Fossil fuel and the end of human chattel slavery
Because of fossil-fuel-powered technology, I don’t need slaves. Let me explain.
I am a bit OCD, and few things give me greater satisfaction than a clean house. I recently added to my housecleaning repertoire an absolutely amazing floor cleaner—and yes, for those who are “cleaning curious,” I will tell you about it. However, the point I want to make about this floor cleaner is that its very existence means that I don’t need slaves because I have reliable fossil fuel powering my home.
Doing anything takes energy. Since time immemorial, humans have relied upon other humans and animals to augment their own energy and to multiply their strength. In Stone Aged times, when tribes warred perpetually over resources that were scarce since they lacked the technology to augment them, one tribe would kill the other tribe’s warriors and then kidnap its women and children to add to the winning tribe’s own strength, which was also depleted by endless wars. The women were effectively slaves.
When humans became agrarian, the need for labor increased, especially as communities grew. Enslaving the losing side in a war was the norm across the world, in every nation, and among every tribe. The winners got relief from the crushing physical burdens of life and the losers bore those same burdens. (See, e.g., the Pyramids.)
With the end of feudalism, Europe gave up explicit chattel slavery but continued to have a subordinate labor class that often lived in conditions indistinguishable from slavery. Indeed, while slave owners with limited access to more slaves might have had an economic interest in seeing that the slaves were, at a minimum, fed, no one had an interest in keeping Europe’s laboring classes alive. Feudalism only ended because the Black Death wiped out so many people that the enslaved vassals finally had some leverage.
We all know that the driving moral force behind the abolition movement in the 18th century was the Great Awakening. This Christian religious movement forced people to recognize the inherent humanity of every individual, skin color notwithstanding. (It’s worth thinking about the fact that the irreligious left has reverted to seeing people superficially, without regard for that inherent and equal humanity.)
However, I contend that, without fossil fuel, that religious impetus to end slavery would have died abornin’. What made it possible was that people figured out how to harness hydrocarbon energy, first from coal and then from petroleum products. In farming and industry, humans, per unit of output, were by orders of magnitude less efficient and, over time, more expensive to maintain than a tractor or a crane.
This change took a bit longer to come to the domestic sphere—and this is where we get to housecleaning. Up until the post-war period, even middle-class people had servants working for them—and while the servants were paid, it was hard and poorly paid labor.
Amongst the most laborious tasks for any good housemaid was keeping the floors clean. Doing it well meant getting down on one’s hands and knees to scrub, especially if the woman of the house believed, as I do, that mops simply liquify and relocate dirt. Cleaning carpets required dragging the carpet outside, swinging them over a line, and beating them, perhaps a cathartic act but a physically exhausting one, as well.
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Today, I cleaned my entire kitchen floor in less than five minutes without exerting any meaningful energy at all. I did it thanks to the best labor-saving device I’ve had since I bought a good vacuum cleaner (I like Shark vacuums). And here comes my unpaid-for product promotion: If you have a passion, as I do, for having very clean hard floors, you will never find something better than the Tineco wet-vac floor cleaners.
My not-top-of-the-line model cost me $200 at Costco (it was on sale) and is a dream: It’s lightweight, easy to operate, self-cleaning, quiet, and incredibly good. For the first time ever, despite all my previous efforts, my grout has finally returned to its original color—and all, at the push of a button. To achieve lesser results in the past, I had a chance between expensive visits from teams of cleaning ladies or hours of hard work on my hands and knees. I don’t need a housemaid. I’ve got my fossil-fuel-powered Tineco.
Some may point out that my thesis collapses in the face of the slavery that’s still rife across the Muslim Middle East and Africa. However, as you may recall, I said that the Great Awakening was the moral impetus for change. All the fossil fuel in the world won’t end slavery unless the culture also changes. In the Muslim world and in tribal Africa, slavery is embedded in the culture, whether as a religious imperative or an unchanged tradition.
Notably, though, even these ancient cultures can change. In Muslim cultures up until about two decades ago, young boys (sometimes still toddlers) were bought or stolen to be jockeys in camel races. However, public pressure changed that culture. Now, the oil potentates who enslaved these boys (and yes, I see the irony of oil producers relying on slavery) happily drive their camels using the same computer controls that hobbyists use to drive remote-controlled toy cars:
Every one of those leftists demanding that we end fossil fuels is essentially clamoring for a return to chattel slavery. This is because, one way or another, humans will always seek labor-saving devices, and if they can’t do it via fossil-fuel-driven gadgets and machinery, they will do it using brute force against other humans.
The text on this 1909 advertisement sums it all up:
Dear Friend,
Just had my picture taken using my lovely new Hoover Electric Suction Sweeper and I’m just as happy as I can be.
It just real fun now to do my cleaning and it costs only a few cents a week.
The Electric Suction Sweeper Company will gladly give you a free demonstration. Drop them a card today at New Berlin, Ohio.
Very lovingly,
Gertrude.
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