I don’t disagree with the argument you make, but underpinning it is the tacit acceptance that a slave is part of the labor market. I don’t think I see why that is necessarily the case. I do think you could look at them as part of the labor market, but I also think they have more in common with capital assets excepting the fact they are members of the human species–but the economic picture doesn’t really change because of that fact necessarily.
Anyway, I do think this is more a matter of opinion than right/wrong. I think there is a good argument that slaves were part of the labor market, I just don’t know that I fully accept it and I think they at least could be considered part of the asset/capital investment side of things.
You could also say the government is simply telling the slave owner he can manage his personal property in the manner he sees fit. I don’t know that it is intrinsically anti-free market.
Again, if you view slaves as part of the labor market.
Right, in practice the South was absolutely not a free market economy. My only point was a theoretical one, that you can have slavery and still be a free market economy. The South wasn’t, it wasn’t even a free democratic society for various reasons. It was ruled by a powerful elite that concentrated most of the political power, land, and wealth in their hands and it did not spread to entrepreneurs or anyone else. It was passed down generation to generation akin to how European nobles passed on their wealth.
This is all correct- and it was also absolutely not a free market economy or a free democratic society because of slavery- formal and informal government intervention (state and local) prevented millions of people through force and threat of force of selling their labor, owning property, and moving freely.
And I think this is completely false. You cannot have slavery (on a significant scale, anyway) without major government support and intervention. Otherwise, slaves will free themselves by force- in all of world history, slaves were never just passive victims. It is government support (both formal and informal, and state and local in the case of the old South), government force, and government threat of force that maintains slaves as slaves and masters as masters. Slaves don’t just stay slaves “naturally”- with time, slaves escaped and/or organized and rebelled. This happened in every society in all of history that had large scale slavery- and each of these societies used government force to maintain slavery. Even informal “citizen militias” had informal government logistical support as well as the all-important government stamp of approval.
So no, you cannot have slavery on a significant scale and still be a free market economy.
Throughout history the primary force that kept slaves in check were the slave holders. They employed armed guards and used physical control of their slaves to prevent uprisings. The government provides an important “backstop”, but it is very much the case that a wealthy guy who makes investments in chains and guards can mostly keep his slaves secured on his own.
A big part of it is ignorance, for example in the Roman Republic and Empire most slaves came from conquered peoples and would be housed with other slaves that they might not even share a common language with. They had no conception of where they were on a globe or map (as they would have probably been ignorant of even using a map), and no idea where they could go if they escaped.
While true, the legions would come in and suppress a big slave revolt, they typically didn’t happen in the first place because the slaves would have had no idea where to go or even what to do in order to escape Roman jurisdiction if they had staged a slave revolt. The actual historical details on the Spartacus servile war have always been sketchy, but from what we can tell, Kirk Douglas movies notwithstanding, those slaves were not running around trying to escape the Italian peninsula. Once they had killed their masters and formed an armed band they appeared to settle in as brigands and vandals, plundering the land until enough legions were sent against them to destroy the force. Most likely this is because they had no realistic idea as to how they would get from Southern Italy to somewhere safe from the Romans.
But anyway, the idea that you can’t be in a free market economy if slavery is practiced is just asinine. If we use such a strict definition we have to dispense with the whole concept of free markets and say there is no such thing. I think instead it makes sense where an economy is mostly driven by free market principles, to call that a free market economy. A slave holding economy where prices of goods are primarily determined by market participants and market participants are free to engage in business mostly as they please, would be a mostly free market economy to my mind.
I would agree you can’t have a “free democratic society” with slavery, but you can have a democratic society. I don’t think one should get too hung up on the franchise. If ultimate power rests in the citizenry and not an oligarchy or monarchy then whatever the specifics you are dealing with a democratic society. That’s why I consider post-English Civil War England and later the UK to be democratic societies. Yes, much power was wielded by the nobility and some still wielded by the monarch, and the franchise was very limited. But it was nowhere near so limited as to call it an oligarchy nor was the monarch powerful enough to call it an absolute monarchy. Democratic society is the only definition that fits.
Throughout history, slaveholders were not able to keep large populations of slaves in bondage for long periods of time without the force of government in support both on paper and materially. Sure, some slaveholders might put down a rebellion on their own, but an entire slave society? Cannot exist (and never has existed) without government approval, material support, and threat of force.
Sure, if an economy is mostly driven by free market principles then it’s fine to call it a free market economy. No slave society in all of history has ever been mostly driven by free market principles, and I hold that no slave society (with a large slave population) can possibly be mostly driven by free market principles, because such a hugely significant government intervention is required to maintain a large slave population as slaves. All slave societies have required huge government intervention- formal, informal, national, regional and local, in legal framework, material support, and force and threat of force to keep slaves as slaves and masters as masters.
