I’m curious as to why this was downvoted? China is definitely at the industrial level and there appears to be strong evidence for forced labor driving parts of the economy, which seems a relevant counter to the suggestion that there’s not an economic incentive to enslave groups in the industrialized world.
Perhaps extracting forced labor from an internal group rather than captured neighbors is a more important distinction to some people?
Although this may become true as automation becomes able to do more things more cheaply, China seems to be a very strong counterexample at our current/recent technological level. Prison slaves, Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle, Laogai or “reform through labor” programmes, etc. America’s prison labor system is also quite scary.
I’m curious as to why this was downvoted? China is definitely at the industrial level and there appears to be strong evidence for forced labor driving parts of the economy, which seems a relevant counter to the suggestion that there’s not an economic incentive to enslave groups in the industrialized world.
Perhaps extracting forced labor from an internal group rather than captured neighbors is a more important distinction to some people?