Wasn’t there some archeological evidence that many of the workers and their families were actually compensated?
The profit motive was covered by the Pharaoh’s exploitation of the entire nation of Egypt as his personal plantation and palace; each Pharaoh’s Pyramid was the resulting useless passion project wasting all that accumulated profit. Albeit at reduced cost, considering the widespread use of corvee and legal limits on the ability of worker’s to negotiate contracts with the agents of the Pharaoh compared to with non-government notables.
Somebody once advanced the theory that the pyramids may have been public works projects, to keep the whole economy from collapsing. The pharaohs had accumulated so much of the available wealth, they spent some of it to put people to work. I think that’s an interesting speculation.
So trickle down eventually works. You just have to let them get to godhood first. Got it.
Capitalism probably
Workers were paid. More interesting to ask why they built the pyramids.
‘Paid’. When some egyptaboo tells you that “there weren’t slaves in Egypt at this time”, remember the ‘workers’ were paid in housing, bread, and beer. And were kinda bound by their duty to the God-Pharaoh. Totally not slavery!
Tho now thinking of it it’s not like my wage stretches farther than that either…
Edit: spelling and punctuation are hard.
Religion.
It was a public works project, just like government jobs, infrastructure, and the military are for the US.
Death
Motive was someone’s huge fucking ego to be remembered forever.
The ROI was outstanding if it facilitated their journey to a good afterlife well.
Glory and worship is equally addictive as profit. The whole point was to have a badass setup in the afterlife. So you could consider this “profit”
I mean the pyramids were wholly improductive multi-decade undertakings, so that’s not making the point you think it’s making.
Probably brought in some tourism revenue
Slaves
I believe the most recent understanding is that the builders would have been paid, actually.
The vast majority of people who built the pyramids were paid laborers.
Nope, well paid workers who got vacation time and sick pay for such horrible conditions "stung by scorpion” (probably a metaphor for hangover), “bleeding wife” (wife on her period).
Oh.
Not slaves, that is a myth.
Oh!
Aliens
