Reasons for the modern slave trade

A Russian-American libertarian Jewish law professor writes:

You don’t have to take my word for the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause, or even the word of the overwhelming majority of Civil War historians. Take that of Confederate President Jefferson Davis himself, who unequivocally stated in 1861 that the cause of his state’s secession was that “she had heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Or that of Davis’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, who famously avowed that “slavery . . . was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and that protecting it was the “cornerstone” of the new Confederate government. Consider also the Southern states’ official statements outlining their reasons for secession, which focus on slavery far more than any other issue.

A Southern newspaper has a contrary view:

Abraham Lincoln repeatedly stated his war was caused by taxes only, and not by slavery, at all.

"My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861)." reads paragraph 5 of Lincoln's First Message to the U.S. Congress, penned July 4, 1861.

"I have no purpose, directly or in-directly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so," Lincoln said it his first inaugural on March 4 of the same year.

Even if you had a time machine to take you bak to 1861, you could not resolve this by asking Lincoln, a soldier, or anyone.

Note that the slave trade had been abolished at least 50 years before.

Compare this to the modern slave trade, by which I mean the induced movement of millions of ppl to fill labor markets.

Here are the main reasons our elites support the slave trade:

Much has been written about the strange bedfellows of the establishment left. What unites feminists, Islamists, anarchists, Bernie-bros, LGBTQ+, BLM rioters, and Hillary voters often seems to be little more than rebellious hatred for Western Civilization. However, that still does not explain what motivates their upper-echelon donors. What causes the—mostly white and male—chairmen and executives of the Western, corporate elite to financially support the very people who would gladly see them hanged in the streets?

The short answer is a deadly combo of greed and virtue-signaling, exacerbated by a small cohort of anti-white agitators. While this is a varied and complicated issue, for simplicity’s sake this article will focus solely on the effects this has on immigration policy. ...

What makes the majority of corporate elites support mass-immigration?

1. Cheap Labor ...
2. More Consumers ...
3. Cheap Virtue-Signaling ...

I would not be surprised if 10% or more of global CO2 emissions can be attributed to the modern slave trade.

Here is an explanation from a libertarian economics professor in an elitist British mag:

Making Nigerians stay in Nigeria is as economically senseless as making farmers plant in Antarctica,” argue Mr Caplan and Mr Naik. And the non-economic benefits are hardly trivial, either. A Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram.

Bryan Caplan appears to confirm all 3 reasons.

All 3 arguments are dubious. Let's compare again to the negro slave trade of 1800. It apparently provided the labor to pick cotton, but surely the external costs were much greater. The Civil War itself must have more than wiped out all the money that was ever made on cotton.

Likewise, mass immigration is profitable for certain businesses today, but costly for everyone else.

There is also a myth that our economy is improved by having more consumers buying more goods. Economists create this myth by the way they calculate GDP, and saying silly things like consumer spending being two thirds of the economy.

The cheap virtue-signaling is maybe the most disgusting of all the arguments. Caplan acts as if there is something noble about buying slaves from Boko Haram and sabotaging societies elsewhere.