Also you may freely ignore his change of stance, the laws and norms of the time, etc
Some people can't help themselves from bringing irrelevant facts to the conversation.
Pretending like these things can be separated is ignorance. Ignoring its brutality does a disservice to our history and that man's legacy
Ben Franklin was one of the greatest minds worldwide of the 18th century. Odds are, even without slavery, he would have contributed just as much as he did with slavery. It's not like he made his money working slaves to the bone in a field and couldn't turn a profit without slavery.
He was a publisher. A few slaves were involved but they were largely incidental to the business. As in, he could have easily paid John and Sam a wage instead of paying to feed and house Peter and George and the business would be entirely unaffected
Besides, without Franklin, there would be no United States, the free-est country in history.
Likewise, Ben Franklin being a founding father doesn't somehow balance the scales in that regard. The existence of the United States doesn't retroactively make slavery ok.
The Founders saw fit to abolish the nobility, and disassociated religion from government. We've forgotten what an enormous leap both of those were (each of the colonies had an establishment of religion). I've seen endless documentaries on the founding of the country, and there's no mention of either of these.
Half of the colonies did abolish slavery. But, again, if it was demanded of the other half, the Union would never have happened.
Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington all held slaves.
I am certainly not advocating slavery. I'm merely pointing out that people should be judged on the morality of their times, not today's morality. If we judged past people by our modern standards, they would all be condemned.
And while he did have a sense of humor (I hear that daylight savings time was just a joke), I don't think that is why he had slaves. He kept them because they were useful to him, and the moment he died they were no longer useful. The slaves owned by others were never useful to him, so they should be freed immediately.
Again, Franklin knew slavery was wrong, literally campaigned to end it for that reason, yet did it himself for decades in the meanwhile, not a difficult horror to grasp in any time
While it operates as a free-market country, the Norwegian government holds large ownership stakes in strategic industries, including petroleum, hydroelectric power, telecommunications, and banking.
Experts often characterize the Norwegian economy as a blend of private enterprise, state ownership, and social welfare that provides high standards of living.
(Cribbed from google)