Moral outrage and the U.S. Civil War

[Aeson]

I think "you may be overstating" is the strongest opposition I've read

Outright lying about what I had said is stronger, as is pretending a factual error is the analog to my argument.

[giblets]

Press our advantage economically (sometimes militarily) to extract resources, siphon off the best talent, exploit their working class for cheap labor, undermine their political/social systems for dubious reasons. Basically what we've done to most of what's to the South of us, and various other places around the world.

Didn't the South sell its resources and cheap labor to the North after the Civil War in our timeline? So basically it would have been like our timeline except with black slaves instead of black sharecroppers...?

[Aeson]

Yeah we know you disagree with him. That's what is strange to me. Because... he doesn't seem to be strongly disagreeing with you.

His comments have been largely amoral as well. So I don't understand how you can disagree with him on morals either.

but

whatver

When I said the CSA would be backwards, he decided that South Africa in Apartheid was a good counterargument of how white people can be ok even though the overall economy suffers. The reality is that South Africa in Apartheid was poor and backwards, and the negative effects of Apartheid and the oppression that came before it will likely cause problems for generations to come. SA just had most of the wealth in the hands of whites, so giblets presented that as an example of a nation that had a similar system but wasn't "backwards".

I disagree very strongly with that sort of analysis. If you have close to half your population poor and uneducated, REGARDLESS OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN, your country is backwards. It doesn't matter how rich your rich people are.

[giblets]

Honestly, if you're convinced that the South would have discarded slavery voluntarily if the Southern states had been allowed to secede, then you're basically saying that the deaths of Union soldiers accomplished nothing except to preserve the Union. If the war was unnecessary to end slavery, then Abraham Lincoln wasn't an emancipator, he simply advanced a nationalistic cause and made it easier for the US to later engage in imperialism abroad. You're spitting on the graves of American soldiers.

[Aeson]

Didn't the South sell its resources and cheap labor to the North after the Civil War in our timeline? So basically it would have been like our timeline except with black slaves instead of black sharecroppers...?

Yes, the CSA was screwed whether they survived as a nation or not. Their only good option (as a whole) was to bite the bullet and voluntarily let slavery go politically while staying in the union. The rich whites would have lost a lot of their wealth. Most everyone (including the majority of Southern whites) would have been better off in that scenario.

Slavery is a terrible system. Trying to hold onto it was detrimental to the South.

[giblets]

When I said the CSA would be backwards, he decided that South Africa in Apartheid was a good counterargument of how white people can be ok even though the overall economy suffers. The reality is that South Africa in Apartheid was poor and backwards, and the negative effects of Apartheid and the oppression that came before it will likely cause problems for generations to come. SA just had most of the wealth in the hands of whites, so giblets presented that as an example of a nation that had a similar system but wasn't "backwards".

I disagree very strongly with that sort of analysis. If you have close to half your population poor and uneducated, REGARDLESS OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN, your country is backwards. It doesn't matter how rich your rich people are.

This is a strawman, I did not claim that South Africa as a whole wasn't backwards. You (apparently) claimed the CSA would be on par with Central America which is an exaggeration because the existence of slavery wouldn't have undermined the productivity of white workers to anywhere near that extent.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I didn't say it was pro-slavery. Pro-slavery means someone supports implementing slavery. giblets doesn't support that, he just wants to pretend it was better than it was. Given how ****ty a system it was, there's plenty of room between "this is the stupidest thing ever" and "well, it's inefficient and bad for GDP, but at least the whites aren't that bad off." Personally I find the latter distasteful.

It's distasteful to claim that holding onto slavery wouldn't have had the disastrous economic effects that you are claiming it would (and therefore would have been much harder to cast off by the common man in the Confederacy)? Because that's what giblets is saying, not even close towhat you are implying.

Honestly, if you're convinced that the South would have discarded slavery voluntarily if the Southern states had been allowed to secede, then you're basically saying that the deaths of Union soldiers accomplished nothing except to preserve the Union. If the war was unnecessary to end slavery, then Abraham Lincoln wasn't an emancipator, he simply advanced a nationalistic cause and made it easier for the US to later engage in imperialism abroad.

