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Slavery didn’t disappear because laws forbid the practice or that people became suddenly more moral.
“What they teach you in school” about slavery is all false.
Slavery disappeared because slavery turned out to be a lousy business model.
And the economy figured it out before moral philosophy did.
Think about it for a second.
A slave has no reason to produce beyond the minimum that avoids punishment.
He doesn’t take care of the tools because they’re not his.
He doesn’t warn you when something breaks because warning you could backfire on him.
He doesn’t learn the trade because learning the trade does him no good.
All the information and incentive problems that state planning has, slavery had them before, and worse.
Robert Fogel documented it with data in *Time on the Cross*, won the Nobel for it, and the conclusion was uncomfortable for everyone: slavery in the U.S. South was locally profitable only under very specific conditions of extensive production and low technical complexity.
As soon as those conditions changed with industrialization, the system collapsed economically before any army showed up to free anyone.
The free worker has reason to show up early, take care of the machine, and warn when something breaks.
The slave has reason to do exactly the opposite.
It’s not that slavery was bad, though it was.
It’s that it was inefficient in a way no overseer could fix.
Every system based on coercion carries its own destruction inside, not because it’s immoral but because it cannot adapt to the new information, feedback and changing inputs it needs to optimize
Reality sends the bill anyway.
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