Oct 17, 2019, 11:35 AM
(slavery)
Slavery existed because of labor required for farming. It ended i) because the labor required for farming first reduced by western agrarian innovation, then ii) was eliminated by western innovation, and iii) because western finance, accounting, and taxation technology made customers provide higher returns than slavery. ie: capitalism(markets) produce incentives that slavery cannot match.
People are not moral. They are practical. They just make excuses to virtue signal wealth, and the elimination of slavery was an excuse to signal wealth. Never assume people are ‘good’. They are always selfish. In almost every case, from the jewish ban on max of six years, to the pre-modern period, to the modern, to the reason governments banned slavery so that they could tax these individuals, or prevent such accumulation of wealth under slavery that competitors to the state could emerge in colonies. Same for the American civil war. It was so that the western territories did not fall under the political leadership of the south and preserve slavery, which would have left the south in control of the continent, isolating the industrial north.