United States.
It is interesting to see David Brion Davis admit in Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of New World Slavery that modern economic historians have found that slave labor in the nineteenth century South was more efficient than “free labor” in the nineteenth century North.
As always, Yankees destroyed what they did not understand on the basis of fashionable crank utopian theories:
“Indeed, many historians initially attacked the economic historians’ discovery that Southern slavery, despite its ghastly evils, was more efficient, productive, and profitable than free-labor farming in the North.”
You would think it would have been obvious: if free labor really was superior to slave labor, planters would have abandoned slavery for the obviously superior free labor system.
It is hard to believe that Yankees were still pushing this discredited theory after the collapse of plantation agriculture in Haiti and later in the British West Indies which were unable to compete with slave labor in Cuba and Brazil.
He writes of Haiti:
“In most respects the very existence of Haiti was a godsend for the abolitionists’ opponents. Sanguine predictions of the moral and educational advance of the people, of economic enterprise that would soon lead to thriving towns and to Haitian ships entering the harbors of the world, increasingly gave way to reports of political upheaval and hopeless poverty.”
Who could have predicted that?
“In contrast to Northern family farms, the larger Southern plantations were more like the agribusinesses of the later twentieth century in terms of size, efficiency, and complex organization…
Scholars still dispute some questions relating to the economics of American slavery, but during the past thirty years a broad consensus has confirmed the arguments of Stanley L. Engerman and the Nobel laureate Robert William Fogel concerning the extraordinary efficiency and productivity of plantation slave labor, which in no way implies they the system was less harsh or even less criminal. The historian Seymour Drescher has shown that most of the political economists of the early decades of the nineteenth century rejected Adam Smith’s overconfident assertion in 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, that because of its incentives, free labor was always cheaper and more efficient and productive than slave labor.”
Efficient, productive, and profitable are words which have never been associated with black people – especially with the Black Undertow – under the free labor system.
“The large planters soon ranked among America’s wealthiest men. Indeed, by 1860 two-thirds of the wealthiest men in America lived in the South – a fact that became difficult to believe after the devastation of the Civil War and the full industrialization of the North.”
Unlike West Indian slavery, Southern slavery was also a middle class institution – the typical slaveowner owned less than 10 slaves, and most planters owned 20 to 40 slaves.
In the West Indies, hundreds of slaves worked on sugar plantations that sprawled across thousands of acres. They also processed and refined the sugar in Cuba. Huge plantations also existed in South Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta
“The later impoverishment of the South nourished the myth that the slave economy had always been historically “backward,” stagnating, and unproductive. We now know that investment in slaves brought a considerable profit and that the Southern economy grew rapidly throughout the pre-Civil War decades.”
After the South was annihilated, the slaves were emancipated, and freedom and equality triumphed, the subsequent impoverishment of the South was cited as proof by Yankees of the backwardness of slavery.
“By 1840 the South grew more than 60 percent of the world’s cotton and supplied not only Britain and New England but also the rising industries of continental Europe, including Russia. Throughout the antebellum period cotton accounted for over half the value of all America’s exports, and thus it paid for the major share of the nation’s imports and investment capital. A stimulant to Northern industry, cotton also contributed to the growth of New York City as a distributing and exporting center gust drew income from commissions, freight charges, interest, insurance, and other services connected with the marketing of America’s number one commodity.”
As an independent nation, the plantation South could have supplied the world with cotton while easily growing its own food and relying upon Britain for manufactured goods and financial services.
The affection of caring about other people’s suffering is the worst thing. Like the way Obama fakes concern for that dead Ambassador. The nigger probably sniggers about it all off camera.
If you look at the bleeding heart on a large scale you realize they are just kleptocratic concern trolls.
“I don’t believe in the existence of abstract universal moral principles (…) I see tradition as a well of experience that countless previous generations have developed as a practical response to various problems they have encountered. It is not something to be dismissed lightly.”
