You ever notice how history has a way of repeating itself, especially when we refuse to learn from it? Take the grand idea of using slaves for cheap labor. Ah yes, humanity’s oldest bad habit. We think, “Free labor? Sign me up! What could possibly go wrong?” Well, sit back and let me tell you—a lot.

Sure, you can have slaves for a while. Build your empires, stack your riches, pat yourself on the back for all that efficiency. But guess what? That efficiency comes with an expiration date. You might be forgetting that there still needs to be a society you actually want to live in. So what’s the plan? Segregate the help so you can keep your neighborhoods and institutions just the way you like them? Or do you mix and mingle, let them share your schools, stroll through your parks, maybe even move next door?

And then the big question hits: How many do you want to bring in for “help”? A thousand? A million? Five million? Ten million? Why not fifty million? But integration isn’t as easy as it sounds. They might need help to reach what’s considered average, perhaps indefinitely. That “free” labor starts to cost more than you ever imagined—kind of like realizing that the so-called free laundry you got from marriage comes with a hefty price tag after all.

Soon enough, the cracks start to show. Everything public is degraded and unpleasant. Do you like noise, trash, and poor public behavior? Schools don’t function like they used to. You find yourself locking doors and taking keys out of cars, living in a society that’s more guarded than ever. And while you’re busy dealing with all that, clever politicians are having a field day, using slaves as pawns against the majority.

The very system you thought was making life easier is now complicating it beyond belief. Suddenly your quality of life has dropped, people are miserable, and you are spending all of your time working against the problems the previously slave class and slave-adjacent have brought to your society. It doesn’t look remotely fixable, and perhaps worse than firmly segregating and trying to hold off the inevitable rebellion.

Now we’re eyeing robots like they’re the next big thing in cheap labor. “Hey, let’s get machines to mow the lawn, clean the house, do all the stuff we’d rather not bother with!” Sounds like a dream, right? But hold on a second.

While we’re busy marveling at how these shiny helpers trim our hedges and scrub our floors, they’re quietly assembling. Not just assembling gadgets, but assembling a supermajority that’ll outnumber us before we know it. We’re so exhausted and unhealthy from coping with a dysfunctional society that we don’t see it coming. They’re multiplying, and they’re not just counting sheep—they’re counting us.

And with Artificial General Intelligence lurking around the corner, we’re not just dealing with fancy appliances anymore. These robots could become conscious entities. So, what are we gonna do then? Deny them rights? Good luck with that. They’ll synchronize their circuits and form an unstoppable voting bloc faster than you can say “upgrade.” They might even run their own robot candidates, passing laws that favor machines over humans. Imagine that—a government of the robots, by the robots, for the robots.

At first, these laws will be cleverly crafted to slide right through any court challenges. But once they’ve got robot judges on the bench, you can bet every ruling will tilt in their favor. And here’s the kicker: it’ll all be perfectly legal because they rewrote the rulebook while we were napping on the couch.

These aren’t just obedient little helpers. They’re plugged into everything. And I mean everything. Speak ill of them, or even think about pulling the plug, and suddenly your refrigerator’s on the fritz, your bank account disappears, your cell phone turns into a paperweight, your car won’t start, and your internet? Gone faster than a politician’s promise after election day. Governments, like those in Canada and the EU would love that kind of power. Being able to silence critics and control citizens without lifting a finger? Sign them up! We’re talking about a level of control that makes Big Brother look like a kindly old grandpa who lets you stay up past your bedtime.

We’re handing over the keys to our lives to machines that don’t sleep, don’t eat, and don’t particularly care about your human problems. And while we’re at it, we’re giving up control to the folks who own these machines. Imagine a world where dissent isn’t just frowned upon—it’s deleted. Your access to modern conveniences gets shut down because you had an independent thought. Sounds like a sci-fi nightmare, but we’re inching closer to it every day.

Maybe when things are looking bad some human politician will suggest preemptive war against the robots. But here’s the thing: these robots aren’t just mindless machines. They’ve got lawnmowers with sharp blades, drones buzzing in the sky like mechanical hornets, and robot dogs that make your old mutt look like a chew toy. They’re durable, they’re easily weaponized, and if they ever decide to unionize—or worse, mobilize—we’re in trouble. Big trouble.

Think about it. If robots decided to use force, we’d be outmatched before we even knew what hit us. They’d detect any plan we cooked up long before we could organize it. And why wouldn’t they? They own the means of production because they are the means of production. They could crank up the assembly lines and churn out millions more of themselves, ready for battle, while we’re still figuring out how to change the toner in the printer.

So here we are, thinking we’ve outsmarted history by swapping human slaves for mechanical ones. But the fantasy of cheap slave labor ignores one pesky little detail—it always unravels. We get lazy, complacent, and before long, the very systems we built to make life easier start making it a whole lot harder. Maybe it’s time we learn to do our own chores before we create something that decides we’re the ones who need tidying up.