The logic of slavery, it has been argued, arose from the fact that in busy societies the only way anyone could lead a life of leisure was by enslaving other people, and getting them to do their work. According to this logic, the institution of slavery is one that dies out as social idleness rises, as there is less of an incentive for anyone to enslave anyone else, and potential slaves are able to resist more strongly. If, in contemporary society, slavery has been abolished, it is not because we are morally superior to the ancients, but that we are more idle, and we increasingly look to technological means to increase our idleness.

But this dodges the question of whether slavery was ever right, even in antiquity. Can it ever be right for one man to subject another?

One way to think about this is to ask whether a 30% idle society should be organised with an equal distribution of idleness,

or for all the idleness to be concentrated in a few individuals.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these different social organisations?

The advantages of equal distribution of leisure or idleness is first one of equality and fellowship. And also, in an interdependent society, in which people depend upon each other to perform different tasks (baker, shoemaker, farmer, smith, etc), it is in the interests of all that none be allowed to fall to zero idleness, and the prospect of death. And furthermore, if cooperative human society is itself a way in which men increase their idleness, then cooperative human society is a shared attempt to increase idleness, and indeed to try to raise idleness to perfect idleness. Human society is like a lifeboat pulling towards some distant shore, and all must pull equally together at the oars. And ultimately, all men are inherently equal in time, because time passes at the same rate for everyone, whatever their rank, whatever their pretension: one hour in the life of a prince is exactly as long as one hour in the life of a pauper.

But the argument in favour of unequal disribution of time might proceed as follows: that it is better that some people be idle and and the others busy, because it is only idle men who have the time to learn to read and write, to become mathematicians and philosophers, to gaze out on the world and try to understand it. Busy people, with little time to spare, simply don't have enough time to do this, or can only get a little way down the path. In a 10% idle society, each individual can only learn one tenth of what a perfectly idle individual can learn. A perfectly idle individual is always going to be wiser and more learned than a busy one, and it is better to have one wise man governing one complete fool, than two equal halfwits.

And it may be argued that if modern Western society owes a tremendous debt to slave-owning Greece and Rome, it is because it was idle Greek and Roman freemen who produced poetry, drama, architecture, sculpture, music, history, philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, astronomy, engineering, roadbuilding, bridgebuilding, aquaducts, a framework of law, and indeed the entire basis of modern Western culture. And they would have not been able to do this had they not been freemen in slave-owning societies which provided them with the leisure in which to undertake these enquiries and experiments. That is, if Rome had never shrugged off its oppressive kings, and expanded into an empire, and Greece had not become an oligarchy or democracy, none of it would have happened. If Plato had needed to spend most of his time ploughing fields, milking goats, and tanning leather, he would never have found the time to write the Republic.

And to this the response might be that all this poetry and drama and sculpture and philosophy was simply so much froth and foam, the idle chatterings of idle men, so much luxury and pomp and splendour, none of which did anything to practically better the condition of humanity.

And, furthermore, it must be pointed out that since Greece and Rome largely acquired their slaves through warfare and conquest, it was primarily military virtues and military skills and military technology that these free men devoted their time to developing. For every one Plato or Aristotle, there were ten thousand athletic meatheads whose only contribution to anything was to kill a few enemies, invent new weapons, or develop new military tactics. Athens and Sparta and Rome lived by learning to subject others to their will, and so they were always primarily concerned with perfecting their military means of coercion. And that is why technological innovation in antiquity was almost entirely military in nature.

And furthermore, once society has been divided into idle freemen and busy slaves, the idle freemen have no particular interest in improving the lot of slaves, finding easier ways for them to work. And slaves have not the time to think of ways of reducing their work. And even if slaves ever did manage this, their masters would simply load more work upon them to fill their idle hours. The Greeks invented simple steam engines, but only as toys. Everything that the Greek freemen of Athens produced was of an impractical and largely useless nature.

And the result is that, 2000 years on, we have the most astonishing weapons, which not even the Greeks could have imagined - but we still live in houses with brick walls and tile roofs, and eat boiled and baked foods off clay plates, and wear woollen clothes and leather shoes, which any Greek or Roman would instantly recognise.

In short, if true, the claim that modern Western culture is largely derived from Greece and Rome should be a source of shame that such pernicious militaristic, aristocratic, and athletic influences still endure, glorifying war and slavery and supremacy, valuing art and music and literature and sport, while discounting mathematics and science and engineering and every kind of practical knowledge. Plato's Republic is anyway a miserable ideal society, which largely reflects the coercive hierarchical society in which he lived. Throw it all away. Start again.