One of the great dilemmas which western civilization has always faced is this: we generally create prosperous societies with growing economies, yet never have large enough birth rates to maintain a healthy labor market. This always results in the importation of large numbers of people from other cultures to do much of the manual labor.
Inevitably, the imported laborers rebel against "unjust" social systems which they find in these societies. This occured in Rome and the South...and is now occuring in Europe, Israel, the US Southwest, and across the Western world in general.
The choice is simple: do the work yourself (and have enough children to supply a growing economy's labor needs), or face displacement, social upheaval, crime, etc at the hands of the imported workers.
There were never any large scale rebellions in the South by slaves even during the war. A couple of well publicized ones which were actually very minor.
Great post! Damn! Why didn't I think of that. Our motto should be: "Have babies, not abortions!"
I've been thinking about this a lot recently - it's a serious issue.
The way the question is framed generally, it sounds as if we (i.e., "advanced western societies") have a choice: if we weren't so disdainful of "getting our hands dirty" doing menial labor, and if we produced more children ourselves, we wouldn't have to import dusky laborers and could avoid the problems they bring.
But is that true?
For example, in general parents find it much easier to provide the ample investment in their children's upbringing and education that will enable them to become productive in the modern economy if they have only one, two or at most three children. In a family of seven children, each child must make do with less.
So my question is, do we really have that choice, or is immigration of poorer laborers an inevitable consequence of building an advanced economy?