Political Theory

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Mon, 06 May 2013 23:07:26 GMT

That's one of the points I was trying to defend. That slave owners were not being morons by not hiring people to do what slaves were doing, they were following price incentives.

yes, they were following price incentives when they manumitted their slaves, recognizing the superior earning power of free labor.

And he seems to use be comfortable using the word "profit" in the usual sense of the word, and not your definition of "non-violent gains".

yes he does. I didnt see him try to impose that definition on anyone else, however.

Anyway, he is also telling us that the profitability of slavery was a result of laws subsidizing it.

This is a very difficult proposition to prove, even in presence of hard data (which he doesn't mention in the paragraph, but he might in the text).

no, it isnt.

You would need to control for a number of variables, like intensity of state subsidies and profitability rates of similar slave owning operations. I don't think this kind of data even exist.

but youre not very well informed on this subject, and youre not interested in becoming informed, so why do we care what you think about data existing or not?

So I will use my psychic powers again, before reading anything

anything to protect your ego, huh.

For instance, fugitive slaves in Brazil were usually captured back by private contractors, and the state in practice didn't give a flying fuck about them.

that sounds like the legal status of chattel, if they were actual human beings, but the state viewed them as property. presumably the state didnt give a flying fuck about some escaped chickens either, and so you hire your cousin Bruno to capture them and bring them back.

But (apparently) he doesn't address that.

I'm sure it does appear that way from the refuge of your dunning-krueger bubble.

In any case, as I've said, even if slavery in america during the ante-bellum period was largely an artifact of institutional subsidies, an hypothesis that doesn't seem that absurd to me, it doesn't refute the point, that slavery is a natural and effective way of economizing resources in some societies facing certain constraints of technology, infrastructure, and so on.

why would anyone want to debate the meaning of "natural" and "effective" with you? can you quote yourself making that argument earlier or did you move the goalposts yet again?

And it certainly doesn't corroborate the ridiculous notion that profit-seeking entrepreneurs that owned slaves would have hired people had they known better how to run their businesses.

can you explain the prohibitions on manumission? why would someone manumit a slave if it was more profitable to keep him as a slave? why would they pass and enforce laws restricting and prohibiting manumission if slave labor was more productive?

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

ToxicAssets — Mon, 06 May 2013 11:07:23 GMT

Malachi:

Gunderson does not understand that there is a difference between slave labor being "efficient" for the slave owner and its effect on society as a whole. Of course slavery was profitable to slave owners. This government-supported system helped them confiscate the fruits of the slaves' labor. But since slave labor is inherently less efficient than free labor, and since so many resources had to be devoted to enforcing the system — most of which were the result of government interventions such as the Fugitive Slave Act, mandatory slave patrol laws, and laws that prohibited manumission — the system imposed huge burdens ("dead weight loss," in the language of economics) on the rest of society. Free laborers and non-slave owners in the South (at least 80 percent of the adult population) were the primary victims of these government-imposed costs, and would have been a natural political constituency for their eventual abolition. As Hummel concluded, "In real terms, the entire southern economy, including both whites and blacks, was less prosperous" overall because of slavery.

Excellent! We can start here.

There are few good things about this quote.

First, he recognizes that slavery was a profitable option for slave owners, more so than hiring free labor.

That's one of the points I was trying to defend. That slave owners were not being morons by not hiring people to do what slaves were doing, they were following price incentives.

And he seems to use be comfortable using the word "profit" in the usual sense of the word, and not your definition of "non-violent gains".

Anyway, he is also telling us that the profitability of slavery was a result of laws subsidizing it.

This is a very difficult proposition to prove, even in presence of hard data (which he doesn't mention in the paragraph, but he might in the text).

You would need to control for a number of variables, like intensity of state subsidies and profitability rates of similar slave owning operations. I don't think this kind of data even exist.

So I will use my psychic powers again, before reading anything, and guess he doesn't do any of that. I might be wrong, and in that case, I would be curious to read the full paper.

But if all he has is some "soft data" about the institutional framework of the slave states in the US in the mid nineteenth century, like laws about fugitive slaves becoming state concerns, that's hardly enough evidence to substantiate an informed opinion about general profitability of slavery in America, and much less for institution of slavery in elsewhere throughout the millennia.

