the argument that slave conditions in the south were preferable to market labour working conditions in the north has been made by essentially every american socialist since 1850, including chomsky, zinn and dewey. it's not generally presented as an argument in favour of slavery, though - it's usually presented as an argument against labour markets.
a variation on this argument is the observation that slave owners rarely killed their property, as they were invested in it, but were more open to killing "free workers" as they could just hire another one.
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Xavier Mahan
With Ana's definition of slavery most of us are slaves.
jessica
yeah, she kind of screwed that up. in fact, o'reilly is perverting a leftist intellectual tradition that rejects the difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery. she didn't mean it, but she's accidentally absolutely right.