You forget that I am one.**
To be honest, you are the only person I have ever heard to make that assertion. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite: conservatives are assumed to ‘equate “makes economic sense” with “is virtuous.”’ But this isn’t a political or moral discussion. It is purely economics.
Back to my earlier question: Did slave prices rise, as I assume they did, after importation was banned in 1808? How did this affect the economic viability of a slave economy?
Damn, kniz beat me to the Eli Witney stuff.
I agree with Whack-a-Mole and others who suggest that the slavery industry in the US would have collapsed eventually without the civil war simply due to economics. The relevant stat that comes to mind is the % of US workers who worked in agriculture at 1900 vs today. I don’t recall exactly but it goes from something like 80% to 2% of the workforce.
I also think that the growing abolishonist movement in the north and the lack of slavery in Europe would have added pressure to stop slavery.
I don’t think even a decade or two could have passed with slavery continuing as it were in the south. Just MHO.
However, I do think that this would make a huge difference to things today. I just don’t think the early beginnings of the civil rights movement would have been possible without every single slave and slave owner being long dead and buried. A couple decades longer of slavery would bring us right through WWI. Many gains by blacks in WWII might not have happened.
Imagine. The civil rights movement may not have happened until the 80’s or 90’s or even today. Seperate drinking fountains during the 90’s? Might have happened.
I don’t understand how anyone could have any serious question as to whether slavery makes economic sense. Perhaps salvery as it existed in the South was doomed, but how can slavery in general not make sense? Surely the right to soeone else’s labor is worth something.
But even if sharecropping is a better model, there is nothing which prevents a slave owner from having his slaves sharecrop, and since his is the option, he can demand a much higher share.
kniz:Jim Crow laws were local laws, not federal ones. It was the federal governent which fought against them.
mhendo: Your behavior is not appropiate for GD.
It was no more inappropriate that Dogface’s gratuitous bashing of liberals.
Anyway, Junior Mod, you must have mistaken me for someone who cares what you think.
No, your post added a new level of inappropriateness to the thread. Dogface’s post, by not naming anyone specifically, and not being, on its face, clearly insulting, lacked two qualities present in your post.
It may have made economic sense in that ANY industry at the time that required manual labor could be gotten for far cheaper if an owner was oly to pay minimal subsistence costs to his labor force. It wasn’t free, but I bet the price for labor would have Ibeen higher if the owners were faced with paying a living wage.
t seems to be that the owners didn’t pay an awful lot per slave when you consider that the slave’s offspring were owned as well. One of the main factors in determining a slave’s worth was that slave’s potential to make more slaves. I wonder if that if a slave’s descendants WEREN’T slaves for life if it would have made economic sense.
It may have made economic sense in that ANY industry at the time that required manual labor could be gotten for far cheaper if an owner was only to pay minimal subsistence costs to his labor force. It wasn’t free, but I bet the price for labor would have Ibeen higher if the owners were faced with paying a living wage.
t seems to be that the owners didn’t pay an awful lot per slave when you consider that the slave’s offspring were owned as well. One of the main factors in determining a slave’s worth was that slave’s potential to make more slaves. I wonder if that if a slave’s descendants WEREN’T slaves for life if it would have made economic sense.
Posted by Dogface:
Also posted by Dogface:
Dogface, I’ve been involved in liberal and leftist groups for years (everything from Young Democrats to the Socialist Party) and I have never met any liberal or leftist who in any way equated economic efficiency with moral virtue. What kind of “liberals” are you talking about? And what country do they live in, and on what planet?
Taking it into simple investments and returns, slavery at the time worked, and unfortunately it still works today, it is still with us.
The balance today is between the cost of investing in labour, and the cost in investing in technology, which has been true ever since profit and gain were around.
If you can produce even an expensive machine to replace human labour, it is generally useful to do so, and the higher the cost of that labour, then the greater incentive for investment, innovation and invention.
In slave economies, and I suppose in hired labour economies, investors have to decide on a balance between short term costs and longer term investments, but the tendency in slave economies is not to invest in some uncertain technology, but to stick with what you know works.
Investment in technology very often brings unforseen benefits and discoveries and creates entirely new markets, in slave economies this diversity does not happen and will generally stagnate when faced with a more dynamic competitor.
Post war reconstructed Germany and Japan forged ahead of other European nations, and although these nations had the advantage of cheaper money, labour was in short supply which necessitated investment in technology.
The result was that in the UK, for example, where labour was plentiful and relatively cheap, companies preferred to continue with elderly outdated production plant, and products and the immediate returns on this minimal investment appeared very good.
I personally have operated steel bashing plant in a suspension spring manufacturing plant that was nearly 150 years old, though it had been converted from using the old overhead drive shaft power system to electric motors.It is easy to get good returns on equipment that paid for itself over 140 years ago!
It took 20 years for Japan and Germany to rebuild, but their economic performance since then speaks volumes.
Slavery in the US, and even in Rome, damped down innovation.
Why construct an expensive machine that can carry out the task of a thousand workers when your short term direct labour costs are free ?
The real question here is, if the Civil War had been avoided, or if the South had won it, would slavery have been abolished anyway, for economic reasons?
I have my doubts. The economic value of slavery was the most important factor keeping the institution alive, but it was only one of several. The whole culture of the Southern landowning aristocracy was based on having slaves around; the owners could think of themselves (and did!) as medieval barons, lording it over their serfs. Domestic servants were essential to their genteel lifestyle, and in the old South (as in ancient Greece and Rome) there was no such thing as free domestic. Most Southern aristos had been raised by slaves, not by their own mothers; the idea of a world without those beloved retainers was inconceivable to them. Males of the slaveowning class got to use their slave women as concubines whenever they wanted; that must have seemed like a very hard thing to give up. And white Southerners generally took pride in being members of a master race, even when they personally could not afford to be master of anybody; we can see that in their desperate efforts to preserve Jim Crow generations later. Above all this was the element of fear. The whites in the South, and especially the slaveowners, lived in daily fear of a successful slave uprising like the one in Haiti in 1791. They were not just in fear for their power, they were in fear for their lives. They believed the blacks were but half-tamed animals and if once they slipped the leash, there would be no stopping them from running wild in an orgy of burning, looting, murder and (above all!) rape – all things which really did happen in the Haitian revolt. Therefore, in their eyes any abolitionist was an insanely dangerous radical anarchist. (In reality, when the slaves were freed by Federal arms they took no such reprisals against their former masters. Why not? Perhaps they were too Christian. But what made the American slaves different from the Haitians? Might be a good topic for another thread.)
Harry Turtledove has written a series of alternate-history novels based on the premise that the South won the Civil War. In the first, How Few Remain (Ballantine-Del Rey 1997), the Confederacy fights a second war with the U.S. in 1882, and wins, with the help of Britain and France. At this time slavery is still a thriving institution, but the national leaders decide to abolish it – not because it is uneconomical, but because the British and French despise slavery and the Confederacy still needs their support. (I think this scenario is a bit too optimistic.) Even after emancipation, however, the blacks are held under a strict apartheid regime, with passbooks and everything, and practically all white Southerners retain the attitude that some kinds of work are “nigger work” and beneath them. In later novels of the series, this leads to truly tragic consequences that I won’t go into now.
Sorry if it read that way. What I meant was that Jim Crow laws were a reaction to the reconstruction policies of the federal government. There is also a good chance that emancipation was a good idea, but not the complete answer. 