I don’t think I find this as convincing as the conventional explanation, which is that unskilled, reluctant labor was ultimately not that useful in the context of modern factories. Chattel slavery isn’t obsolete because slaves can’t seek good culture fits on LinkedIn, it’s obsolete because we have machines that do the things that slaves used to do except faster, more efficiently, and without a huge quantity of social[1], economic, and martial overhead.
This is similar to the reason oxen and feudalism aren’t around anymore.
Slavery creates a ton of discontent, not just among slaves, but among free workers whose wages are undercut, among humanitarians, and among ordinary people who don’t like being exposed to the risk of an attempted slave revolt just so someone else can make money.
It is true that industry allowed England and the northern USA to impose their will on agricultural slave societies. But it is also true that big plantations aren’t efficient. Agricultural production increased after the abolition of slavery in both the Caribbean and the American South.
Do you have evidence for this? I thought it was fairly well-established that slavery had higher agricultural production than the systems that followed it. Production is the last thing I’d expect to increase with abolition because sharecroppers and other free people want to grow food, have free time, etc rather than spending 90 hours a week picking cotton in a gang labor system. ChatGPT agrees that slave plantations had higher productivity.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco, which is why people expected slavery to die out on its own. Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production. Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco,
Source? No source I can find supports this.
Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
Virginia plantations specialized in breeding slaves because the price of enslaved people was extremely high, because slavery had high agricultural production.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production.
My claim was directly about production: the number of bushels of cotton, tons of sugar, etc produced per unit of land, or per laborer. Of course the free farmer or sharecropper can have higher welfare than the slave, because they can invest in their own welfare at the expense of production.
Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
This doesn’t seem true for the US historically. The growth rate of the US Black population seems basically constant in 1840-1880. If emancipation increased the growth rate we would see it in the trends. The reason is that when the slaveholding class steals the surplus of the slave class, they also have an incentive to increase the slave population, as in Virginia.
If free labor actually increased cotton production, we would see production after 1865 quickly surpass the 1860 trendline, not just the level. Instead, just surpassing the level took until late 1870s and needed greatly increased land area and better technology, while the trendline remained permanently below the pre-1860 trend. The economics literature suggests that the end of slavery meant a huge downwards shock in agricultural productivity in the American South, and the disadvantages, like reduced human capital investment, mostly affected skilled labor sectors rather than agriculture.
The destruction of the civil war, the reconstruction afterwards, and the cost of transitioning social structures is definitely a confounder for your graph. Even then, there are more general reasons we might not expect total cotton production to increase despite increased efficiency per worker. The person you’re respond to didn’t provide any sources, but surely there are per-acre or per-person comparisons somewhere?
There is detailed analysis in the 1975 study Time on the Cross by Nobel winning economist Robert Fogel. The field has even better data or methods since then, but I’m not an economist and can’t point to them—all I know is that most secondary sources agree that plantation slavery had high agricultural productivity.
This was ultimately the case, but it’s deeply speculative as to whether that was because of abolition, or in spite of it.
It was the development of industrial technology that drove slavery to its height. The cotton gin, envisioned as a means to reduce reliance on slave labor, actually caused a massive increase in the need for slave labor. The enslaved population went from 700K in 1790 to 4+ million in 1860.
While slavery existed, there was no need to pursue labor saving technology. In fact, selective breeding of cotton strains was a prime focus of the industry so that cultivation could be extended to less optimal environments to be harvested by even more slaves. Slavery was on the increase prior to the war of emancipation and there was no incentive to look for alternatives.
Had the breakaway states achieved victory, it’s questionable if the nationwide hunt for industrial efficiency would have occurred. Best case it would have been delayed by decades. The USA would certainly not have been in a position to become involved in WWI and without that no (or greatly reduced) involvement in WWII and everything that followed.
Had the breakaway states achieved victory, it’s questionable if the nationwide hunt for industrial efficiency would have occurred.
Now that’s an interesting question. Automated farming equipment is ultimately much cheaper than use of slaves, but how much of an incentive does it take to make a nation invent or adopt a cheaper method? Very debatable whether “I’ll ultimately make K% more profit” is sufficient, or if “I’ll go bankrupt if I don’t find a solution right now” is needed.
Highly relevant in the context of AI. There are lots of jobs that an LLM can do well enough right now, given the right scaffolding, and a lot of money gets saved if that gets done, but it’s a laborious and very sensitive process to get from here to there.
