Modern American Slaveowners

[pyesetz]

According to some back-of-envelope calculations, the USA annually expends 93 megawatt hours for every man, woman, and child, which is the equivalent of each citizen having 186 human slaves toiling away at 12-hour shifts.  In the old days, if you wanted a breeze, you had a slave wave a fan over you.  Now we use electricity.  Aren't modern conveniences grand?

Most plastics are made from oil, and are only cheaper than wood and metal because oil is cheap.  But it won't be cheap much longer!  We might be seeing a resurgence of coopers and metalsmiths in the next generation, as plastics become restricted to rich men's toys only.  Hopefully we won't be going back to horses and buggies—the streets were full of horseshit back then.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

As cool as it would be to have 186 slaves, I'll take the modern methods.

[pyesetz]

Most of my 186 slaves are actually working inside truck engines, bringing food to me.  A bunch of them are in squirrel cages, compressing refrigerant for my air conditioner and freezsr.

An unexpected 3 AM swim does sound rather disconcerting.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I was speculating on household heating earlier. I'd make some of my 186 slaves turn cranks attached to some sort of friction device to produce heat, while others ran the fan to distribute it.