Yeah, having hundreds of thousands if slaves takes away all incentives to create technology that makes work easier.
Not necessarily--the conclusion requires more than that. It requires, for example, that no individuals could gain an economic edge over their rivals through crushing more work out of the same number of slaves--or, alternatively, getting the same amount out of a smaller number. In the cruelty of enslavement, enslaved people are "tools" of labor, exploited like a beast of burden or machine, which means they cost money to buy, maintain, and repair (or, more commonly, replace with newly-enslaved persons.) If master-enslaver A has the same number of enslaved people as master-enslaver B, but master-enslaver A has superior fertilizers, better transportation, access to insecticides, and tools like cotton gins to separate seeds far faster (and with far less wear-and-tear) than if he were to dedicate his enslaved workers to the tasks, then those technologies will still have value, not because the master-enslaver
cares about reducing labor, but because these things increase yields and reduce the amount of time and money required to extract it.
A society built around the expectation of human(oid) slavery can still get value out of labor-reducing technologies, but they will certainly be viewed differently and likely will advance differently.
Big bounds in technological progress usually happen when their is lack/need of some kind.
When there is a war, there is a need for better weapons.
When there was pestilence and half of Europe was killed, there was a need for improved productivity per person.
While this is one source, it is not the only source. Sometimes, a new discovery, or a critical mass of iterative improvement that crosses a breakpoint, has made a particular action possible when it wasn't before. Metallurgical advances in the 17th and 18th century finally enabled us to turn Heron's funny spinny-steam-toy into an actual steam engine, and you know what the very first (commercially successful) application was? An atmospheric pump for mining. Pure economic interest, not a lick of warfare. Combat applications of steam engines wouldn't come along for more than a century (and
big ones wouldn't for almost two.)
Also you have different interest groups in societies. Like a common misconception about medieval guilds was, that they hindered technological progress.
But that is only a half truth. Medieval Guilds job was it to keep their members an their families in business.
So they discouraged any development of technology that could replace their labor. Because that would destabilise the workforce and having a stable society were everything has its place was ab imperativ for medieval societies.
But technological progress like for the quality of product was fine and encouraged.
Right. Hence why I said what I said above: even in a society built around the enslavement of sapient beings, it's not that there would be
zero appetite for labor-saving stuff. It's that it would be viewed differently. Every interest group cares about different things. You see quite a bit of this if you play games like
Victoria 3, for instance.
Like a society in which Druids bless the crops maybe doesn't need to develop better agricultural techniques. But now there is a war an the Druids are drafted into it and can't bless the crops anymore and suddenly you need to figure out how to feed a whole population without magical enhanced growing of corn and boom progress or death.
But you could have other forms of progress in this area. For example, perhaps Druids can't meaningfully irrigate lands that
would be arable if they weren't so arid, which can lead to examining how and why various terrains are able to support various crops. There will also be pressure on the druids themselves to put out yields which continue to support a growing population, which may run into trouble if there's a cap on how much magic can do to squeeze more productivity out of the land.
Medieval societies were pretty much all about stability. So technological disruptions were.not encouraged.
Most societies are. Even today. It's just that technological advancement is going at a breakneck pace right now, and choosing not to compete is a death sentence--"instability" now
means a failure to keep pace. Technology has changed from mostly slow, iterative building on the work of the Old Masters, into a Red Queen's Race where the only way to keep up is to run as fast as you can, and the only way to get ahead is to run
twice that fast.
Socialist society was about equality and betterment of all, so medical research and access to medicine was developed (like broke ass Cuba has a better medical system than the US, because that is whats important for cuban society).
This is more than a bit off the mark. While you may be right about Cuba (I've no idea, I'm no student of Cuban history), the Soviet Union full-force embraced Lysenkoism, which was outright blatant pseudoscience that promised stability, increased productivity, and politically-convenient results. Likewise, Mao's Great Leap Forward was specifically about trying to hyper-modernize Chinese agriculture and industry through mass peasant labor. Unfortunately, because he despised "intellectuals" (despite being one himself), he ignored or eliminated anyone who could have told him that his grain production targets were impossibly high and that the "steel" produced by his mobilized peasants was actually near-worthless pig iron.
Socialist societies can also prioritize productivity and growth rather than common welfare and quality of life. They just do so from a collectivist standpoint, not an individualist one. (This is, for example, why the Federation is really neither "capitalist" nor "socialist"--it is a highly individualistic society in terms of rights, privileges, liberalism, etc., but it is a highly collectivistic society because the nigh-inexhaustible energy sources, plus technologies like replicators, enable everyone to live at the highest standard of living, and "labor" becomes a form of self-actualization doing something you
enjoy rather than a means to obtain sustenance or support the common good.)
Like, in my first ever big campaign I DMed, there was a dwarfen society build on the principles of socialism. Everything was owned by the workers who worked there, which shaped that society more into uniformity and deviation was rare.
The "evil empire" had the goal to monopolise all magic (including the enslavement of all magical creatures, including elves) and when you bought magic items from them, they didn't recharge automatically- you had to pay a licensed trader to recharge that magic item while another country opposed to the evil empire was more of a benevolent theocracy, that was a safe haven for all the magical creatures fleeing the grasps of the evil empire.
So the evil empire had some highly advanced magic tech, but it was not widespread.
The theocracy had widespread magic use everywhere.
The dwarfen community had low magic (because of a conspiracy to kill all children with magical abilities) which lead to technological development - more advanced mining techniques, advanced weaponry including gun powder weapons and so on.
Interesting stuff!
