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The plantation economy developed in the southern states, and the initial political dominance of Virginia (which provided four of America’s first five presidents
by pizza 9y ago
The plantation economy developed in the southern states, and the initial political dominance of Virginia (which provided four of America’s first five presidents) ensured the continued survival of slavery in the newly independent country. By 1860 auction prices suggested that the collective value of American slaves was $4bn at a time when the federal government’s annual budget was around $69m. That explains both why southern slaveowners, many of whom had borrowed against their slaves as collateral, would never give up the practice, and why a financial settlement of the issue was out of the question.
I guess this too would be an example of the 'banality of evil'.
(btw to get around the paywall just clink on 'web' to find it through google; it'll let you read it if google is the referrer)
- lukas099 9y agoI agree. Although we like to think of them as psychopaths, people who do evil are mostly pretty normal people.
- kolbe 9y agoJust an aside, but I wonder if the north stood to profit from this dynamic. Like, if farms were held as collateral against the slave loans, did northern banks get to take that land when the owners went into default?
- pizza 9y agoI know of a different way the North profited -- the opportunity cost of a firm refusing to do transactions with members from a different group (i.e. both hiring black labor or collaborating with black enterprise) is equivalent to institutionalized forfeiture of feasible income (of adding more laborers) [0] Southern capitalism thus negated capitalism's mission: that society improves when parties can fulfill each other's desires efficiently if they each have something that the other desires. So Northern capitalism did tend towards greater capitalist prosperity, because it wasn't contradicting post-slavery capitalism like the South. That contradiction depends upon the Southerners not seeing blacks as anything but "technology", rather than economic agents. But the result is that white refusal to cooperate with blacks hurts both blacks and whites: neither blacks improve their lot (no productivity), nor do whites improve theirs (forced to relinquish maximum efficiency and profit that would otherwise be allowed by allowing black employment) - simply because of racial stubbornness. [0] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/58e/1a4/aa6/58e1a4aa6e9fd533879253.pdf https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/5...