I don’t think I find this as convincing as the conventional explanation, which is that unskilled, reluctant labor was ultimately not that useful in the context of modern factories. Chattel slavery isn’t obsolete because slaves can’t seek good culture fits on LinkedIn, it’s obsolete because we have machines that do the things that slaves used to do except faster, more efficiently, and without a huge quantity of social[1], economic, and martial overhead.
This is similar to the reason oxen and feudalism aren’t around anymore.
Slavery creates a ton of discontent, not just among slaves, but among free workers whose wages are undercut, among humanitarians, and among ordinary people who don’t like being exposed to the risk of an attempted slave revolt just so someone else can make money.
It is true that industry allowed England and the northern USA to impose their will on agricultural slave societies. But it is also true that big plantations aren’t efficient. Agricultural production increased after the abolition of slavery in both the Caribbean and the American South.
Do you have evidence for this? I thought it was fairly well-established that slavery had higher agricultural production than the systems that followed it. Production is the last thing I’d expect to increase with abolition because sharecroppers and other free people want to grow food, have free time, etc rather than spending 90 hours a week picking cotton in a gang labor system. ChatGPT agrees that slave plantations had higher productivity.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco, which is why people expected slavery to die out on its own. Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production. Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
Source? No source I can find supports this.
Virginia plantations specialized in breeding slaves because the price of enslaved people was extremely high, because slavery had high agricultural production.
My claim was directly about production: the number of bushels of cotton, tons of sugar, etc produced per unit of land, or per laborer. Of course the free farmer or sharecropper can have higher welfare than the slave, because they can invest in their own welfare at the expense of production.
This doesn’t seem true for the US historically. The growth rate of the US Black population seems basically constant in 1840-1880. If emancipation increased the growth rate we would see it in the trends. The reason is that when the slaveholding class steals the surplus of the slave class, they also have an incentive to increase the slave population, as in Virginia.
See this chart ChatGPT made:
If free labor actually increased cotton production, we would see production after 1865 quickly surpass the 1860 trendline, not just the level. Instead, just surpassing the level took until late 1870s and needed greatly increased land area and better technology, while the trendline remained permanently below the pre-1860 trend. The economics literature suggests that the end of slavery meant a huge downwards shock in agricultural productivity in the American South, and the disadvantages, like reduced human capital investment, mostly affected skilled labor sectors rather than agriculture.
The destruction of the civil war, the reconstruction afterwards, and the cost of transitioning social structures is definitely a confounder for your graph. Even then, there are more general reasons we might not expect total cotton production to increase despite increased efficiency per worker. The person you’re respond to didn’t provide any sources, but surely there are per-acre or per-person comparisons somewhere?
There is detailed analysis in the 1975 study Time on the Cross by Nobel winning economist Robert Fogel. The field has even better data or methods since then, but I’m not an economist and can’t point to them—all I know is that most secondary sources agree that plantation slavery had high agricultural productivity.
This was ultimately the case, but it’s deeply speculative as to whether that was because of abolition, or in spite of it.
It was the development of industrial technology that drove slavery to its height. The cotton gin, envisioned as a means to reduce reliance on slave labor, actually caused a massive increase in the need for slave labor. The enslaved population went from 700K in 1790 to 4+ million in 1860.
While slavery existed, there was no need to pursue labor saving technology. In fact, selective breeding of cotton strains was a prime focus of the industry so that cultivation could be extended to less optimal environments to be harvested by even more slaves. Slavery was on the increase prior to the war of emancipation and there was no incentive to look for alternatives.
Had the breakaway states achieved victory, it’s questionable if the nationwide hunt for industrial efficiency would have occurred. Best case it would have been delayed by decades. The USA would certainly not have been in a position to become involved in WWI and without that no (or greatly reduced) involvement in WWII and everything that followed.
Now that’s an interesting question. Automated farming equipment is ultimately much cheaper than use of slaves, but how much of an incentive does it take to make a nation invent or adopt a cheaper method? Very debatable whether “I’ll ultimately make K% more profit” is sufficient, or if “I’ll go bankrupt if I don’t find a solution right now” is needed.
Highly relevant in the context of AI. There are lots of jobs that an LLM can do well enough right now, given the right scaffolding, and a lot of money gets saved if that gets done, but it’s a laborious and very sensitive process to get from here to there.