Despite claims from progressive historians that US slavery was a natural outgrowth of a free market economy, the reality is that slavery would have been much costlier without governments—federal and state—subsidizing it. It is time to set the record straight.
Joshua Mawhorter
Assistant Editor, Mises.org
Joshua Mawhorter is assistant editor of Mises.org. He was a summer fellow at the Mises Institute (2023) and a government/economics and US history teacher since 2016. Josh has a bachelor’s degree in political science from California State University, Bakersfield, a master’s in political science from Southern New Hampshire University, and a master’s in Austrian economics from the Mises Graduate School (2023). He has self-published a few books, including The First Constitution: The Articles of Confederation, Tyrannosaurus Debt: The Student Loan Crisis and How to Survive, and “An Austrian Critique of Modern Monetary Theory”, his thesis. He also enjoys teaching in the areas of theology, the Old Testament, church history, apologetics, and philosophy.
Latest work
Slavery has existed throughout history in all places and cultures. It was not introduced by the political state yet, as with many things, slavery could not have had the scope or extent that it did in...
Joshua Mawhorter argues that slavery persisted largely due to government intervention rather than free-market mechanisms.
