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Before you replace a slave with a machine there are other steps. Indentured servants, share croppers, migrant labor. There is a whole ladder of human exploita
by amayne 16y ago
Before you replace a slave with a machine there are other steps. Indentured servants, share croppers, migrant labor. There is a whole ladder of human exploitation. Ultimately, slavery is a less efficient substitute for free skilled labor.
Having a slave is more than just feeding them scraps. You have to be able to contain a slave population and keep them from murdering you. There are real costs to this. At a certain point the costs are outweighed by the benefit of freeing people and letting them create surpluses.
Communist Russia and North Korea were slave societies. They couldn't compete with the free west. When China enable certain economic freedoms and gave up (some, not all) of their slave-state tendencies they experienced the greatest economic boon in history.
- jeromec 16y agoHold on a second. You're suggesting slavery is in the same category as indentured servants, share croppers, and migrant labor for human exploitation? The difference is night and day! If I have to spell it out, in one case you work of your own free will, and in the other you don't and are abused and beaten. I do agree that in the macro sense it's better economically to free people and educate them, but that is NOT the logical path slave owners in the U.S. were on. And once, after war, slaves did become free they were not made to be educated as whites.