Originally Posted by kerry

Why slavery disappeared is a bit of a puzzle to me. I've heard the argument that industrialization made it unnecessary. But that argument by itself I don't find convincing. What's cheaper about having free workers in a factory as compared to slaves? The best argument I can imagine is that factories are associated with cities and housing slaves in cities is expensive compared to housing slaves on a large farm. But that argument isn't completely convincing either since workers still have to pay for housing in cities.
On a macro scale, I can see where allowing free class movement from the lower classes to the upper classes is preferable since it allows smart people, who would otherwise be slaves, to move beyond the level of simple manual labor and contribute to the economy in more complex ways. So if the slave class gets educated, the economy might find a new Einstein or a new Bill Gates. But the micro process of that transition from chattel slavery to wage slavery eludes me. Do people know of specific examples where a slave owner switched from being a chattel slave owner to being a wage slave owner? I don't know of any.