re: #256 Mattand

Thing is, it’s really not true — or true only from the invention of the cotton gin to the civil war. The north was overtaking the south in every way by the time the war approached.

And whether slavery was a necessary part of the flourishing US economy (note I’m not saying that it did not provide that boost in the early US) is not certain either. Slave labor is not as efficient as free labor because there’s nothing in it for the slave. If the south had employed free labor after the revolution, would they have been less prosperous? There’s no way to go back and test, but in other places and times, free labor has beaten servile labor.