Was Slavery Good? (What About Smex Slaves?)

In this provocative episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into a taboo topic: slavery—both historical and modern. Is slavery “good” at a civilizational level? They explore why more people are enslaved today than at any point in human history (~50 million in forced labor or marriage), critique selective outrage over past vs. present slavery, and examine cultural attitudes toward wartime rape/slavery across groups (Puritans, Quakers, Backwoods/Appalachian Scots-Irish, Cavaliers, Spanish Catholics, Vikings, Muslims, Japanese, etc.).

Key discussions include:

* Genetic and cultural legacies of “rape slaves” vs. conquest without integration.

* Why certain Protestant subgroups showed remarkable restraint (no recorded cases of raping Native captives).

* How slavery economically stifled innovation (Rome, the American South).

* Maps showing slavery’s concentration in Cavalier regions and its overlap with modern socioeconomic struggles.

* Why reflexive disgust toward status-signaling and a preference for strong partners may have given some groups a long-term edge.

They argue that, even setting aside morality, sex slavery and post-conquest integration often backfire genetically and culturally—while loving your own people and culture drives lasting success. A data-heavy, counterintuitive take that challenges both left- and right-wing sacred cows. Not for the faint of heart.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone Collins. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a concept that was way more interesting than I expected it to be as I started to dive into it. Okay. Is slavery good?

What, and what brought up this concept is like, obviously this is not a topic we were allowed to talk about growing up, or we’ve been allowed to talk about more broadly as a society. No. And so, then Tucker Carlson and, but the left has been hugely glazing recently places like Qatar. Oh. And I’m like, well, Qatar’s a slave state, right?

Like, so if, if he can talk about how great Qatar cities are, at least the faction of the right that like, doesn’t like this weird Tucker faction. They think slave slave states are awesome now. And the left thinks slave states are awesome now because, you know, a, a, a across the, middle East. This is just something that we see.

Fun fact, by the way, in Gaza the neighborhood where blacks are kept is called [00:01:00] slaves or like slave neighborhood.

Speaker 11: But more specifically, ‘cause I wanted to check this just to make sure that’s right. Yeah. It’s called The Neighborhood of the Slaves is where black people live in Gaza, , because having slaves is so common there. , And there were around 11,000, Afro Palestinians are around 1% of the population of Gaza was black.

Uh, and, and brought there to be slaves.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, I mean, this is common in the, in the the, there’s

Simone Collins (2): a black meadow in Gaza.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In the area. Well, they, they bring them in and use them as slaves basically. So, remember that the, when they were doing the mass genocide in Darfur, there was like, what was it?

10 exercise of the deaths in Gaza that this genocide was of Muslims against blacks, and they called them slaves. That was, no,

Simone Collins (2): not, not exactly. It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous. It’s just that like.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, just

Simone Collins (2): the one used [00:02:00] for a black person, sort of, it was, what’s the word for when something’s like Kleenex, you know, or bandaid where like, you know, it becomes genericized of like, well they’re, they’re the same thing.

And then, so then

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I am sure that American Blacks would believe you, you used the n word analogy for that. You’re like, it’s just syn synonymous.

Speaker 2: Category is people who annoy you. Audience, keep quiet, please.

Speaker 4: Uh, well, oh, 10 seconds, Mr. Marsh. I know it, but I don’t think I should say it.

Speaker 2: Oh, ooh. Oh, naggers. Of course. Naggers. Right? Uh, can we cut to, uh, can we cut to a.

Simone Collins (2): It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous.

Malcolm Collins: Like, yes, it was used in that context, but we use it in different contexts all the time now.

Simone Collins (2): Well, if, if you live in a society where the only ever time you see someone who is, you know, we’ll say, who is [00:03:00] purple hair is a slave, you’re just gonna be like, well, you know, I need to get a purple haired person, you know, around the plantation or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Tucker went further, by the way. I just don’t buy your argument at all. They, they mean it as a slur. They mean it as this is how we see you because it, it is common in those regions. But and by the way, fun fact, more slaves on earth today than there ever have been in human history.

Simone Collins (2): That’s, no, I, I knew that and it really frustrates me when people are like, oh, we practice slavery in the past.

We’re so humiliated. It’s like, yeah, no, if you care, stop worrying about reparations. Maybe stop slavery today. There’s stuff you can do today. Because there are,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That’s what gets me when a woke person complains about being enslaved. It’s like you only get to complain about being enslaved if you’re going to do something about the slavery that exists today.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause my ancestors did something about your ancestors, slavery. So what are you doing for the existing Oh, nothing. So, so

Simone Collins (2): you’re no better than all the, the white people whose descendants are now. Implicated in [00:04:00] reparations requirements or white guilt or whatever it is

Malcolm Collins: putting out in this episode is, is, is actually probably more that if we’re talking about who did more harm to who owe the, the southerners, the reparations.

And we’ll get into some data on that. But to get it even spicy, no, I know from a moral perspective, but if we’re just talking about economically they were a net hindrance to the region.

Simone Collins (2): Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I I, gosh, I feel like I was reading to this just recently, so we’re talking about how oh yeah, no well, one of the people who is talks with, with the pod a lot was talking about how slavery ultimately held back technological advancement in the south.

And how when you have

Malcolm Collins: not just the south, you see it hold back wherever it’s practice and we’ll go into why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s the reason why Rome didn’t have an industrial revolution because they had a massive slave population. If they didn’t have that, they probably would’ve had an industrial revolution.

Yeah. Of looking at the technology that they had access to. They had access to many of the early tools of the Industrial Revolution. They just had no reason [00:05:00] to use them because they had constant slave populations.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. The general argument being that when you have an excess of human labor, you, you tend to get lazy and not actually technologically,

Malcolm Collins: but this stuff isn’t the most interesting stuff.

And I wanna start with the most interesting stuff because the most interestin