Exactly. Aeson's position is arguably more distasteful that what he thinks giblets's is - in that the North should have let the South go because eventually they would have ended uneconomic slavery (even if blacks had to suffer through more years of it) - see I can do an Aeson argument too .

[Aeson]

Honestly, if you're convinced that the South would have discarded slavery voluntarily if the Southern states had been allowed to secede, then you're basically saying that the deaths of Union soldiers accomplished nothing except to preserve the Union. If the war was unnecessary to end slavery, then Abraham Lincoln wasn't an emancipator, he simply advanced a nationalistic cause and made it easier for the US to later engage in imperialism abroad. You're spitting on the graves of American soldiers.

The war was fought to preserve the union. I don't like it, it's not what they tought me in school, but as best I can tell the North wasn't fighting to end Slavery. It was an important issue for some in the North, but that wasn't the main impetus for the North fighting the war. I don't think sugar coating the motives of the North does service to anyone. There was a lot of wrong on both sides from a moral perspective, and it wasn't until the 1960s that we really started to have any sort of admirable stance on race as a nation as a whole. Still we struggle with it

The effect of ending slavery was a good one. How long the CSA might have persisted as a slave economy is not definite, so even a utilitarian argument to exchange X amount of slavery for Y amount of lives is mostly guesswork. Slavery would have ended at some point, but whether it was 1870 or 1970 (both are stretching the limitations of possibility even within the impossible hypothetical) is quite a big difference.

[Sava]

Slavery is a terrible system. Trying to hold onto it was detrimental to the South.

Who disagrees with that?

[Aeson]

It's distasteful to claim that holding onto slavery wouldn't have had the disastrous economic effects that you are claiming it would (and therefore would have been much harder to cast off by the common man in the Confederacy)? Because that's what giblets is saying, not even close towhat you are implying.

giblets is saying a lot of things. He said that South Africa wasn't backwards because the whites were reasonably ok. Ignoring the horrendous plight of the majority of the country who was kept oppressed, uneducated, and impoverished. To me that's a backwards nation. To giblets it's not because the white minority isn't too badly off. (Let alone how he ignored that Apartheid demonstrably failed as a system and was discarded.)

Exactly. Aeson's position is arguably more distasteful that what he thinks giblets's is - in that the North should have let the South go because eventually they would have ended uneconomic slavery (even if blacks had to suffer through more years of it) - see I can do an Aeson argument too .

You may find it distasteful to consider the possibility that war which killed so many and caused so much destruction wasn't the best utilitarian option, but I don't. I do think it's an unanswerable question ... but the goal of saving the most suffering from happening is a good one, whether ultimately that would have been letting the South secede or not. Obviously the best possible result (while the CSA seceding) would have been for a bloodless secession and quick end to slavery via other methods. Though it's likely slavery would have persisted for some time.

[Aeson]

Who disagrees with that?

That essentially what I lead off with in this thread. So ... giblets wants to say it wasn't as detrimental to the South as I think it was. This is important to him because as he illustrated, how the white population does is his primary concern when judging how well a nation is doing.

[giblets]

That essentially what I lead off with in this thread. So ... giblets wants to say it wasn't as detrimental to the South as I think it was. This is important to him because as he illustrated, how the white population does is his primary concern when judging how well a nation is doing.

No it's not. I've already told you that's a strawman. However since a majority of the CSA's population is white- if the existence of slavery only had a moderately detrimental effect on the productivity of white workers, then slavery couldn't have reduced the CSA's GDP by much more than half relative to what it would be without slavery, which would mean the CSA is nothing like Central America. That's not to say the welfare of black people doesn't matter. WTF?

[Sava]

That essentially what I lead off with in this thread. So ... giblets wants to say it wasn't as detrimental to the South as I think it was. This is important to him because as he illustrated, how the white population does is his primary concern when judging how well a nation is doing.

if anything, i'd say he cares more about the people who aren't overweight

[giblets]

if anything, i'd say he cares more about the people who aren't overweight

Fat people should be put in camps

[Sava]

ever been to walmart?