Resolved: A truely capitalistic system would be detrimental to slavery, even if it were permitted t

I am honored to participate in it. Framework: In this debate it is my job to prove that a system of true capitalism would benefit slavery. In this debate whether or whether not slavery is allowed is not a question, therefore this is a hypothetical argument of what would happen in a truly capitalist society where slavery is allowed. If I can prove that there would be more slavery in a capitalist system where slavery is allowed the resolution is negated and I win this debate. Contention 1: Slavery throughout history Throughout all of history slavery was and is used for manual labor from sex to resource collection. For the most part we are going to focus on resource collection, for it is the most relevant to this debate. Slaves would collect resources through dangerous and often deadly means. They did this to drive economies and drive trade. Many of the resources collected were through agriculture and mining. They collected these resources, because there was a demand for those resources to drive the civilization. Without slaves the civilizations would not be able to thrive as well as they did. Decent evidence for this is you can see throughout history that the most successful civilizations throughout history were built on a foundation of slavery. The Roman Empire, The British Empire, The US and the list goes on. If slavery was allowed it would increase because of capitalism's desire to drive the economy and to make profits soar at any cost. While not all corporations are bad many of them will abandon morals for the sake of profit. This can be seen in Cigarette and Tobacco companies when research proving smoking to be detrimental to health first starting coming out. They did not care about their consumer and denied any evidence of the harms of smoking for the sake of saving their profits. If slavery were allowed corporations and companies would abandon morals for the sake of profit. Slavery would exist in today's society because there is still a demand for physical labor. Because of slavery's mostly worldwide disapproval and ban forced slavery was replaced by waged slavery. If slavery were allowed and not looked down upon forced slavery would take waged slavery's place. Contention 2: The nature of Capitalism For better or for worse Capitalism is a system driven by profit. Maximizing profit is the lifeblood of capitalism. It is what allows successful, innovative ideas to be successful and for generally bad ideas to be put out of business. This has some pros and it has some cons, however that is not too relevant. One of the cons to this is it drives companies and corporations to go to morally questionable lengths to make money. Despite a great amount of the public disagreeing with these practices they still remain widely done. Why? Because they make money. This can be seen with Apple's practice of buying from Foxconn, something you probably have heard a lot about. This shows that companies will sacrifice moral principles, but it doesn't matter because it makes money. Despite having practices a great majority of the public would disagree with, Apple still remains an extremely popular company having a huge name in phone production. This proves that companies will abandon moral principles for the sake of profit. Even more than that the companies who have the lowest moral principles can go straight to the top of the corporate ladder because they make the most money. While some companies with strong moral principles will have positions of power the important point is that companies who have no such principles will also be at the top. This means that because corporations will take up the institution of slavery if it were allowed to maximize profits. Therefore if this is true the resolution is negated and I should win this debate Contention 3: Slavery will increase profits. Causing companies to adopt the institution. (Disclaimer: I am speaking about this from an objective perspective and view this as a bad thing and am strongly against the institution of slavery. ) So far all of my arguments have hinged upon the assertion that slavery increases profit and drives the economy. So now I will take upon this contention to prove that. So as I stated before you will see throughout history that the civilizations that used slave labor ended up the most successful. This is some evidence, but in all fairness it is not concrete proof as there is still the possibility that it is correlation and not causation so I will take it upon myself to further provide evidence and reasoning. 1. Under Capitalism a slave is the perfect worker. A cheap payment that will lead to a lifetime of backbreaking work. There won't be any issues with unions or demanding pay raises. The slave owners will simply buy practically free labor and reap all of the benefits while giving none to the worker. That is the ideal worker under a capitalist system. 2. Slavery allows for production to skyrocket. While you need a high demand to make more profit that is not very hard to come by if you chose the right resources to produce. With high production you have the ability to drive your competitors out of business and have a larger grip on your market and get your brand well known by selling it to a large pool of customers. By doing this you can greatly increase profits giving your business huge potential. 3. For my third point I will refute some common points made saying that slavery does not increase profits. A. Some say slavery decreases the quality of the product, therefore reducing profit. However, creating a lower quality product is not always going to be a lower profit than the status quo. Lower quality products sold at cheap prices is great for reaching out to lower income and younger customers. This can be seen with the corporation McDonald's. They produce low quality food at low prices and they are the largest fast food corporation in the world. If McDonald's had slave labor their production would shoot up even higher than it is now and give them the ability to make even more money. B. Some will also say that slavery limits innovation by focusing on hard manual labor and not technology. This is a decent argument, but one fatal mistake they make is they leave out what happens after the resources are harvested. For example, miners can be used to harvest metals used in electronics to innovate technology. Also, by creating all of these raw materials there is a lot more abundance to those resources which allows us to do more research with those resources. Contention 4: Mercantilism is capitalist in nature and was responsible for enslavement of millions. Mercantilism's logic can be briefly summed up by this. The greatest amount of money in the shortest amount of time at any cost. Sound familiar? It should, because it is very similar to capitalism. There are a few differences, but the nature of the two economic systems are practically identical. Capitalism seeks to maximize profits and will often sacrifice moral principles to do so. Mercantilism seeks to do basically the same thing. The only key difference I see is Capitalism exists in a period of time with more advanced economic knowledge and technology. Many historians agree that Mercantilism was one of the most devastating and heartless economic systems created. Mercantilism was a driving force in the colonial period and was the cause of the trans-atlantic slave trade. In other words a system with nature practically identical to Capitalism was responsible for one of the most brutal and racist slave trades ever to exist. One can only logically confer that a system of true Capitalism will yield similar results if allowed to do so. Onto you Pro Sources in Comments.