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Costanza comments on What is Evil about creating House Elves? - Less Wrong
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Aristotle thought that some people were naturally slaves, and it's hard to overestimate the historical importance of Aristotle on philosophy. See http://www.suite101.com/content/aristotle-on-slavery--some-people-are-slaves-by-nature-a252374
More recently, George Orwell wrote about the waiters in the Parisian restaurant where he was a dishwasher:
...never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, ‘What an overfed lout’; he is thinking, ‘One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.’ He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day — they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafes. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.
See http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79d/chapter14.html
Lots of people get real pleasure out of pleasing authority. Not out of being abused by authority, but rather by getting little pats on the head. Elves are not far from human at all in that way.
Dogs love to be praised by master, and that's why we love them. Dogs were bred by humans from wolves to be obedient and submissive, if not sentient.
EDIT/P.S. Slightly off-topic. Epictetus, one of the founders of stoic philosophy, was himself a slave for much of his life. His thought was absolutely a rationalist. As far as I know, he never questioned slavery as an institution.
It may not be exactly what Aristotle had in mind, but I feel obliged to point out that some people do consider themselves to be natural slaves, and I would consider it rude to contradict them about that. If you want one they can be obtained on collarme.com, Or So I've Heard.
Well bother. They all seem to be sex slaves. Which is great and all but I was hoping to branch out a bit and recruit some manual labour as well...
sorry if this squicks anyone here, but...
Not all of these people are sex slaves. Many of them are "service slaves".
I, personally, want to be a service slave, aka "minion", to someone whose life is dedicated to reducing x-risks.
The main purpose of this arrangement would be to maximize the combined effectiveness of me and my new master, at reducing x-risks. I seem to be no good at running my own life, but I am reasonably well-read on topics related to x-risks, and enjoy doing boring-but-useful things.
And I might as well admit that I would enjoy being a sex slave in addition to being a service slave, but that part of the arrangement is optional. But if you're interested, I'm bisexual, and into various kinds of kink.
Adelene Dawner has generously offered to help train me to be a good minion. I plan to spend the next few months training with her, to gain some important skills, and to overcome some psychological issues that have been causing me lots of trouble.
I haven't set up a profile on callarme.com for myself yet.
I was initially creeped out by this comment. Then I read on and got more creeped out. But at some point it got so weird that it turned back on itself and became awesome. It might be my favorite thing I've read here.
Us humans are so damned interesting. Not to mention diverse-- in ways some people who drone on about diversity can't even comprehend! And there is something special about a space which not only can make sense of the above comment but can tolerate it. And kudos Peerinfinity, for not being afraid to be seen as different. I would be.
And as a matter of self-observation I got more accepting of the above comment once it became about sex; which must be the result of some kind of liberal, sex-positive memetic infection. Why should I be more tolerant of sexual desires than other life desires?
Upvoted for this.
Relevant details:
Peer is not currently ready to be a minion in any kind of stressful environment. Every authority figure he's had so far has been of the 'I won't respect you unless you stand up for yourself' type and not very sane, and as a result of that Peer has some very dysfunctional habits when it comes to interacting with such people. I'm already working on fixing that, but I expect that it will take at least a year before he's able to deal with normal expressions of disapproval in a sane way, voluntarily communicate important information that the recipient might not like, and correctly parse the relative importance of an order given previously which was stated to be very important vs. an order given recently with more emotional weight behind it but no other statement that it's unusually important. I'm confident he'll get there, but it's going to be a while. (This is also why I'm involved at all - the more neurotic aspects of this issue are painful to watch, leading me to want to try to fix it. I'm not sure if I'll turn out to like having a minion around enough to keep one in the long term - it's possible, but I also like living alone. In any case, Peer wants to be working for someone who's actively involved in x-risk prevention, and I'm not.)
We're also going to be working on practical skills; if anyone thinks they'll be interested in taking Peer on when he's done learning how to interact with sane people, it would be good for them to contact me about any skills they think they'd like him to gain. (My plans so far are pretty basic with a geeky twist: Cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, Lojban and/or sign language, computer hardware skills, social skills, organizational skills, etc. Peer already programs.)
Wow. The concept is fascinating.
Once we've settled into some kind of routine, I plan to set up a blog where Peer will document his progress. I'll make a point of announcing it in the discussion section when that happens.
How's it been going?
Peer turned out to be higher-maintenance than I expected, to the point where it obviously wasn't going to work out. He went back home, and has been working on self-improvement there, with some amount of apparent success.
I've pointed this question out to him in case he wants to give more details.
Actually I saw a few who wanted to do cooking and housework: and one who was willing to give her master the money she earned from her job (provided he fed her).
Ok. Now this sounds promising!
Unfortunately, you'll probably also have to have sex with them.
Well that's a chore. :P
the word slavery is used as a blanket term for far too many phenomena. IIRC "slaves" in roman times had regular work hours, could own property, could buy out their contract etc.
True. On the other hand, historically, perhaps the majority of humans since the invention of agriculture have lived lives of what we would regard as continual drudge work, poverty, little or no protection from authority, and very little opportunity for advancement. Until recently, philosophers -- and everyone else -- took it for granted that this was how the world would always work. Certainly some "slaves" were privileged, but by the same token, huge numbers of nominally "free" people had it worse than canonical house elves. Even today, this is how it is for many, many people.