Yeah, sorry I wasn't clearer.
I seem to recall that both Imperial Rome and the ancient Greek city and island states had slaves, and that slaves had a certain amount of humanity directed at them. They didn't have any rights, were property, but were recognized as human beings by a great deal of the population, and were given a certain amount of decency by people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for slavery here, but I wonder if something like what existed in Imperial Rome or Greece might manifest itself in sections of the 3I.
Don't worry, I doubt anyone will mistake a discussion of the conditions of life for slaves in different times and places as an argument for slavery being put in place in the present day.
I certainly won't.
Treatment of slaves in the Roman Republic and Empire seems to have varied a lot. IIRC, under the old Roman law, the pater familias could kill slaves out of hand. (Also his own children.) Some slaves were probably treated very poorly, given the brutality of the uprisings that did occur. The Romans crucified large numbers of slave rebels during the Servile Wars. The latifundia were likely harsh places from what I have read, although I seem to recall that just about all of the contemporary criticisms of those had more to do with undermining the freeborn citizen farmer than with any concern for the slaves.
Christianity starts to change things (for the better, if you think slavery is bad) but the process takes centuries.
I am not arguing against the economic shifts being an important part of the gradual decline of slavery.
I don't think any single factor explains something that complex very well.
RE the earlier Greeks, Aristotle writes about slavery. IIRC, he considered it artificial but necessary. Someone has to do the grunt work. (Later recycled as the mud sill argument, under very different social conditions and with a color/caste component not present in Ancient Greece).
I think maybe Euripides raises some questions of justice and humanity in regard to slavery.
But my overall impression of Antiquity is that hardly anyone thought twice about slavery. It was just part of the order of things. Lose a war and you might be enslaved. At the risk of generalizing, most societies seem to have had a mechanism for freeing slaves. But some kind of client status wasn't uncommon for freedmen. The Romans had that for a long time.
Slavery in Antiquity was not generally about caste, color, or any of that.
Spartan Helots were a caste, sort of. But I am not sure that I would call them slaves. And serf confuses them with people living under very different social and economic conditions. Probably it is best to just call them helots.
If anyone has other ideas or information, please do share. I hope I do not seem pedantic. This is an area of interest for me.