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> Moderation is no solution at all when you think about it. Contrariwise: Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slave

> Moderation is no solution at all when you think about it. Contrariwise: Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slavery outright or established a scheme whereby slavery would eventually be phased out. It frequently was accompanied or preceded by laws which approached gradual emancipation by granting freedom to those born to slaves after a given date. Among the European powers, slavery was primarily an issue with their overseas colonies. The British Empire enacted a policy of compensated Emancipation for its colonies in 1833, followed by Denmark, France in 1848, and the Netherlands in 1863. Most South American and Caribbean nations emancipated slavery through compensated schemes in the 1850s and 1860s, while Brazil passed a plan for gradual, compensated emancipation in 1871, and Cuba followed in 1880 after having enacted freedom at birth a decade earlier. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensated_emancipation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensated_emancipation

bilbo0s 7y ago
So in other words, still slavery. Right? I mean, there's still slaves. "Your kids can be free! But only the ones born after the next Vernal Equinox falling on a Tuesday. Oh, and by the way, You can never be free." Again, a solution that's ludicrous on its face and doesn't really get rid of slavery. Kind of like the compromise we had here, where you could "technically" have slaves in the North. (Of course, occasionally in the North, your neighbors came by to kill you and take your slaves to Canada. But you could have them.) Obviously, it just turned out to be not a very workable solution. Like any compromise on an issue like that. There were just a whole lot of people out there taking that whole "..then, thenceforward, and forever free.." thing deadly seriously. Either you have slavery or you don't. It's kind of binary. You really can't go into a roomful of pregnant high school girls and pick out the one who is the "most virgin" is kind of my point. It's ludicrous to think that you can.
- lukifer 7y ago
  There is an unresolvable tension between the quantitative and the qualitative, and it's hard to imagine a more extreme example than erasing ineffable human dignity in order to turn a human into a commodity. Let's flip this around to today: imagine a hypothetical future 100 years from now, that honors the qualitative dignity of all animal life, and views factory farming with the same horror that we view slavery now. From this moral vantage point (even as a meat eater, I concede this position the high ground), a phased approach seems appalling. We currently slaughter roughly one Holocaust's worth of animals every hour; how about reducing it to one Holocaust per two hours? Maybe a new law to give cows an hour in the sunshine before they're herded back into pens? What about voluntary buyback programs? Taxes on meat to subsidize cheaper vegetables? These are all quantitative solutions to a qualitative problem: either cows have inalienable value as conscious beings, or they don't; and if they do, shouldn't we stop at nothing to defend that sacred value and eliminate all human-caused animal suffering, rather than wishy-washy incrementalism? The unfortunate reality then and now is that we're stuck in quantitative games, directly or indirectly. There are no shortage of highly motivated consumers and producers who benefit from factory farming, just as as there was for slavery. There was clear justification to go to war to end slavery, to forcibly grind the game entirely to a halt; but it was not without cost, not only in lives lost, but in a consequential cultural rift that persists to this day. I'm both ignorant and curious how culture played out in those societies that use phased approaches; do they have equivalents to the "Southern Strategy" and Nixon's racially-motivated War on Drugs (which is rightly, I think, compared to modern-day slavery)? I don't claim to know the answers to any of these things; but until a given moral phase-shift takes place, it's not always obvious how to get there, and a hardline stance can run the risk that the system kicks back, opponents are strengthened and galvanized, and nothing is accomplished. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony and offense of invoking a comparison to farm animals in a discussion of slavery, when slaves were once viewed as livestock. I'm attempting to draw the opposite point: of humanizing animals, in the same way that we now humanize all homo sapiens regardless of ethnicity.)
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    But we did take a non-incrementalist approach to slavery, and it worked. Sherman smashing through Georgia was not, by any stretch of the imagination, "moderate". And it worked much better than any of the other approaches. Travel to Asia or Africa, and ask who the leader of the US was when the slaves were freed? Then ask who the leader of the British Empire was when their slaves were freed? Or the leader of Brazil? There's a reason people in Asia revere Lincoln and not the leader of the British Empire, or the leader of Brazil at the time, or the leader of Cuba, or what have you. That reason is because Lincoln is viewed as having done the right thing in the face of enormous risk. We did the right thing in a way that transcended America. It even transcended the slaves to be perfectly frank. What we did has inspired humanity ever since. Whether you are at an elite University in Beijing, Shanghai, or Singapore, Lincoln is a leader all of the most promising students are drawn to. This is not simply the result of marketing either. For instance, the king of Siam was famously drawn to Lincoln over all of the others as well. The Czar lamented his comparison to Lincoln. Insisting people should instead venerate him, because he had done more for the serfs than Lincoln did for the slaves. And he felt he'd certainly done more than the British or the Portuguese, who he felt had done nothing at all. All of this was long before professional marketing really existed. Even long before the US was really even a power. So our solution to slavery paid us off over a thousandfold in untold influence and soft power alone. Influence and soft power throughout the world. Now, I'll concede that it's influence and soft power that we seem to have squandered, but it's also influence these wishy washy incrementalist approaches never conferred on their proponents. You say it was a cost, (and presumably a loss?). I think you might believe that because you haven't properly accounted for the many benefits we've enjoyed in your cost-benefit analysis.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > it worked much better than any of the other approaches. Only if you consider a million lives lost, and many more wounded, "better" than the solution other countries with slavery, like Great Britain, adopted: they paid off the slaveowners and freed their slaves without any violence at all.
      - 7y ago
- tlholaday 7y ago
  You write ... > So in other words, still slavery. Right? .., which suggests you overlooked the first leg of the OR clause: > Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slavery outright But maybe I am not understanding you. If an act outlaws slavery outright, is it your view that there are still slaves? You also write ... > ... and doesn't really get rid of slavery. .., but the historical record shows that compensated emancipation did get rid of lawful slavery.

