Since slavery may mask the true total cost of the industries dependent on slave labor, it also tends to cause disproportionate investment in those industries; massive economic reorganization may then be required if and when the institution is abolished. For example, the adverse economic effects of over-investment in cotton plantations and related industry persist to this day in some parts of the old South. Slavery in the United States has had other long-term adverse social and political effects, of great consequence even today, which are so obvious as to require no elaboration here.

Slavery has not only praxeological implications, but also profound moral consequences, which will be understood better in the light of principles to be developed in Subsection 3.12, "Ethics in Society."

Conscription

Conscription is the coercive seizure of human labor, usually for a limited length of time. Even if conscripted workers are paid, their labor is not obtained by voluntary contract, and conscription therefore still constitutes an interventionist initiation of force. Conscripted labor is most often invoked for military purposes (the "draft"), but occasionally arises in other contexts. For instance, public school systems may combine truancy laws with "community service" requirements, thus obtaining involuntary labor to serve the "public interest."

^Previous