For instance, fugitive slaves in Brazil were usually captured back by private contractors, and the state in practice didn't give a flying fuck about them. Some slaves managed to escape for good though, and they created their own autarkies, called Quilombos. Interestingly, some ex-slaves Quilombo leaders became so powerful they started holding slaves themselves.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilombo

And as far as "soft data" goes, we can find a lot of examples of qualitative dynamics that favors the notion that slavery was an economic inevitability, and not some historic accident or a design of our ancestor's despicable cruelty, like we're taught today by politically correct know-nothings.

But (apparently) he doesn't address that.

On the contrary, he starts by postulating an unqualified statement that "slave labor is inherently less efficient than free labor", so if you wanted a clear example of petitio principii, there you have.

In any case, as I've said, even if slavery in america during the ante-bellum period was largely an artifact of institutional subsidies, an hypothesis that doesn't seem that absurd to me, it doesn't refute the point, that slavery is a natural and effective way of economizing resources in some societies facing certain constraints of technology, infrastructure, and so on.

And it certainly doesn't corroborate the ridiculous notion that profit-seeking entrepreneurs that owned slaves would have hired people had they known better how to run their businesses.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

ToxicAssets — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:41:31 GMT

TA, if you believe you are mature, act the part. You certainly do not strike me as such.

Don't worry bro, I'm certainly not as mature as I should be given my age. Not that I'm an old man, but it's certainly unbecoming to tease and ridicule kids and get into these dumb online arguments when you're no longer a teenager.

I'll assume the responsibility here. It won't happen again.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 22:25:31 GMT

Smiling Dave:

Far be it from me to defend Malachi, but what Toxic wrote is TIBO [= True In Bizzaro-world Only].

http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_2/3_2_1.pdf

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE7_2_2.pdf

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo29.html

One thing I learned here. With the exception of Smiling Dave, the more smug and condescending the writer, the less he actually knows.

great links Dave.

Gunderson does not understand that there is a difference between slave labor being "efficient" for the slave owner and its effect on society as a whole. Of course slavery was profitable to slave owners. This government-supported system helped them confiscate the fruits of the slaves' labor. But since slave labor is inherently less efficient than free labor, and since so many resources had to be devoted to enforcing the system — most of which were the result of government interventions such as the Fugitive Slave Act, mandatory slave patrol laws, and laws that prohibited manumission — the system imposed huge burdens ("dead weight loss," in the language of economics) on the rest of society. Free laborers and non-slave owners in the South (at least 80 percent of the adult population) were the primary victims of these government-imposed costs, and would have been a natural political constituency for their eventual abolition. As Hummel concluded, "In real terms, the entire southern economy, including both whites and blacks, was less prosperous" overall because of slavery.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:24:13 GMT

roger that Jon.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:23:36 GMT

About those Smiling Dave links, why don't you go there

why dont you?

I'm pretty sure the scholar doesn't do that

good for you, mr psychic powered strawman.

Reading it would just come to show how impaired are Smiling Dave reading skills

I doubt that, he saw through you like a pane of glass or a non-refractive atmosphere, or some other basis for comparison that is characterized by extraordinarily high translucency.

I can only realize that if not you nor Smiling Dave were able to outline the points in a shorter post, it's because there's no point at all.

otherwise your ego would suffer. I understand.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Jon Irenicus — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:20:51 GMT

Keep the negative commentary down or I will be issuing some time outs.

TA, if you believe you are mature, act the part. You certainly do not strike me as such.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:15:47 GMT

I was saying that the profitability of a venture depends on the technological and institutional conditions where and when it exists.

thats been a premise for this whole discussion. quit trying to pretend its your main point when I had to tell you that. assming of course "institutional conditions" is translatable to a system of ideas that people refer to when they perform economic calculation.

Similarly, contract labor was known much before it became good business practice. That's because slavery was very profitable before a variety of technological and institutional changes took place, making contract labor a more cost-efficient alternative.

can you explain why, or is this a faith-based proposition?

I've been saying all along that the profitability of a business venture, regardless of how violent it is, depends on the environment of technologies and institutions (and ideologies and habits) it is embedded.

and all along I have been attempting to discuss the actual environment of technology and ideas that enables or prevents certain categories of action.

