Exactly! Why innovate when you can enslave? Why wasn’t the Antebellum American South industrialized? Slavery kills the impetus to reduce labor.
Counterpoint: The American South very quickly adopted one of the classic inventions of the Industrial Revolution, the cotton gin. And it has been proposed that this actually helped entrench slavery in the South.
Exactly! Why innovate when you can enslave? Why wasn’t the Antebellum American South industrialized? Slavery kills the impetus to reduce labor.
Counterpoint: The American South very quickly adopted one of the classic inventions of the Industrial Revolution, the cotton gin. And it has been proposed that this actually helped entrench slavery in the South.