I understand what you are saying, Hunter, but remember the moral principles of Jesus that ARE universal, and eternal, and that were not developed by countless generations but by God. No other ideology or tradition, not even the tradition of Sparta, can outlast or supercede it. The pursuit of wealth as such and the use of human (and humanoid?) “beings” against their will and best interests to “produce great wealth” are both contrary to the spirit of his Teaching. Whatever Solomon and other Hebrews did that “God winked at” in the Old Testament, and regardless of the apparent sanction of slavery and materialism by false Christendom, the moral principles of Jesus still stand, are universal, and cannot be ignored forever.
Like natural science, the strength of tradition is precisely that it is practical and flexible and draws upon the collective experience of previous generations who have been repeatedly tested by various problems.
Then why invoke “tradition” to defend such practices instead of just claiming they’re the best way known? Heliocentrism has been around long enough to be able to claim the title of “tradition” but it doesn’t require it because it can stand on its own two feet. Monarchy, in contrast, has to resort to appeals to tradition because it’s not at all clear that it is advantageous for society as a whole on its own merits.
As far as I can see, traditions are only defensible as traditions when there is no good reason to do something any other way. For example, despite the best efforts of atheists through the ages, religion appears to be a social mainstay; in that case Christianity is as good as any other religion, but since it’s a western tradition it makes sense for it to be the religion of choice for westerners.
Bad ideas that don’t work are progressively weeded out through trial and error.
An idea doesn’t have to “not work” in order to be superseded by another; it simply has to work less well. For example, slavery worked, but it doesn’t work as well for the greater part of society as does free labor so it’s only right that it has been weeded out.
(2) That’s also why abstract reasoning is so dangerous and produces disaster after disaster: compared to tradition, ideology is inflexible and impervious to experience, and incapable of progressing beyond its usually silly axioms.
That can certainly be true. I have no reason to deny that.
We have shifted from private responsibility to social responsibility and the effective result is that there are no more masters who are personally liable when negroes misbehave as they inevitably do when given “freedom” and left to stir and riot in their ghettos.
Were slave-owners themselves punished whenever their slaves misbehaved? This is news to me.
In any case, freedom is a given. There will be no taking it away now. People’s determination to maintain their freedom surely exceeds many times over your determination to take it away so it’s quite clear you will be destroyed should you attempt it. Put it out of mind and deal with reality please.
The reality is that whites also “inevitably” eventually misbehave when given freedom so it’s not really clear why you’re targeting negroe with this statement. The question is why should whites have to pay the price for negro misbehavior. My answer is they shouldn’t, and separation/segregation is the policy best suited to alleviating whites from this burden (besides affording a whole host of benefits of itself to boot).
(6) Anti-Whiteism follows naturally from liberal ideology and has been with us since the earliest days of liberalism when it was first discredited by Jacobinism during the French Revolution.
That’s obviously not true else I wouldn’t be able to take the position I do. I do take the position I do and I do it without logical contradiction so you’re flatly wrong.
In your liberal society, virtuous taxpayers are forced to subsidize the damaging consequences of the vice of gluttony through Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid which are based purely on the sentiment that universal healthcare is a “fundamental human right.”
Actually, it’s based on the fact that a society that provides health care to its citizenry is superior to a society that doesn’t. As a practical matter, separating suffering whose cause was “the vice of gluttony” from suffering whose was cause was more noble is no easy matter; simpler to just treat everyone.
Back to the point about morality, though, the above is “wrong” to you because… you feel badly about “cheaters,” right? It’s an upsetting, even infuriating feeling, isn’t it? I bet it’s not a feeling you enjoy experiencing. It’s a feeling you wish to quell when it crops up, rather than a feeling you’re inclined to indulge in or cultivate.
Silver’s world is delusional because in reality nothing can be fair because individuals and groups differ in ability and traits which of course breeds enormous resentment.
If the standard is perfection than any policy can be dismissed as “delusional.” If the standard is “basically fair” as opposed to “perfectly fair” then we have something to work with. It’s simply a given that not all will be perfectly satisfied. But with the value of fairness as a guiding light the dissatisfaction experienced by the dissatisfied is likely to be much less than the dissatisfaction produced by policies that arrogantly disdain fairness.
