What happened is that people were informed in more vivid detail about
the conditions of life of real slaves, which convinced them that they
didn't want to live in a state/nation/etc where those sort of things
happen to people. Concrete facts were more persuasive that abstract
arguments about what is or is not "evil" in principle.
>It just makes no sense at all to argue about how to make something evil
>more efficient, whether we've got it at present or not.
Here's a news flash: it may not be possible to eliminate all evils in
the world anytime soon. Even if war is evil, for example, it makes
sense to seek ways so wars kill fewer people when the happen.
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/