Constrained Bliss Point

The economics of slavery is an incredibly interesting topic to me. More accurately, what I imagine “the economics of slavery” entails is very interesting, as I have only begun studying it, and only at an amateur level.

And what got me started thinking about the economics of slavery? Robots. Specifically the movie “I, Robot”. I’m a fan of imagining in vivid detail post-apocalyptic futures, and a robot revolution is up there with a Class 4 zombie outbreak. At the end of that movie, the overtones of Sonny freeing a generation of robot “slaves” got me thinking about the economic distinction between capital and labor (I was taking a class in intermediate macroeconomics at the time).

If we had an entire workforce of humanoid robots doing things that people usually do, what would this make the economy look like? Traditional economics would probably treat the robots as capital. But then your capital is kind of producing labor, and that is weird. The only other time that happens (that I can think of) is slavery.

I still think it’s insane that people used to own people. But, from a strictly analytical perspective, if people are owning people (and not just purchasing their labor from them), doesn’t it make sense to treat owned people as capital? There are similarities, like people tend to depreciate rather quickly if you don’t feed them and give them shelter. I read somewhere that slavery is the only time when capital and labor are equal.

I guess I’m still not convinced that there should be a tight delineation between capital and labor. Need to look into that in the future.