Comments by "DefaultFlame" (@DefaultFlame) on "MentisWave"
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Slavery is economically viable in some niche cases, usually when a relatively easily produced resource such as tobacco or sugar (not that sugar was that easy to produce, but you get the idea) skyrockets in price due to being geographically locked in an underdeveloped region of the world. However, even in the slave owning southern US slavery was being phased out for not being economically viable before the cotton gin was invented, briefly revitalizing the practice, as tobacco had fallen in price and cotton was so labor intensive that it couldn't compete with wool produced in the north prior to the cotton gin.
Housing, feeding, and containing a slave population is expensive. Paying pennies to poor farmworkers that have to feed and house themselves and who willingly go to their place of work is surprisingly cheap in comparison. Slavery is only really viable if no willing workers can be found, and after a few generations, or even less, it's cheaper to free them and employ them for a low wage.
Then agricultural machinery comes along and puts most of them out of work.
Wage and debt slavery are some of the few forms of slavery still practiced in the world as they are economically viable. The only form of pure chattel slavery (people as property bought and sold) that is still economically viable and practiced in the modern world is sex slavery.
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