Roland Fryer had a very nice piece on slavery in the Wall Street Journal to mark Juneteenth. A small excerpt:
Slavery endured not only because society condoned it but also because, for slaveholders, it paid. Fogel and Engerman overturned the then-fashionable view that bondage was an economically backward form of racist exploitation, manned by an idle workforce that dragged the South down. Their data revealed a colder truth: For those who owned people, slavery was the most profitable and therefore most rational labor system on offer. Recognizing the profit calculus behind slavery doesn’t dilute its moral horror—it sharpens it. It exposes how market incentives can entrench inhumanity and how the lure of profit can eclipse compassion.
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