Quote Originally Posted by Subotan View Post
Why get 100 slaves to do the work when you can have 5 machines running, with two slaves for each to set the things up, and two engineers to keep them going.

(That's just a hypothesised situation btw) Even if the engineers demanded relatively high wages, it would still be cheaper than feeding 100 slaves, and was certainly cheaper than guarding them. And as people realise that being an engineer is profitable, more people would become engineers, driving the price for engineers down.
Actually, no: not really. You apply a rationale from the 20th century AD (even in the 19th century it tended to be cheap [enough] to just hire another bunch of low-wage low-skill workers; plus: even though the fact that machines could in theory beat the slave force in cost-effectiveness that didn't convince the slave-owning estate-holders of the Southern USA or Suriname too readily either) to an area in which getting this other bunch of workforce could be as easy as a trip to the local market?

Mind you: the initial success of the Industrial Revolution was due to demands for the output of the 'heavy' industries -- AFAIK no such large scale demand existed in the 3rd century B.C.