> “As Thomas Piketty (2014, 158–61) pointed out, the capital value of slaves from the founding of the United States until 1863 was about 150 percent of annual national income. With Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were no longer objects of alienable property. They could not be used as collateral, and they were no longer capital. As slaves were transformed into wage laborers, the owned human component of the value of total US capital assets was reduced to zero.” Excerpt From: Geoffrey M. Hodgson. [[Conceptualizing Capitalism]]