bilbo0s 7y ago

So in other words, still slavery. Right? I mean, there's still slaves. "Your kids can be free! But only the ones born after the next Vernal Equinox falling on a Tuesday. Oh, and by the way, You can never be free." Again, a solution that's ludicrous on its face and doesn't really get rid of slavery. Kind of like the compromise we had here, where you could "technically" have slaves in the North. (Of course, occasionally in the North, your neighbors came by to kill you and take your slaves to Canada. But you could have them.) Obviously, it just turned out to be not a very workable solution. Like any compromise on an issue like that. There were just a whole lot of people out there taking that whole "..then, thenceforward, and forever free.." thing deadly seriously. Either you have slavery or you don't. It's kind of binary. You really can't go into a roomful of pregnant high school girls and pick out the one who is the "most virgin" is kind of my point. It's ludicrous to think that you can.

lukifer 7y ago
There is an unresolvable tension between the quantitative and the qualitative, and it's hard to imagine a more extreme example than erasing ineffable human dignity in order to turn a human into a commodity. Let's flip this around to today: imagine a hypothetical future 100 years from now, that honors the qualitative dignity of all animal life, and views factory farming with the same horror that we view slavery now. From this moral vantage point (even as a meat eater, I concede this position the high ground), a phased approach seems appalling. We currently slaughter roughly one Holocaust's worth of animals every hour; how about reducing it to one Holocaust per two hours? Maybe a new law to give cows an hour in the sunshine before they're herded back into pens? What about voluntary buyback programs? Taxes on meat to subsidize cheaper vegetables? These are all quantitative solutions to a qualitative problem: either cows have inalienable value as conscious beings, or they don't; and if they do, shouldn't we stop at nothing to defend that sacred value and eliminate all human-caused animal suffering, rather than wishy-washy incrementalism? The unfortunate reality then and now is that we're stuck in quantitative games, directly or indirectly. There are no shortage of highly motivated consumers and producers who benefit from factory farming, just as as there was for slavery. There was clear justification to go to war to end slavery, to forcibly grind the game entirely to a halt; but it was not without cost, not only in lives lost, but in a consequential cultural rift that persists to this day. I'm both ignorant and curious how culture played out in those societies that use phased approaches; do they have equivalents to the "Southern Strategy" and Nixon's racially-motivated War on Drugs (which is rightly, I think, compared to modern-day slavery)? I don't claim to know the answers to any of these things; but until a given moral phase-shift takes place, it's not always obvious how to get there, and a hardline stance can run the risk that the system kicks back, opponents are strengthened and galvanized, and nothing is accomplished. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony and offense of invoking a comparison to farm animals in a discussion of slavery, when slaves were once viewed as livestock. I'm attempting to draw the opposite point: of humanizing animals, in the same way that we now humanize all homo sapiens regardless of ethnicity.)
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  But we did take a non-incrementalist approach to slavery, and it worked. Sherman smashing through Georgia was not, by any stretch of the imagination, "moderate". And it worked much better than any of the other approaches. Travel to Asia or Africa, and ask who the leader of the US was when the slaves were freed? Then ask who the leader of the British Empire was when their slaves were freed? Or the leader of Brazil? There's a reason people in Asia revere Lincoln and not the leader of the British Empire, or the leader of Brazil at the time, or the leader of Cuba, or what have you. That reason is because Lincoln is viewed as having done the right thing in the face of enormous risk. We did the right thing in a way that transcended America. It even transcended the slaves to be perfectly frank. What we did has inspired humanity ever since. Whether you are at an elite University in Beijing, Shanghai, or Singapore, Lincoln is a leader all of the most promising students are drawn to. This is not simply the result of marketing either. For instance, the king of Siam was famously drawn to Lincoln over all of the others as well. The Czar lamented his comparison to Lincoln. Insisting people should instead venerate him, because he had done more for the serfs than Lincoln did for the slaves. And he felt he'd certainly done more than the British or the Portuguese, who he felt had done nothing at all. All of this was long before professional marketing really existed. Even long before the US was really even a power. So our solution to slavery paid us off over a thousandfold in untold influence and soft power alone. Influence and soft power throughout the world. Now, I'll concede that it's influence and soft power that we seem to have squandered, but it's also influence these wishy washy incrementalist approaches never conferred on their proponents. You say it was a cost, (and presumably a loss?). I think you might believe that because you haven't properly accounted for the many benefits we've enjoyed in your cost-benefit analysis.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > it worked much better than any of the other approaches. Only if you consider a million lives lost, and many more wounded, "better" than the solution other countries with slavery, like Great Britain, adopted: they paid off the slaveowners and freed their slaves without any violence at all.
    - 7y ago
tlholaday 7y ago
You write ... > So in other words, still slavery. Right? .., which suggests you overlooked the first leg of the OR clause: > Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slavery outright But maybe I am not understanding you. If an act outlaws slavery outright, is it your view that there are still slaves? You also write ... > ... and doesn't really get rid of slavery. .., but the historical record shows that compensated emancipation did get rid of lawful slavery.