Absentee plantation ownership has been much criticised for its deleterious social effects and productive inefficiency. The economic case against absenteeism was founded on arguments first advanced by Adam Smith. Slavery was one of the examples used by Smith to illustrate his theories of monitoring and incentives. A slave, he wrote, was a ‘person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much and labour as little as possible’. While systems of coercion and control might succeed in preserving the profitability of enslavement, such an institution could never be efficient.

Agency problems are created whenever a conflict of interest arises between an owner and the overseer of a business, and when the costs of monitoring the overseer's behaviour are high. West Indian estates were located thousands of miles away from Britain and communications were very slow by modern standards (a letter sent out to the colonies might take up to two months to be delivered). White managers of absentee estates possessed powers of coercion over enslaved labourers; observing the daily conduct of such overseers was well-nigh impossible. Smith's criticism of slavery argued that managerial failures compounded a slave's inherent lack of incentives. In consequence, agents were well placed to defraud distant grandee employers, more concerned with status-enhancing projects of conspicuous consumption than with scrutinising the cost schedules of their estates.