I still don’t see any rational reason why they wouldn’t be, and I very much doubt you could find a modern economist who would argue that slaves are not labor. Your own cite on this issue disagreed with you, so I’m not sure why your so determined to argue this point.
The fictional country of Andistan has a population of Andy, his friend Phil, and their 1 million slaves divided between them (held in check by a robot army). Andy is free to engage in business as he pleases with his friend Phil, and Phil is free to engage in business as he pleases with Andy. According to Martin Hyde, Andistan has a free market economy.
Speaking of economics I think that the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 and the dreaded Dredd Scott Decision from the supreme court also affected or were going to affect the economy in ways the northerners saw as negative. Many on the North noticed that technically all states turned into slave ones, because they had to support the laws of the slave ones, even in the North.
The Northerners that disliked slavery now were forced to enforce the repulsive institution, many free blacks moved to Canada because a single accusation that a black person was a former slave was enough to send one to the south in shackles ( the law actually prevented an accused black person from defending him or herself), also, those fines imposed on the ones not enforcing the law would had a negative effect on your business if you were an abolitionist. The Dredd Scott decision then made things worse as in no uncertain terms all blacks were officially relegated to a second class status.
So now the slave owners could take their slaves where they pleased. And it is clear that it would had led to worse confrontations than the ones the slave owners had versus the regular workers and prospectors of the gold rush in California.
I don’t actually see where the cite disagreed with it, please actually clarify what you’re saying on that. It mentions that some forms of non-free labor, but specifically it never mentions complete slavery, could be considered labor. It seemed like to me it was differentiating between paid unfree labor and chattel slaves who work for no wage. Which to me at least, pretty clearly reinforced what I was saying.
We have very different opinions on what “hugely significant government intervention” is, such that I think further argument on that point is pointless. I don’t think serving as a “backstop” and having a few court functionaries process the paper work is “hugely significant.” Most day to day handling of slaves has always been by the slave holder. In prominent slave-based societies like the antebellum South or the Roman Republic/Empire it was extremely rare for the government to have to physically subdue slaves, and their administrative involvement was minimal.
The market is free, for Andy and Phil. It’s not free, for the slaves. Nor is it free for the robots. The trick is deciding where to draw the line between actors and property. I could see the line in several places, but I’m not sure the choice is not arbitrary.
That’s not an accurate reflection of anything we’re talking about. All the Southern States were majority free, except for Mississippi and South Carolina. The free individuals doing the enslaving had the advantage of having all the legal firearms and also kept their slaves in conditions not easily amenable to revolt. The reason most slaves did not revolt had nothing at all to do with the government–and the slave holders had no reason at all to care really that the government would come in to suppress their slaves once the revolt got big enough–because they’d have been killed when the revolt started and whatever happened after that is irrelevant to them. For that reason the primary element keeping slaves in captivity and behaving, were and always had to have been the individual slave owners.
Further, the idea that it matters that these slaves were not free, is a political and moral issue. Economically you don’t have to consider them people at all, in which point it is irrelevant they are unfree.
Without that “backstop”, and without formal and informal government approval, slaves would not stay slaves and masters would not stay masters. Yes, we have very different opinions on what “hugely significant government interventions” are.
Imagine that the local government said slavery was illegal. And then imagine that the local government treated “citizen militias” responding to slave uprisings like they would any mob-like group of armed people- arrest them for disturbing the peace (or something similar). Then imagine what would happen during a slave uprising.
Without government intervention, a slave society cannot continue to enslave any large population.
I’ve encountered these types of libertarians before and they boggle my mind. On one hand they eviscerate Lincoln for taking away all sorts of liberties and defend the CSA, who are guilty of just about the biggest infraction on liberty one can imagine. It makes no sense.
But this is the fallacy that government is somehow an outside force - that it’s something that happens to people rather than something that people do. Governments don’t create slavery and slavery doesn’t create governments. It’s people who create both of these. People that want slavery also want a government that supports slavery.
Government approval, support, and intervention is vital to the maintenance of a slave society for this reason (among others): slave uprisings only need to succeed once to overturn a slave society. To maintain a slave society, slave uprisings need to be defeated 100% of the time.
Haiti was the exception. Spartacus, Nat Turner, and Denmark Vesey would tell you that slave uprisings could succeed in the short term but not end slavery.
But all you’re doing is stating a tautology. A slave uprising only achieves a complete victory if it’s able to achieve a complete victory.
And my main point is that you’re still seeing a non-existent divide between the people and the government. You’re talking about the “government” putting down slave uprisings and the “government” enforcing fugitive laws and the “government” maintaining slavery. Who do you think this government is? It’s the people in the society - they create the government they want. So it’s the people putting down slave uprisings and the people enforcing fugitive laws and the people maintaining slavery.