Would there have been any use for slaves after cotton-picking was automated?
stitching footballs, gutting fish, there's always a use for the mindless manual labor suited to the negro
Easily could have delegated rote manufacturing and the like to them rather than outsourcing to lesser-developed countries, seeing as low/non-existent wages could be paid while keeping the industry at home. Transportation costs would be significantly reduced, even when accounting for the lessened friction of distance present today. Certain countries like Pakistan still have some forms of slavery—primarily debt bondage—and they frequently do precisely that: rote manufacturing of stuff regular citizens have no interest in performing.Seeing as manufacturing is being increasingly automated now, though, the only remaining sector that wouldn't necessitate educating the slaves would be the tertiary sector (services). Raises the issues of low worker performance and difficulty of supervision, but the former could likely be mitigated via physical & mental conditioning.
>>18002523There plenty of slaves working in factories, from breweries to steel mills, with educated slave foremen overseeing slave labourers. I don't see any reason why a slave economy is inherently incompatible with an industrial economy, it's just never been tried outside of war
Yes, although cotton-picking automation made large-scale slave labor economically unnecessary for cotton, but cheap labor could still be exploited elsewhere. The world might always have slaves, unfortunately.
