Sprinkling in the words “supply” and “demand” doesn’t make it an argument.
I would be very happy if it were just a model, but it is not even a model. That’s exactly the problem.
If you want to make an argument, you have to actually say something about supply and demand. You have to connect slavery (or any other aspect of any particular time and place) to supply or demand, or, better, both.
It is much more popular to argue that cheap labor caused the industrial revolution than that expensive labor caused the industrial revolution. Maybe expensive labor caused the agricultural revolution, which overshot and produced cheap labor, which in turn caused the industrial revolution. But if you can’t tell the difference between that claim and the claim that expensive labor causing the industrial revolution, then you don’t actually mean anything when you claim to have a model.
Sprinkling in the words “supply” and “demand” doesn’t make it an argument.
I would be very happy if it were just a model, but it is not even a model. That’s exactly the problem.
If you want to make an argument, you have to actually say something about supply and demand. You have to connect slavery (or any other aspect of any particular time and place) to supply or demand, or, better, both.
It is much more popular to argue that cheap labor caused the industrial revolution than that expensive labor caused the industrial revolution. Maybe expensive labor caused the agricultural revolution, which overshot and produced cheap labor, which in turn caused the industrial revolution. But if you can’t tell the difference between that claim and the claim that expensive labor causing the industrial revolution, then you don’t actually mean anything when you claim to have a model.