pnakasone wrote:Theemile wrote:It was mentioned once before that manpower's most popular slave line was the "technician" line. Intelligent, and given basic technical training, in a high tech universe, they were used to operate and maintain equipment. It was followed by the heavy physical type (like Hugh Arai), and the pleasure types.
In our reality, there are pretty much no jobs that no one will do. The average American might not want to pick tomatoes all summer, but throngs of Mexicans cross the border to do so. The oldest trade is still alive and well in virtually every city and town around the world. I cannot see this situation changing much in the future. There will always be someone willing to go to the most hideous places to do an awful job, for a small paycheck.
The only jobs that are difficult to fill are ones where the worker is guaranteed to die in a short period of time. In which case, slaves which are modified for specific environments where a normal human couldn't function might make sense. But any job other than that would be easily filled.
If you offer enough money people will do even deadly jobs.
IIRC it has been mentioned that large scale slavery dos not make any economic sense once you reach industrial level technology. One of the major clues that something else was going on is that Manpowers books do not add up right. The cost of producing a slave exceeds the potential profits that their labor would produce.
Which was really my point, unless you are buying someone for "snuff sex", any job can and will be done by someone cheaply, or can be done mechanically. The fact that Manpower has to raise their product and "educate" it to some level, makes any profit margin slim if any, and with antislavery laws stealing markets, the product, and expensive portions of the supply line, it stops making sense.