Mention the above to your average leftists, and they think you’re expressing support for slavery. But even in the dehumanizing institution of slavery, economics is still involved. If you pay a lot of money for a slave and that slave brings you income, you want a healthy slave
Precisely. While this might sound crass, the calculus is this:
There is no ROI from an abused or neglected slave. Historically, in the American context, only those who could work and work well (and that included morale among the slaves, something which seriously affects the quality and quantity of the work done) would provide a solid return on investment. Even small rewards for performance (better quarters, stable environment, some semblance of family life) could net a better bottom line. In Antebellum America, the investment (in gold) was substantial, especially when one considers that 20.67 of those dollars were the price of an ounce of gold. To obtain the equivalent price of a slave today, you would have to multiply that 1850 price by ~80. (spot $1645/oz of gold), So, a $500 slave in 1850 would cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today's dollars, to put that in perspective. Not something the average person could do.
And while there are those who will take a sledge hammer to their new farm equipment, they are few. There is no gain, no profit, no ROI in that. (Lest we forget,
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a novel, abolitionist agitprop used to justify a war many did not want to fight.) I would postulate that there were few who owned slaves, and far fewer still who abused them, outside of employing them and their lack of freedom. It is an institution which deserved to die, although that death may be overrated in its effectiveness, and imposing it here was (and still is) used as an excuse to invade and conquer lands which had been held, ironically, in economic bondage to their conquerors (follow the money, it is ever the motive for war).
Slavery persists, in some nations openly, and for a much lower buy-in, and in societies where profit is easy to come by (average slave price about $90 (USD)), the wholly capitalistic incentive to treat slaves well enough to gain an ROI is removed. Life, literally, is far cheaper, and the slave a less valued commodity overall.
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In no way are my comments above intended to justify the abhorrent institution by which one man might own another. I cannot justify that, and fight against those chains daily myself, albeit chains imposed by a Government, and not a specific owner. And in America, those once enslaved in private hands are now the chattel of the Government, trapped in an economic scheme which requires quantum leaps in capability and income to escape, or sheer and dogged determination, a system which exists to employ a multitude of officials at public expense, offering little escape for those who allegedly benefit, a system working in concert with other bureaucracies to keep generations in the same economic thrall, in the name of 'helping', guaranteeing a population dependent on the largess and 'kind hand' of a government which forcibly extricates those resources from the rest of the population, without their consent, and to the detriment of nongovernmental programs which would help free those dependents from their bondage.
Call that what you will, but all that has changed is who 'owns' the plantation, and the amount of work expected.
