The slavery issue is discussed in some depth in the comments. The blog author points out that slaves do, in fact, shirk: slave-based economies suffer for it, as history has shown. It's interesting to read Cato the Elder's blunt accounting of how many managers, employees, and slaves were best for different types of farm in early Rome. They seemed to be a significant, but not overwhelmingly important, part of that system.
Mt.goat: I couldn't agree more, eliminating drudgery is better than building robots to do it. I've read similar ideas from Schumacher (
here, I think) and they made a lot of sense.
Marina: That's an interesting question, but I wonder if you're rushing to make it a dichotomy. I bet slavery will be tried as one response to our predicament over the
course of the next few decades, but will not be able to compete with other systems. I'm not sure the winners of that competition will all be altruistic, though.
"the qualities of these bacteria, like the heat of the sun, electricity, or the qualities of metals, are part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men. They are manifestations of the laws of nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none." SCOTUS, Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kale Inoculant Co.