Actually, it’s based on the fact that a society that provides health care to its citizenry is superior to a society that doesn’t. Silver
How is that a fact? 2+2 + 4 is a fact. What you did was claim an opinion as fact. How is a society that forces me to pay for someone else’s anydamnthing a superior society?
Silver’s whole post on Sparta smacks on anti White liberalism. Hell he self admits to not really seeing himself as White. We cannot expect some one like that to have the best interests of Southron White in his thinking
Of course you shouldn’t expect or assume that I have the best interests of Southron Whites in mind. That’d be hopelessly naive. But it’d be at least as silly (and, really, a whole lot more) to assume or expect, just as a matter of course, that nothing I think or say could possibly ever be in alignment with the interests of Southron Whites. In reality, there is a great deal of common ground.
How is that a fact? 2+2 + 4 is a fact. What you did was claim an opinion as fact. How is a society that forces me to pay for someone else’s anydamnthing a superior society?
Excuse me, I didn’t mean to say fact. “Principle” was the term I meant to write.
you are a leftist Silver so it is safe to assume you are anti Southron White man at every turn. Which your post pretty much bare out. lest wise when they are interesting enough for me to read
Slavery worked far too well. That was the problem Lincoln had with it. It’s possible that it was also problematic for Britain for various reasons. Thus the suppression of the trade. It helped to keep competitors behind if they couldn’t use slaves.
“Slavery worked far too well.” Communism could have worked far too well, too, making the “majority who are natural slaves and crave a master” most efficiently productive, if it hadn’t been for vodka and greed, and corrupting influence of liberal propaganda.
Socialism worked tolerably well. It wasn’t a complete washout as a system. Not ideal but one of the problems that socialism caused was working reasonably well. It got Gagarin up into space. It produced the T34, the Kalashnikov… Stuff like that. The digital revolution made it redundent though. Communism was good at producing quantity. However quantity isn’t quite as useful anymore.
Exactly, John. Then we can move on to “value judgement”: Was it RIGHT?
YANKEE PRIDE WORLD WIDE
“The later impoverishment of the South nourished the myth that the slave economy had always been historically “backward,” stagnating, and unproductive.” Just as the later collapse of the Soviet Empire led many to forget the time when the world was awed by its slave-powered production.
“Just as the later collapse of the Soviet Empire led many to forget the time when the world was awed by its slave-powered production.”
Russians are smart. They know how to make weapons and play chess. Too bad they didn’t know how to make cars, integrated circuits, or enough toilet paper so that maybe the Soviet Union might still be around today.
The USSR was surplus to requirements once Israel was founded and proved it could survive a few wars. Once that was clear the Jewish population migrated out of their
goyische veal pen and used Israel as home base instead of Moscow. The Russians were not that interested in policing Treblucstan and Outer Mongolavia in the first place.
If slavery was so immoral one would think , Moses, Jesus, or Allah would have clearly forbid it. If you don’t believe in God, then you defer to the might makes right of evolution, and the struggle for survival.
Moses, Jesus, and “Allah” and weren’t white. I’d like to believe that we have a genetic predisposition toward morality that lower races naturally lack.
Davis notes that the complete absence of antislavery in Antiquity, the explicit endorsement of slavery in the Bible, and the sanctioning of slavery by the Church for over a thousand years was a source of great comfort to Southern slaveowners.
Lincoln was motivated by nothing more than aggrandizing the North at the expense of the South. Annexing Cuba wouldn’t have “extended slavery.” It would have only made the South more powerful in Congress.
Re: Silver
(1) Why isn’t it possible? Most people hold all kinds of contradictory beliefs. It took America two centuries to progressively weed out the “contradictions” of equality.
(2) Castro’s Cuba must be obviously superior to us then.
