Moral outrage and the U.S. Civil War

[grumbler]

Your comparison with Nazi slavery was apples and oranges to begin with.

No, since I made clear the connection. I know you cannot understand what I write, but others can maybe help you interpret English.

[grumbler]

And regular slaves do not?

For that matter, so did the German civilians.

[giblets]

No, since I made clear the connection. I know you cannot understand what I write, but others can maybe help you interpret English.

You should chill out and maybe go learn about basic economics...

[grumbler]

You should chill out and maybe go learn about basic economics...

Rather ironic, given that I teach economics. Maybe I'm not the one who needs to learn more about it...

[Aeson]

giblets, you're taking a very limited view of what is involved. You're not even doing proper accounting of very straightforward costs involved such as taskmasters, chains, whips, medical costs (you can't just let your "$400k" asset die when it gets sick). You seem to be underestimating costs you do take into account. You are also completely ignoring a great deal of indirect or difficult to price costs.

Negative publicity on it's own would have killed open slavery. Even at the time of the Civil War there were boycotts of slaved products. Such boycotts would be almost universal in modern society. Maybe some very tiny local businesses in specific locations could have survived this factor selling stuff exclusively to neonazis and KKK members in modern times, but no large business could survive the publicity. (Of course it couldn't still be legal for the same reason.)

Slave rebellions also need to be factored in. They can be extremely costly. As availability of potentially destructive technology increased so too would the costs of the risk of rebellion. One upset slave in modern times could do many $millions in damages even without access to anything other than the equipment they were working. More destructive implements such as firearms and explosives are readily available. McDonalds has 400k employees. There is no way they could control them. You'd have restaurants being burned down all the time, occasional mass murders of customers/employees, and all the lawsuits involved with them. Even "successfully" ending a rebellion often requires killing many of your "assets". With greater liberalization of the rest of the population, the impetus for rebellion and the available tools for rebellion would have increased. I for one would consider it a moral obligation to arm slaves, and even fight with them against the slavers.

Slavery was doomed. It is a ****ty system in all aspects.

Sadly wage slavery (as in paying subsistence+1 wages in horrible working conditions) is still a very real thing, but it is also doomed.

[giblets]

Rather ironic, given that I teach economics. Maybe I'm not the one who needs to learn more about it...

And Ben Kenobi apparently teaches history.

[giblets]

Good points Aeson, it's probably more efficient to keep your slaves on another continent. However boycotts would probably only work well in a scenario where the South never seceded and was highly integrated with the North- if the South had seceded they probably would probably be more isolationist and refuse to reform their society. They could still do business with China or whoever else doesn't care about morals.

[Aeson]

It's far more efficient to not have slaves (or even poorly paid employees) at all. This is because economies of scale become more efficient the larger and more affluent the consumer base becomes. Slavery (and wage slavery) cannibalizes the economy by eliminating the working class (outside their subsistence) from the consumer base. This inefficiency is what will doom wage slavery.

And why the South would have quickly become a very backwards place if they had successfully seceded and maintained a slave economy. They would have become (part of) the wage slaves for the North eventually.

[grumbler]

It's far more efficient to not have slaves (or even poorly paid employees) at all. This is because economies of scale become more efficient the larger and more affluent the consumer base becomes. Slavery (and wage slavery) cannibalizes the economy by eliminating the working class (outside their subsistence) from the consumer base. This inefficiency is what will doom wage slavery.

And why the South would have quickly become a very backwards place if they had successfully seceded and maintained a slave economy. They would have become (part of) the wage slaves for the North eventually.

The "virtuous cycle" of wages and consumption you mention here is very real, but only became apparent in the last part of the Nineteenth Century during the Second Industrial Revolution. The real argument (contemporary) against slavery is that it is so inefficient; as you note above, the costs are high (24/7 supervision, security, living expenses, sabotaged output, sabotaged assets) and output is low (unmotivated workers, lost time due to slave punishment/recovery from punishment). As you note, the outcome of a slave economy is an economy that becomes subordinate to a non-slave economy. That's precisely why the Southern elites decided to secede.

[giblets]

It's far more efficient to not have slaves (or even poorly paid employees) at all. This is because economies of scale become more efficient the larger and more affluent the consumer base becomes. Slavery (and wage slavery) cannibalizes the economy by eliminating the working class (outside their subsistence) from the consumer base. This inefficiency is what will doom wage slavery.

And why the South would have quickly become a very backwards place if they had successfully seceded and maintained a slave economy. They would have become (part of) the wage slaves for the North eventually.

I don't see how white Southerners would be much worse off than white South Africans during Apartheid. Keeping ~40% of your population in poverty might be bad for national GDP but I'd say you're overstating the impact reducing the size of the local consumer base.

[Elok]

Slavery didn't help much during the actual war, either. The North got some extremely motivated new recruits out of the deal.

[Proteus_MST]

I guess modern computer technology could help make the management of large groups of slaves easier. Like Long Range Trackers that are affixed to the ankles of slaves ... and maybe even short range trackers (for use within buildings) that are implanted into the slaves bodies (and therefore aren´t easily removable by the slaves). This way the tracking of the slaves movements could be done with only few people at computer monitors ... with guards only needing to step in in case of escape attempts/uprisings (and even those may be partially replaces by remote controlled weapons stations at strategic locations)

[grumbler]

I guess modern computer technology could help make the management of large groups of slaves easier. Like Long Range Trackers that are affixed to the ankles of slaves ... and maybe even short range trackers (for use within buildings) that are implanted into the slaves bodies (and therefore aren´t easily removable by the slaves). This way the tracking of the slaves movements could be done with only few people at computer monitors ... with guards only needing to step in in case of escape attempts/uprisings (and even those may be partially replaces by remote controlled weapons stations at strategic locations)

But what would be the point? In order to get work out of slaves, you need to oversee them with enough people that you can monitor not only quantity of output, but quality, and if you are going to prevent intentional damage to the machinery, you need even tighter surveillance. Even if you want to do this remotely, using cameras, you still have to pay all those millions of people that are doing nothing more than looking at slaves working. The "cost savings" you think you are getting by using slave labor are going to get eaten up by the security and monitoring costs.

[grumbler]

Plus, of course, your tech is going to be hacked by antislavery types, and may thus be more a cause of insecurity (through overconfidence) than security.

[Aeson]

I don't see how white Southerners would be much worse off than white South Africans during Apartheid. Keeping ~40% of your population in poverty might be bad for national GDP but I'd say you're overstating the impact reducing the size of the local consumer base.

You are conflating individuals with the whole, and white Southerners with major slave owners. Backwards places tend to have very wealthy people ... just relatively few of them amid masses of poverty in a depressed overall economy. Central/South American billionaires aren't the ones risking their lives to cross borders to get a ****ty job, or working in the fields/plants that create the stuff we buy. But that doesn't mean their nations are just fine economically. Most of those countries have horribly depressed economies ... which is why so many people are risking their lives to cross borders to get a ****ty job, or working for even worse wages in worse conditions to make a select few and foreigners richer.

That's where a slave economy South would have been headed.

Also, Apartheid wasn't slavery, and was demonstrably doomed itself. South Africa's economy is horribly depressed compared to where it should be, because of the systematic exclusion of such a large portion of the population for so long. It's not much of a "counter argument", more of a confirmation of why it's horribly stupid for a nation to try to artificially depress it's economy by keeping a significant portion of it's population poor, uneducated, and oppressed. And they got off so easy because they lucked out with Mandela.