Remember how the Mainstream Media said they won't be coming for Jefferson and Washington Next?

[Antiboyscout]

The economic collapse of the south

the adoption of sharecropping that people like you accuse of being defacto slavery

the fact that sharecropping didn't end until the invention of the mechanical cotton picker nearly a century later. Meaning the problem wasn't actually solved until then.

Having a climate that makes mechanized farming, like in the north, impossible it draws one toward slavery as there are no alternatives. Means to an end, not an end of itself.

Considering the mechanical cotton picker was so widely adopted after it's introduction that it is one of the main causes of the second great migration, it seems those southerners were perfectly willing to use an alternative when it presented itself.

it was a matter of survival

a modern equivalence would be if NYC passed a law banning the ownership of internal combustion engines in the entire state. Easy enough for the city slickers who can walk and drive electric. Not so easy for the farmer up-state who must scrap his tractor and combine and semi. If NYC offered no alternative, exemption, or timetable to ween off the use of the tractor it would look like a naked power grab of the urban cities weakening rural economies for their own benefit.

So your justification is that slavery was "the only viable economic solution". Which is total and complete horseshit. Slavery is economically inefficient. From an economists perspective, and setting aside the morality, you have to devote extra labor to having overseers who do nothing but try to keep slaves in line. With paid workers, they keep themselves in line since, y'know, they're getting paid. Similarly slaves still require food, clothing, housing, all the essentials. And finally, slaves have no incentive to work any harder than they need to to avoid beatings. Since they don't profit from their labor, they don't have any incentive to work harder than the bare minimum.

So from an economic perspective as well as a moral one, slavery is a dismal failure. All it does is result in less wealth, less innovation, and concentrating that wealth into a small number of hands who use it inefficiently. With no economic freedom or mobility, the free market literally cannot exist (see the word FREE in free market) - slavery is basically communism where the output of the communist system is used for enriching the wealthy, rather than the people (so, communism but with more beatings).

https://fee.org/articles/slavery-was-never-economically-efficient/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-25/how-slavery-hurt-the-u-s-economy
https://mises.org/wire/left-argues-slavery-was-economic-blessing-heres-why-they-are-wrong

These are three conservative sources condemning slavery as economically inefficient. Each of them is on the right wing of the American political spectrum - in case of Mises, on the bleeding crazy edge of the far right where they can't help but choose breakfast cereals on the basis of which one pwns the libtards. And they all disagree with you.

Mmm, maybe you should have paid more attention in school and less attention to crazy shit fed to you from "alternative education".

Then you need to tell that to black activists, who claim that the wealth of the United States, or at least a majority of it, was created by slave labor. It is the basis of the reparations argument after all.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Then you need to tell that to black activists, who claim that the wealth of the United States, or at least a majority of it, was created by slave labor. It is the basis of the reparations argument after all.

I'm not 100% on this, but I think actually going up to the activists and recounting their claims is somewhat of a misguided attempt.

This kind of stuff particularly is fought at the debate team club tables.

[GreyICE]

Then you need to tell that to black activists, who claim that the wealth of the United States, or at least a majority of it, was created by slave labor. It is the basis of the reparations argument after all.

You don't seem to understand, the system was very good at enriching the elite. Hundreds of thousands of slaves died in the most abject, horrible conditions possible, but the rich who were the beneficiaries? Of course they made out well.

There's plenty more we could discuss about your ignorance here (looking up the Housing Act of 1949 would be a good start) but I think we've conclusively demonstrated your alternative education ain't worth shit.

Critical thinking and higher order thinking skills might destroy many foundations the Republican party rests on, but they do have this advantage where they teach you critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. Those come in handy when you have to evaluate a load of complete trollop and ask "does this actually make sense?" Does it actually make sense that the system in the south was so unique that Adam Smith's Classic Liberalism and economic theory would break down to such an extent that SLAVERY would be the correct answer to fix it? Wow. I have some criticisms of unrestrained capitalism (especially treated as a religion) but apparently you straight up think it doesn't work.

[Antiboyscout]

Then you need to tell that to black activists, who claim that the wealth of the United States, or at least a majority of it, was created by slave labor. It is the basis of the reparations argument after all.

You don't seem to understand, the system was very good at enriching the elite. Hundreds of thousands of slaves died in the most abject, horrible conditions possible, but the rich who were the beneficiaries? Of course they made out well.

There's plenty more we could discuss about your ignorance here (looking up the Housing Act of 1949 would be a good start) but I think we've conclusively demonstrated your alternative education ain't worth shit.

Critical thinking and higher order thinking skills might destroy many foundations the Republican party rests on, but they do have this advantage where they teach you critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. Those come in handy when you have to evaluate a load of complete trollop and ask "does this actually make sense?" Does it actually make sense that the system in the south was so unique that Adam Smith's Classic Liberalism and economic theory would break down to such an extent that SLAVERY would be the correct answer to fix it? Wow. I have some criticisms of unrestrained capitalism (especially treated as a religion) but apparently you straight up think it doesn't work.

Are they demanding payouts from the ancestors of slave owners? NO, they demand payment from All white people and the nation in general.

What does the housing Act of 1949 have to do with anything? Isn't it one of those red lined housing schemes that left black people out in the cold, and there for, cannot be a contributing factor in the Second Great Migration.

Labor and Capital, slavery makes them completely interchangeable. Labor was in demand, slavery fulfilled the demand. The only pick-me-up in the southern economy before the mechanical cotton picker (machinery, the other thing that makes labor and capital interchangeable) was the steam engine that made factories possible in the south, but like a 3rd world country, they were only built and run do to low wages from a depressed economy, and left just as quickly.

Serfdom ended in Europe when farming technology made the work of many the work of a few. It didn't end in china do to the demands of rice cultivation, one the reasons famine struck the country after the communist took over. Slavery has been a part of humanity for a long time and always for the same reason.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Critical thinking and higher order thinking skills might destroy many foundations the Republican party rests on, but they do have this advantage where they teach you critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. Those come in handy when you have to evaluate a load of complete trollop and ask "does this actually make sense?" Does it actually make sense that the system in the south was so unique that Adam Smith's Classic Liberalism and economic theory would break down to such an extent that SLAVERY would be the correct answer to fix it? Wow. I have some criticisms of unrestrained capitalism (especially treated as a religion) but apparently you straight up think it doesn't work.

Actually Adam Smith wasn't ignorant to this stuff iirc.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, if nothing else, this has proven that there are still people defending these statues because they are slavery apologists who think the losing traitors deserve participation trophies.

[Darth Wedgius]

Those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned.

- Aristotle

I can defend slave-owners while not defending slavery.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Slaves by nature is just any form of legitimate authority though.

[Antiboyscout]

Well, if nothing else, this has proven that there are still people defending these statues because they are slavery apologists who think the losing traitors deserve participation trophies.

“The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” - US Grant

What is the desire, 150 years later, to enact a harsh victors peace.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well, if nothing else, this has proven that there are still people defending these statues because they are slavery apologists who think the losing traitors deserve participation trophies.

“The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” - US Grant

What is the desire, 150 years later, to enact a harsh victors peace.

Grant's known as a not-good type of president. Not evil of course, but like, lousy. It was the same deal with Washington.