(3) A great example of how liberalism erodes tradition, undermines morality, cultivates vice, punishes virtue, promotes degeneracy, and ultimately substitutes incredibly expensive social programs implemented by a massive central government for traditional moral precepts that work.
(4) No, it has nothing to do with “feeling.”
I don’t “feel” on a gut level that gluttony is immoral. I understand on a rational level why gluttony is a vice and why a traditional society would proscribe and stigmatize gluttony in order avoid its various negative consequences.
(5) Yes, slaveowners were liable for the actions of their slaves. As a consequence, private masters absorbed all the costs of dealing with the Black Undertow, such as regulating destructive slave behavior in the slave quarters.
(6) I won’t stop criticizing and attacking liberalism and showcasing the destructive consequences of imposing liberal ideology on traditional human societies.
(7) Why do Whites “have to pay” for the consequences of destructive negro behavior? It follows naturally from black citizenship and black freedom and equality in a liberal republican society.
Your idea that blacks should be separated or segregated from Whites infringes on their “human dignity” and their “freedom” and “equality” which are the “principles” that govern liberal democracies.
“Russians are smart. They know how to make weapons and play chess. Too bad they didn’t know how to make cars, integrated circuits, or enough toilet paper so that maybe the Soviet Union might still be around today.”
It is easier to force slaves to labour physically than mentally. Creativity and liberty, and even leisure, are connected somehow.
(8) Tradition is the mechanism of progress. Western science itself is a tradition that has evolved over ten centuries.
(9) Geocentrism was a scientific model that conformed to observation. It came from the Greeks.
(10) Monarchy is the most stable and enduring form of human government. Democracies have a long track record of flaming out in disaster.
(11) Christianity triumphed over paganism because of its strengths as a social model.
Hunter, I’m always amazed at these new “moral impratives” for Ed on us all by Uncle Sugar and the Marxist left with absolutely ZERO religious foundation. Leftism is it’s own religion. Silverman is an adherent.
Uncle Silver has been doing his “moderate” act for years and years. Everyone on the internet has encountered it. Hence, my “calloused forbearance.” I’ve heard it all before a million times.
I’ve heard it all before a million times.
Sadly, you’ve learned so little from it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with your wishing to racially survive and thrive, nothing inherently wrong with it at all. But there’s everything wrong with insisting it means perpetual war with all other races, which is the position that emerges from your multifarious mumblings when the smoke clears. My moderate stance is no act pal; it’s heartfelt and something I’d fight and, if need be, kill for.
“Your idea that blacks should be separated or segregated from Whites infringes on their ‘human dignity’ and their ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ which are the ‘principles’ that govern liberal democracies.”
It seems you wrote that ironically, or sarcastically. My position is that separation IS generally MORAL, and miscegenation and other intentional mixing such as importation for profitable use is generally immoral.
“Monarchy is the most stable and enduring form of human government. Democracies have a long track record of flaming out in disaster.”
Aristotle recommended a mixed polity, with many checks and balances, as historically most stable and beneficial. The dark prospect of being ruled by a hereditary elite, generation after generation, however “stable,” doesn’t suit THIS reader’s temper!
“Christianity triumphed over paganism because of its strengths as a social model.” What Christianity? Triumphed, in what sense? True Christianity spread, as a faith, because it was a superior message. Syncretistic “Christian” state religion adopted or took advantage of the language and forms of the new faith.
Silver has proven him self to be liberal on every issue, including the race question. Why not have the fortitude to be honest about your leftism?
and its hilarious folks support him. fools
Silverman: we are always in a state of war by varying degrees to competition for resources. Since humans are social creatures, we gather into families, tribes and nation to secure what we need. It’s nature.
Myosin Nagant: I would prefer a monarch who, at least in theory, is responsible to God for their people than a multiracial Denocrazy that sells their founding stock down the river.
Myosin Nagant: Christianity spread to the emperors who forced in down on others.
Christianity had already spread and been “proven” before emperors “adopted” it, and Roman popes and other authorities forced a “different Jesus” down on others.