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Notes -
Why not the fact that slavery is a lot more economically feasible when your crops spoil very quickly when picked, have relatively constant harvest times, and don't lend themselves very well to even rudimentary mechanization (ox + plow + wheel and axle will not help you generate more tree fruits to anywhere near the same extent those things will help you get more grain per harvest)?
When labor is cheap, and you inherently need lots of it due to the properties of one's crops, how can you justify spending the money to mechanize for only marginal benefit? The only other real option is defense/arms races, and the American civilizations really had no concept of what kind of destruction the Sea Peoples were going to visit on them when they arrived. No need for selection pressure there, just sit back and relax, we're the only people in the world.
But spoilage was not a problem for the crops that slaves in the New World were imported to work on: cotton and tobacco in the US; sugar in Brazil and the Caribbean. And of course cotton did lend itself to mechanization, in the form of the cotton gin.
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