Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 133 posts

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#41

Post by zozbot234 »

wins32767 wrote: post #27

"And just as a household needed slaves, so companies need staff. Permanent employees, like slaves, are far more desirable than outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought external contractors could never be relied on like members of the primary social group. They failed to turn up when instructed to, took liberties with their fees and, taking little pride in their work, carried out their tasks shoddily. With slaves,…

Slaves who worked in Roman households were effectively a highly-skilled and educated minority, who could indeed hope to earn enough to buy out their freedom. It goes without saying that this was not a meaningful possibility for the vast majority of slaves, who were forced to work under far more strenuous conditions.

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#42

Post by balutdev »

britch wrote: post #10

What a strange piece. Putting the reader in the master's perspective certainly is a choice. It fails to investigate that almost anyone in its ostensible audience of corporate managers is both a "master" and "slave" (mangers have managers). An incredibly grim takeaway as well. It acknowledges the exploitation in both systems, but doesn't ask you to do anything about it or interrogate it deeper. There's no way that you…

edit:

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#43

Post by [deleted] »

MisterTea wrote: post #32
wins32767 wrote: post #27

"And just as a household needed slaves, so companies need staff. Permanent employees, like slaves, are far more desirable than outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought external contractors could never be relied on like members of the primary social group. They failed to turn up when instructed to, took liberties with their fees and, taking little pride in their work, carried out their tasks shoddily. With slaves,…

> "With slaves, however, who were stakeholders in the system," "With slaves, however, who's stakes were forcibly held by others in the system," FTFY

[deleted]

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#44

Post by quocanh »

evan_ wrote: post #37
quocanh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely have to be opened minded in order to read this. I can see how this could be offensive or distasteful but from a purely academic point of view it's interesting to see that a master-slave relationship was more than a contractual relationship. Leadership was just as important in that relationship as it is in a manager-employee relationship. And although we have since abolished slavery, we will always need…

you actually have to be close-minded to read this favorably, an open-minded reading would be to consider the "slaves" as people whose rights are being violated

Close/open-mindedness isn't about being morally wrong/right. It's about holding a vile idea in your head long enough to see its various facets. To study it and understand it.

Openmindedness here means being able to understand that slavery is wrong at the same time you study what it reveals about the human condition. To be clear, no one in this thread has argued that slavery was good. If you think that, then maybe it's a sign that you're not separating subtle ideas well enough.

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#45

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

cogman10 wrote: post #34
xeromal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anything historical, you really need to objectively put yourself in the context of the people you're looking at. Rome had cruelty laws for how to treat slaves. I'm not an expert but perhaps if the slave did their job then floggings, torture, and crucifixion were illegal, but were allowed if they broke the law. People will look back and probably think US execution is terrible and cruel while currently, a large por…

This works to an extent. You have to be careful to make sure you aren't just softening history with a "product of their time" argument. A good example is US slavery. You might mistakenly fall under the understanding that slavery was just a common and well accepted practice. Yet, from the founding of the US and earlier it was HIGHLY controversial. You can't just take the perspective of the slave owner, you must also c…

How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have niceness kicked out of you early on. And Roman life could be very brutish. One of the things we inherited from them was the word decimation, which came from a punishment of picking every tenth person to be put to death ( usually used for soldiers or uncooperative city ).

It does not soften it. It just explains it.

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

balutdev wrote: post #42
britch wrote: post #10

What a strange piece. Putting the reader in the master's perspective certainly is a choice. It fails to investigate that almost anyone in its ostensible audience of corporate managers is both a "master" and "slave" (mangers have managers). An incredibly grim takeaway as well. It acknowledges the exploitation in both systems, but doesn't ask you to do anything about it or interrogate it deeper. There's no way that you…

edit:

[deleted]

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#47

Post by jacquesm »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the risks! Anything your slave does that damages other people's properties or causes them to lose life or limb is your responsibility. Those poor masters. Seriously, anything that attempts to be 'open minded' about slavery starts off on the wrong premise: that there are useful lessons to be learned there about human interaction. It's a well that is so thoroughly poisoned that it is probably better to stay…

There is merely a step away from arguing for 'wrongthink' as a policy. Ideas should be examined, thoroughly and openly. Staying away does the opposite to the goal you may want to achieve. Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on rational/logical discourse.

> Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on rational/logical discourse.

But they can.

Religion, racism, terrorism, fascism: they are all ideas that can corrupt, and some people are more susceptible to this than others. If you find that you are at the end of your wits and unable to find one more source for management advice to the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think you should simply stop looking because nothing good can come of that.

Ideas do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a timeframe as well as what was considered locally acceptable and those conditions all but ensure that anything that you think you might learn is going to be very hard to apply.

We study history to avoid repetitions, not to see what particular item certain despicable people from the past had to say.

For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up by Elizabeth Holmes.

Those are books I can do without.

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#48

Post by evan_ »

quocanh wrote: post #44
evan_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you actually have to be close-minded to read this favorably, an open-minded reading would be to consider the "slaves" as people whose rights are being violated

Close/open-mindedness isn't about being morally wrong/right. It's about holding a vile idea in your head long enough to see its various facets. To study it and understand it. Openmindedness here means being able to understand that slavery is wrong at the same time you study what it reveals about the human condition. To be clear, no one in this thread has argued that slavery was good. If you think that, then maybe it'…

If you "[hold] a vile idea in your head" but only look at the aspects of the vile idea that would benefit you then you've chosen to ignore a pretty huge facet of the idea.

Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?

#50

Post by xeromal »

cogman10 wrote: post #34
xeromal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anything historical, you really need to objectively put yourself in the context of the people you're looking at. Rome had cruelty laws for how to treat slaves. I'm not an expert but perhaps if the slave did their job then floggings, torture, and crucifixion were illegal, but were allowed if they broke the law. People will look back and probably think US execution is terrible and cruel while currently, a large por…

This works to an extent. You have to be careful to make sure you aren't just softening history with a "product of their time" argument. A good example is US slavery. You might mistakenly fall under the understanding that slavery was just a common and well accepted practice. Yet, from the founding of the US and earlier it was HIGHLY controversial. You can't just take the perspective of the slave owner, you must also c…

It works the further out a historical event goes. US slavery is still very recent compared to Roman slavery. Once 1000 years has passed from the US slavery, historical takes will probably be different from what we have now.
Post reply on HN