>If slavery was a disaster for the US, the US wouldn't have become an economic giant during slavery Nope, I said it was a disaster for progress. That doesn't p

>If slavery was a disaster for the US, the US wouldn't have become an economic giant during slavery Nope, I said it was a disaster for progress. That doesn't preclude it from becoming an economic giant. My claim is that slavery held back US progress to a large margin. This does not mean the US did not progress at all. That's a strawman. >human labor was cheaper and more efficient It was cheaper, but it caused investments in automation to not take place. Automation is orders of magnitude more efficient. >So without the excesss capital from slavery, there is no investment towards automation. This doesn't explain how progress is made today without the need for slavery, even in loss-making industries. >Slavery was a major source of excess capital This doesn't disprove my point, at all. My claim is that automation produces orders of magnitude more capital.