Does the positive side of tribalism/racism outshine the negative side?

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would they have to choose between slavery or starving?  They were the ones growing the food either way.  It was the slaver who had to choose between slaving and starving - opting for theft over death.

You opened man doors. I will step in this one.

To your first. That is all that was available unless they wanted to go criminal.

Who can you possibly be referring to here, aside from the slavers, who did go criminal™?  If there was nothing else for the slaves then there would be nothing for the slavers.   That's where they got their shit - from slaves, not the other way round.  The only difference between some poor guy scraping in the dirt and the same poor guy scraping in the dirt as a slave, is that in the latter he is someones property, as is whatever he may be scraping up. 

To your second. They were not growing anything unless they were already slaved to the land owner.

OFC they were, that's how slavers came to have the opportunity to acquire them as slaves.  Hard to get ahold of a dead one who had nothing to eat and keep him alive until being enslaved.  It's not as if slaves were created ex nihilo on demand. Slaves were a product and there is an industry to it. That industry depends on the plentiful existence of a live animal that you hope to make do everything it would normally do to live - like growing food, but to do it for you, the slave owner.

Your third is unintelligible to me. Slavers do not become their own slave.

Regards
DL

It was the suggestion that this instrumental good you're referring to is the slavers instrumental good, not the slaves.  They're the ones who needed slaves to support their own lives and their own societies.  The slaver had a choice between slaving and death.  The slave was going to make the donuts either way.

This is an instrumental good, or at least it's the kind of thing that can be alleged to be an instrumental good, and we can weigh this against the moral evil of slavery, but you have the recipient roles reversed. If slavery was a social safety net, it was the slavers social safety net. If one or the other party is going to be contended to have nothing else, it was the slaver stuck in this dilemma. That's why they resorted to slavery.

-as to whether or not slavers become their own slaves - I could only reiterate that the moment that a person hinges their existence on slavery they are very much a slave to their slaving system. Apparently, not just them, but their descendants for some time to come, as well. It's do or die. Wages are a competing instrumental good, and they satisfy the needs of both parties better, and with less moral baggage, than slavery. I'm personally of the opinion that slavery is an existential threat to the slave owner for many of the same reasons that it's an existential threat to the slave - that it compounds the very problems that we might employ it to solve. I don't even recognize it as a credible instrumental good to be weighed against it;s entirely certain and constantly present moral evil.