Of course, you still make a few mistakes. The ideological enabler of slavery was not the origin of slavery, for the obvious reason that before slavery was a consolidated practice there was no ideological tradition justifying it.

more faith-based assertions on your part. the ideology that justifed slavery was necessary a precursor for slavery, because human action. you effectively suggest that humans embraced slavery out of instinct and then figured out how to justify it. justify it to whom? its animal behavior!

if they didnt have the idea that slavery was beneficial to them then where did they get the slaves? your statement above is some epic trollerskating.

And slavery was a consolidated practice, outcompeting other forms of labor organization for so many centuries

"so many" that you cant identify even one, but your sure a "better historian than yourself" (which could mean anybody, based on some of the ridiculous assertions you have made) could find some. thats enough to justify your belief to yourself, sure. no one else cares.

Pretty much like steam power was a profitable technology before internal combustion engines and electricity were available and cheap enough alternatives.

thats a good example of your ignorance, considering how much electricity is manufactured through steam power today.

Get your order of facts right and then I will consider my job here done.

if youre so interested in educating me then how about answering my questions?

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

ToxicAssets — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:38:18 GMT

About those Smiling Dave links, why don't you go there and extract the passage that shows how all these slave-holding enterprises were losing money dealing with slaves back in the day, and how they could've been making so much more money had they hired the free labor available, if only they were smart enough to calculate their costs right. And that they didn't do it for millenia out of stubbornness and attachment to irrational traditions, even though the price structures they were facing clearly pointed out to better alternatives.

I'm pretty sure the scholar doesn't do that in that paper, and if he doesn't, it's pointless to look there for a rebuttal to my argument.

Reading it would just come to show how impaired are Smiling Dave reading skills, something that I was already aware of and that I don't need further confirmation.

But hey, I might be wrong about that, so why don't you go there, read the whole thing and waste your time looking for the lost argument to my proposition here.

Find the passage where he says it, and where he presents hard data substantiating it.

And only then, after you've post it here, I'll be interested in reading the the thing.

Otherwise it just seems like an easy way out. He just dump some paper on the "economics of slavery" probably without even reading the thing and comparing to what I've being saying, this way transferring me the responsibility of finding there anything that can serve as your argument, because you kids are too lazy to do it yourself.

Face it, I can only realize that if not you nor Smiling Dave were able to outline the points in a shorter post, it's because there's no point at all.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

ToxicAssets — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:20:56 GMT

should I really be using alternating current?

No, you shouldn't go back and use direct current for high voltage applications where alternate current proved a better alternative.

And you shouldn't go back using slaves in agriculture either. You would probably loose money.

That's not what I was saying, and you seem to know it. I was saying that the profitability of a venture depends on the technological and institutional conditions where and when it exists.

Direct current, for instance, would be very profitable before large scale alternators and transformers were available providing more cost-efficient generation and transport of electricity. And it would profitable to use it commercially before this whole electrical infrastructure was ready. And we still use direct current for a large number of low voltage appliances.

Alternate current was known much before it became an economically efficient technology.

Similarly, contract labor was known much before it became good business practice. That's because slavery was very profitable before a variety of technological and institutional changes took place, making contract labor a more cost-efficient alternative.

In the case of electricity, the technology improvement was sufficiently fast that Edison could see his system get outperformed.

In the case of slavery, technological and institutional changes that made slavery obsolete for most forms of labor took place over a much longer timespan.

But just as with Thomas Edison, you can only "outsmart" all these enslavers in history after the fact.

In any case, I've been saying all along that the profitability of a business venture, regardless of how violent it is, depends on the environment of technologies and institutions (and ideologies and habits) it is embedded.

And your last posts were much more in lines with what I've been saying all along than you are willing to admit.

Of course, you still make a few mistakes. The ideological enabler of slavery was not the origin of slavery, for the obvious reason that before slavery was a consolidated practice there was no ideological tradition justifying it.

And slavery was a consolidated practice, outcompeting other forms of labor organization for so many centuries, because it was an economically efficient way of getting things done, in the sense that it created more profits for its businesses than the alternatives available at the time.

