When you own the lawmakers, you can tailor make laws to support your businesses... And they did.
Second, if "robber barons" did allegedly break existing laws, were they prosecuted and what were the results?
I refer you to Hillary as a recent example of how this works out in practice.
In Northern states slavery was abolished peacefully and gradually, no need for violence or confiscations of property.
And the same would have eventually occurred in the Southern states had people left them alone. I have read about how the abolition movement took shape since the Declaration of Independence kickstarted it, and it's outcome was inevitable.
It would have happened in the border states before it got to the deeper South, but the social dynamic were impossible to stop. Many of the Slaveowners had become wealthy enough to feel guilty over their source of income.
Charles Dickens covers this ground in his book "American Notes."
But Slavery was not the proximate cause of the war. It was Slave produced money that was the cause, on both sides.
Any and all the economic issues you claim were so important to them could have been reasonably negotiated away, but they never did.
So you assert.
After the first year or so, the economic cause of the war became irrelevant. Too much blood had been shed, and it had become a war of Domination and Revenge on the part of the North, and a war to get away from oppression on the part of the South.
Today there are 100 or 1,000 times more laws regulating business than during the Gilded Age.
The result is more uniformity in standards of business practices, but also vastly less freedom to experiment & grow new types of business.
So those old-time giant "captains of industry" are now replaced by little corporals of corporate bureaucracy, more committed to following minute rules than to innovating new & better solutions to customer needs.
Point is: a more balanced view of the Gilded Age would note the US economic growth rate then rivaled that of, for example, China in recent years.
Those "captains of industry" dramatically transformed for the better both the landscape and standards of living of tens of millions of Americans.
The fact that "robber barons" didn't follow all new laws written in years since doesn't mean they were necessarily unethical by standards of that time.
By the way, if you are not yet a fan of Ayn Rand, I highly recommend her to you.
She has a brilliant analysis of exactly your concerns here, of which my words are but a poor reflection.
DiogenesLamp speaking of abolition: "It would have happened in the border states before it got to the deeper South, but the social dynamic were impossible to stop.
Many of the Slaveowners had become wealthy enough to feel guilty over their source of income. "
In a more normal course of events, Border States like Maryland, Delaware and even Missouri could well have faced abolition movements and followed their Northern cousins in gradual peaceful abolition.
Among the reasons for that is: absent cotton in those Border States, slavery was nowhere near as profitable as in the Deep South.
But slavery's extreme profitability is part of what made Deep Cotton South slave-holders adamant in opposing any whiff of suggestions regarding abolition.
Under no circumstances would they "go gentle into that good night" , period.
Anyway, my feelings about those old-time slave-holders is akin to that towards those Gilded Age "robber barons" you condemn so quickly.
Both categories lived under the laws of their time and really should not be so condemned for not obeying laws which had not yet been written.
See Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution regarding ex post facto laws.
DiogenesLamp speaking of peaceful abolition: "But Slavery was not the proximate cause of the war.
It was Slave produced money that was the cause, on both sides.
Again, my analogy is Pearl Harbor, about which you might argue the "proximate cause of war" was economics, since FDR had embargoed shipments of oil and other raw materials to Japan.
But there was no war, and indeed could have been no war because in 1941 88% of Americans opposed it, before Pearl Harbor.
So Pearl Harbor is the proximate cause of US entry into WWII.
The same logic applies to Fort Sumter.
Neither slavery nor economics, nor any other reason sometimes mentioned, was the "proximate cause" of war.
Confederate assault on and seizure of Fort Sumter was.
DiogenesLamp speaking of possible negotiations: "After the first year or so, the economic cause of the war became irrelevant.
Too much blood had been shed, and it had become a war of Domination and Revenge on the part of the North, and a war to get away from oppression on the part of the South."
But economics was never the cause of war, proximate or otherwise.
And, by the end of the first year of war, freedom for slaves was becoming a huge issue for the Union.
Regardless, my key point here still stands: Confederates could have stopped the war on any day of their own choosing, and could have negotiated much better terms than they received at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, but they refused and instead continued fighting until the bitter, bitter end.
Who is to blame for that?
Who is to blame for the fact it took A-bombs to convince Japan to surrender, "unconditionally"?
President Roosevelt, or Truman?
Nah.