eli5: how does wage labor produce more profit than slave labor?

Question

To Start slavery in any form is immoral and needs to be abolished from every corner of the globe.

I am asking this because I heard somewhere that a big factor for the banning of slavery in these industrialized areas of the world (I.e Britain and the Northern US) was motivated by profits because it was better on profits to have paid workers rather than slaves.

That could also be 100% wrong but if it is true then wouldn’t slave labor bring more profit than a paid worker?

In: 0

Answer 1

Slaves need to be maintained. With the paid labour model, a (barely, if at all sufficient) wage is distributed to the workers to finance their own lives. It shifted the power in a different way, where now the workers “desire” being exploited.