Pretty much like steam power was a profitable technology before internal combustion engines and electricity were available and cheap enough alternatives.

Get your order of facts right and then I will consider my job here done. I mean, you'll probably think you still disagree with me and that I'm an asshole, but that's ok. Some lessons hurt and sometimes the pupil hold it against his teacher. And I'm not here to seek fast praise. The important thing is that you're showing some obvious progress in your understanding of things.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:03:17 GMT

I mean, if you agree that in a slave-holding society where slavery is a established institution it's comparatively cheap to keep a slave in bondage since he has little opportunity to survive if he breaks free and little incentive to rebel, you're just acknowledging the point in question.

thats because youre so dead set on "proving me wrong" or whatever you cant even shut up long enough to remember my point.

I mean, don't you ever stop to think that men like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were slave owners?

Do you consider yourself smarter than these men?

see? trollbait. of course, the answer is yes, so troll can scoff. but I mean really? who asks that? who plays this game? do you ever ask yourself, hmm, was Thomas Edison smarter than me? should I really be using alternating current?

I mean, do you ever stop to think that you call other people ignorant and uneducated on this topic, you dont have time to read some links, but you have time to spend a week arguing with me, you make four replies and I havent read a single thing I didnt know already, and you live under a bridge and eat schoolchildren, maybe youre a troll?

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 01:54:15 GMT

Oh, right, you're going to ask me now about the non-slave owning cultures that were outperformed. I'm sure a better historian than me can find

so youre sure of your thesis even though you cant back it up, youre sure those links arent worth your time, youre such a self assured troll, thanks for playing.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 01:51:35 GMT

Relative concentration of military and organizational technology by an elite group, relative abundance of exploitable unskilled human capital, and relative scarcity of installed capital structure and/or technological knowledge and/or institutional contract-based labor supply that can offer cost-efficient alternatives to the coercive use of raw manpower.

wrong. the only necessary enabling factor is an ideology that teaches people to act in the interest of others. lower technology environments are better for slavery because people dont have to be as smart in order to do the work, and this dumbness makes them likelier to believe in an ideology where they are some sort of slave. as people get smarter, they figure out that there is no real difference between people, except their individual characteristics.

technology as a factor in enabling the forced enslavement of people is a contributing factor but, the system of ideas must support this effort for two reasons. firstly, the technology to defend is generally speaking an order of magnitude less expensive than the threat it defends against. secondly, the higher your technology level, the less likely you are to want people who have been forced into slavery anyway, because you have no jobs for them to do.

And those conditions were precisely the conditions throughout the lion's share of human existence.

you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Now let me use my psychic powers here

case in point.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

Malachi — Sat, 04 May 2013 01:40:03 GMT

But even skimming the begining of DiLorenzo's text in Lew Rockwell's site we see that he does not deny that slavery was profitable in the institutional environment of the South. His claim is basically that this profitability, in the mid nineteenth century, was dependent on laws that subsidized slave holders.

That might very well be true (however it's also a very hard claim to very with data), but it's similar to saying that Microsoft's profits are not real because of laws of intellectual property that subsidize them.

those points are actually quite relevant to our main topic. you would do well to note them. I also suggest that you focus less on personalities, and more on the topic at hand.

And that doesn't refute my general point, which is that profit making operations are conditional to their (institutional) environment, a point that only "vive la revolution" seems to have grasped. It actually confirms it even further.

look here dude, thats what I have been telling you these past week. thats why I keep drawing your attention to the fact that these enabling conditions are ideological or technological, so that we can deal with the issue at hand.

Re: The Question of Choice...HELP!

ToxicAssets — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:16:18 GMT

He is old and settled in his ways. He knows all the answers because ten years ago he was as smart as Malachi.

I'm 27. Not that old overall, but as old as Methusalah compared to the average user here, who writes like a high school dropout (and reads even worse).

I don't know Malachi's age, but his opinions, the structure of his argumentation and thought process, his overall culture (or lack thereof) and even his insolent attitude are very much like mine when I was 16 or 17. That's why I've ballparked a 10-year developmental gap.

It might be less, I'm a slow learner.

But whatever his age is, he still has a lot to learn, like I did back then. And like I still do myself, albeit in a more advanced level than his. In any case, I'm always glad to help.