it is the near-universal consensus among economic historians and economists that slavery was not "a system irrationally kept in existence by plantation owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests

Well, I’ll be damned.

So what you’re saying is, the complaint about China spying on people boils down to piracy?

Frankly, it’skind of the opposite: the slavery part of the argument is obvious, simply because IIRC the model of chattel slavery the US south operated on was only viable through the constant flow of new people to feed into the meatgrinder. The “better off” part is kinda dubious.