Admittedly without support, I'd assume that slavery held back southern productivity.

If you are making profit to support a lavish lifestyle relative to your local peers and (crucially) there is no free market value of your laborers' labor, then what incentive do you have to apply innovation?

Some (cotton gin), but certainly less than a free (in all senses of the word) labor market where a shortage of workers leads to increased wages and a push towards mechanization.

> Admittedly without support, I'd assume that slavery held back southern productivity. If you are making profit to support a lavish lifestyle relative to your local peers and (crucially) there is no free market value of your laborers' labor, then what incentive do you have to apply innovation?

I agree. It is my understanding that the Romans were in a good position to develop a usable steam engine, but never had enough motivation to do so, because slave labor was cheaper.

  Germany has no history of slavery

We'll just conveniently ignore the war years, gotcha.

That is stupid sophistry. In looking at an economy, comparing economic models, forced labor during 4-5 war years (especially a war which turned out to be a big loss and destruction of the country) is different than institutionalized serfdom/slavery over generations.

That's because when l the other empires where getting going Germany was a set of small disunited sates.

Also take a look at what happened in the Sud west if you think Colonial Germany didn't have slaves