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TaskForceCausality t1_iqyrdhm wrote

Slavery. The Romans integrated slavery in a way very alien to the modern understanding of the term. With slaves integrated into the social fabric of the Roman civilization and being a valuable commodity to boot , the pressure to invent technological labor saving advancements wasn’t there.

Using slaves to accomplish a task would always be more cost effective than using a machine , especially when the number of slaves one owned was a social signal to boot. Much like driving a Mercedes signals success in some cultures today , having a lot of educated and capable slaves equaled similar sentiments back then.

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AnaphoricReference t1_irdsvzo wrote

If supplying fuel for a labor-saving machine (for instance a sawmill) takes just as much or more slave labor as is saved by the machine (sawing), it is prefereable to just put the slaves directly to sawing instead of gathering fuel because it requires less oversight over the slaves.

In roman times the most efficient to move a large amount of fuel would have been a trireme with slaves at the oars and a very basic sail. In the 18th century the same would have been possible with a ship manned with just a handful of sailors. From this perspective the wind power revolution in the age of sail contributes to the preconditions for the industrial revolution.

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