This is a weird lens to look at slavery through. The circumstances in the US were unique: intense economic coupling to slavery, very large regional identity defined by slavery, &c.
More importantly, I'm not sure what this has to do with Rayiner's point. The realization that many plantation slaves would be better utilized as doctors and lawyers did not free the slaves, nor did economic competition from non-slaveholding plantations. It did, in fact, require coercion.
IMO the blame lies at least partly on American hyper-competitive mentality, where you have people on both sides willing to go to war over slavery, or "wage cultural war on homophobes" today. My link was intended to show that not all countries are like that.
I just can't agree with Rayiner that we should escalate more because the current conflict is all-important. Game theory tells us that if everyone thinks that way, society loses. And game theory offers a way out: you need a shared culture that enables de-escalation without losing face. Conflicts would still get resolved, but without wasting tons of resources on both sides. Many countries have that.
just to add, some writers distinguish between societies where slavery existed (almost every human society) and "slave societies", where "the definition of the relationship between ownership and labor -- is defined by slavery". (see: http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/09/the-slav...)
> intense economic coupling to slavery, very large regional identity defined by slavery, &c
If we wish this to be relevant to the current discussion: do you think the US has intense economic coupling to few-women-in-tech? Large regional identity defined by few-women-in-tech?
> It did, in fact, require coercion.
In a minority of instances, it was achieved through coercion. That doesn't mean coercion was the only way it was ever going to happen in those instances.
And when someone says "it took guns, not economics" then it seems entirely to the point that guns were only involved in a minority of instances. I'm not sure how you can not think this is relevant to what Rayiner was saying.
[citation needed]