass, that's different. Serfs are not slaves. Working class people are not slaves etc.

And one can have slave societies that are a cultural desert, like Sparta.

I can’t see that Slavers Bay generates anything of cultural value.  “Culture” is watching as children and dwarves get torn torn to pieces.

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I can’t see that Slavers Bay generates anything of cultural value.  “Culture” is watching as children and dwarves get torn torn to pieces.

It's not even like they use slaves to create other goods that they then export, like with the Free Cities that use slaves. The slaves are the exports. Their cultural achievements look to consist of  slaving and the fighting pits.

[frenin]

Slavery apologism is the last thing i expected to read this day on this forum. Not going down that rabbit hole.

[Hrulj]

16 hours ago, SeanF said:

Okay.  So on the one hand, we have mass deportations , civil war, slave revolts, torture, rape, and impoverishment of the free poor.

On the other, we get some works of poetry and philosophy written by slave owners.

There’s a lot of literature that suggests slavery retards economic progress.  The profits of slavery go into conspicuous consumption by the elite, who have no incentive to invent things or create new ways of working, because they have captive labourers.

Eventually the costs of slavery outweigh the benefits, yes. Which is a point I also made previously. 

Elite has to have leisure if it is to create. Poetry is good but nothing compared to math. Look up any mathematician, from Pythagoras to Isaac Newton and others and tell me how much hard physical labor did they get done. Heck, tell me what percentage of modern mathematicians, physicists, chemists, doctors and others do hardcore physical labor. 

[Jaenara Belarys]

25 minutes ago, Hrulj said:

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton did not, to my knowledge have slaves. Servants, possibly, but not slaves. 

26 minutes ago, Hrulj said:

Heck, tell me what percentage of modern mathematicians, physicists, chemists, doctors and others do hardcore physical labor. 

Probably not as many, because we have machines and they can pay other people to do it for them. 

 

If your argument was that society would have a harder time truly developing without any lower class, I would most likely agree. Societies, as @SeanF and @Craving Peaches have pointed out, can and does develop without slavery.