In other words, your betters know best. Are you honestly arguing that it's better to be a slave than a free worker? Are you honestly making that comparison? Here's the difference--my great-grandfather immigrated to this country and worked a miserable job in the coal mines. His children did better than him, and their children did even better. That's why immigrants flooded to America,. By contrast, a slave's children were going to be slaves. His grandchildren were going to be slaves. His great grandchildren were going to be slaves. Conflating free labor and the opportunity for social mobility that America has always offered with slavery is mind boggling.
In the name of Mammon, all things are allowed.
Such as owning people. Don't pretend that the south's interests in slavery weren't purely economic.
A "free worker" -- besides being an oxymoron -- was not measurably better off than many nominal slaves.
Are you honestly making that comparison?
Comparison, yes. Equation? No.
Conflating free labor and the opportunity for social mobility that America has always offered with slavery is mind boggling.
It is naive to say that "social mobility" was available to many of the immigrant classes in the mid-19th century. Economic realities -- including the exploitation of working classes by Northern factory aristocrats -- mired many immigrants in perpetual penury. Look at the "company towns" of the mining concerns or the abuse of Chinese and Irish labor during the railroad expansion westward.
I am not equating the two systems; wage slaves are still paid, and are -- at least ostensibly -- free to seek other employment. But there is less concrete difference between the two than the mere nomenclature would indicate.
Don't pretend that the south's interests in slavery weren't purely economic.
I didn't. But slavery as an economic necessity was fast becoming obsolete. And I daresay the slaves displaced by mechanization and "freed" from their masters would not have found their lot considerably improved for all the talk of "liberation."