Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, you can make that sort of broad argument about anything. For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). The point being made here is whether Private Equity CEOs are contributing anything substantial apart from concentrating capital. The answer to that has to…
>For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). I think that's a different discourse. Slave labour was not a "bullshit job", it was productive. However, it was unethical. You can have productive jobs which are unethical, but that's a separate discussion from bullshit job…
That depends on how you do the accounting. If you account for slave labor as the cost of minimal food and housing, then it's not only productive, it's cheaper than almost anything else, especially because the slaves are property, so you can breed them and get a return-on-investment while also extracting labor.
Of course, if you account for slave labor in terms of some equivalent to wages, then all of a sudden society has reason to stop using slave labor and innovate instead. Ditto for today's low-wage labor in which sub-living wages end up subsidized by state antipoverty benefits.
Society has always faced a choice between exploitation and innovation, a zero-sum arrangement and a positive-sum arrangement. Unfortunately, rarely has it been wise enough to choose the latter.