We'd be dealing with the waste from their power plants today. Or we might be extinct. Probably extinct. Looking like Mars, probably.

Neither is no answer. But since Rome was using slaves and the slaves told them to fuck off, Rome burned.

Idiots!

Rather the Western Empire couldn't manage its barbarian problems and the eastern empire just slowly dwindled down to one city over the next thousand years.

The slave economy persisted into the modern era.

Not all. But slave economies don't last long. History is replete with the demise of slave economies. The confederate south in the US is a good example.

Come to think of it, I can't remember any capitalist based society that wasn't slave based, in one way or another.

Or a capitalist society that has lasted very long. Are there any pure capitalist states anywhere in the world?

And really was only done in by the tractor. The nominal end of slavery was followed within a few decades by bound labor sharecroppers and prison gangs of the post reconstruction south.

Feudalism was the direct descendant of the roman slave economy and persisted right up to modern times.

I don't know what "long" is.

Did any private contractors submit the lowest bid, then walk away with a profit after the job was done?

I'd have to say the roads and freeways that were built by private contractors were a success of capitalism.

Who owns the freeways? Who gets to use the roads free of capital charges?

Your point is that we have socialism which hires capitalists to do the work.

There are quite a few structures and US and state and city organizations that are entirely built by and staffed with government employees. That's socialism.

both capitalism and socialism.

But our government is socialistic by its very nature.

We use capitalism to build structures but those structures are actually owned by the people which makes it a socialist structure. Even though so many libraries in the US were given to towns by Carnegie (Was the one in your town named the Carnegie Library? It was in the town where I grew up.) The upkeep and daily activities are paid for the town or city and so it is a socialist institution.

You are smart!! Thanks!