The Economics of Slavery
Probing the incentives and institutions that kept slavery alive can help us value what freedom means, by Roland Fryer
"Learning what slavery entailed is enough to horrify us; understanding why it endured demands economics. Moral repulsion at reducing people to property can—and must—coexist with the need to explain how such barbarism flourished in a nation that proclaimed “all men are created equal.” Only by probing the incentives and institutions that kept slavery alive can we fully appreciate what freedom means.
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"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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"Teaching that slavery was simply racial exploitation differs from showing that it was capitalism run amok, an incentive-driven system that targeted black people because doing so maximized profit. Both interpretations acknowledge slavery’s brutality, but the economic framing sheds light on how incentives can be reshaped, pointing to concrete ways the future can be brighter."
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