3 ms·

I will respond to this only because I've heard it before. That view is impossible to justify because a. Slavery is an evil, repulsive act, and if it's linked t

I will respond to this only because I've heard it before. That view is impossible to justify because a. Slavery is an evil, repulsive act, and if it's linked to capitalism, then that will (for good reason) lead to opposition to capitalism. b. While it was economically good for some, it was bad for others, and you can't write down a sensible economic model in which ownership of others leads to an efficient outcome. That's all I'm going to say about this crazy claim in an attempt to prevent its misuse.

thephyber 7y ago
This seems like the same "solution aversion"[1] argument that lots of conservatives have when it comes to rejecting the possibility of "global warming" / "climate change". I would argue it's also wrong, especially in the modern USA flavor of capitalism after the Friedman Doctrine[2] said that shareholders are actually immoral for not maximizing profits despite any other social responsibility. This is a "Paperclip Maximizer"[3] utility function where companies eventually figure out how to use legal, financial, and psychological/addictive tools to overwhelm the defenses of all consumers in a society. It's effectively a flavor of social darwinism. Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers), but ours has largely been captured[4] by corporate interests. [1] https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  >>Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers) The regulatory approach is a one-size-fits-all over-simplification of the vast diversity of interactions that take place in an economy consisting of millions of people. If there is an allegation that some party is exploiting another, it has to be provable in a court of law in order to have a reliable indication that the allegation is true. Trying to generalize entire classes of interactions as exploitive and thus worthy of being prohibited is not a good way to organize a complex society. It inhibits opportunity and allows special interests to exploit the population at large through anti-competitive behavior far more than it creates opportunity and reduces exploitation. A well-functioning society needs an active role for the government but that role should be in providing public goods, like objective information resources that consumers can resort to, not in limiting consumers' choices to protect them from their own bad judgment.
  - someguydave 7y ago
    Agreed. In fact the poor and downtrodden suffer more under regulation because the government often removes alternative recourse from them in the name of justice.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
I'm not saying the person you are responding to is right, but your counter seems flawed. Owning slaves was legal and allowed some people to gather wealth, even at the expense of other people. As a result, there were people who got rich doing exactly that. Why isn't that part of capitalism? Yes, it taints it, but really what it says to me is that unfettered capitalism will lead to "evil", repulsive acts, and that is exactly why, as problematic as it is, government must set legal boundaries around unacceptable behavior when such behaviors are discovered. To make a modern analogy, it is legal for coal companies to "top" mountains, and to strip mine, and to release gigatons of CO2, and with it biologically significant amounts of mercury, massive amounts of particulates, large waste byproducts of coal ash and more. It is legal and profitable, so there are many companies doing it, despite the clear external costs to environment and the health of the population. Is this not part of capitalism?
- scythe 7y ago
  What is capitalism? Is capitalism any system that uses money? Doesn't that make most "socialist" countries capitalist? To me, capitalism is about guaranteeing people's property rights. Some forms of indentured servitude might be considered a type of capitalism, but certainly not 19th-century American slavery, in which slaves had almost no rights (and the situation got worse as time progressed). In the very early days, slaves could even work for pay and eventually buy their freedom, but as the years went on, they were banned from this and later from owning property altogether. Furthermore, history clearly shows that slave codes were continually tightened not because it was believed to be economically viable but because the population of the South was afraid of black people. Already in the eighteenth century it was made illegal for a slaveowner to free his slaves by fiat. It required approval from the government. How is that capitalist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States >A 1723 law stated that slaves may not "be set free upon any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious services to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council." This isn't some perverse overinterpretation of slaveowners' property rights. It's about fear, plain and simple. White people in the antebellum South did not want black people to be part of society. Capitalism can't explain that. There was a brief respite after some slaves fought for the patriots in the war and manumission was reinstated, but then: >However, as population of free Negroes increased, the state passed laws forbidding them from moving into the state (1778)[34] and requiring newly-freed slaves to leave within one year unless they had special permission (1806).[35] This was not just about money. Money doesn't explain "freed slaves must leave".
zdw 7y ago
I think I stated this poorly - optimization in most economic systems ends up causing problems of morality. Any number of non-capitalist systems have their own host of problems that are comparable in magnatude. Most of the other responses in this thread point out rightly that your predicate in item b) is the core problem of capitalism - profit is frequently optimized by creating negative externalities.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
As another commenter pointed out, slavery was a modern version of feudalism, not so much capitalism. I am not an economist or historian, but I'd say the difference is that in a capitalistic society, the employees are also consumers, part of - if not the drivers and backbone of - the economic system. That is, simplistically speaking, employer pays employee, employee has steady income, employee goes to bank to deposit savings and take out a mortgage to buy a house, vastly improving quality of life. Bank uses savings to give out loans and mortgages allowing for people to start businesses and family lives, gains interest back, pays it back to savings accounts, etc. Well, that was how it worked for a while anyway, nowadays I have no clue, outstanding mortgages are speculated with at high risk, banks spend your savings and the debt of your mortgage ten times over at least in financial constructions of exponential complexity, etc.

thephyber 7y ago

This seems like the same "solution aversion"[1] argument that lots of conservatives have when it comes to rejecting the possibility of "global warming" / "climate change". I would argue it's also wrong, especially in the modern USA flavor of capitalism after the Friedman Doctrine[2] said that shareholders are actually immoral for not maximizing profits despite any other social responsibility. This is a "Paperclip Maximizer"[3] utility function where companies eventually figure out how to use legal, financial, and psychological/addictive tools to overwhelm the defenses of all consumers in a society. It's effectively a flavor of social darwinism. Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers), but ours has largely been captured[4] by corporate interests. [1] https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

CryptoPunk 7y ago
>>Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers) The regulatory approach is a one-size-fits-all over-simplification of the vast diversity of interactions that take place in an economy consisting of millions of people. If there is an allegation that some party is exploiting another, it has to be provable in a court of law in order to have a reliable indication that the allegation is true. Trying to generalize entire classes of interactions as exploitive and thus worthy of being prohibited is not a good way to organize a complex society. It inhibits opportunity and allows special interests to exploit the population at large through anti-competitive behavior far more than it creates opportunity and reduces exploitation. A well-functioning society needs an active role for the government but that role should be in providing public goods, like objective information resources that consumers can resort to, not in limiting consumers' choices to protect them from their own bad judgment.
- someguydave 7y ago
  Agreed. In fact the poor and downtrodden suffer more under regulation because the government often removes alternative recourse from them in the name of justice.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

I'm not saying the person you are responding to is right, but your counter seems flawed. Owning slaves was legal and allowed some people to gather wealth, even at the expense of other people. As a result, there were people who got rich doing exactly that. Why isn't that part of capitalism? Yes, it taints it, but really what it says to me is that unfettered capitalism will lead to "evil", repulsive acts, and that is exactly why, as problematic as it is, government must set legal boundaries around unacceptable behavior when such behaviors are discovered. To make a modern analogy, it is legal for coal companies to "top" mountains, and to strip mine, and to release gigatons of CO2, and with it biologically significant amounts of mercury, massive amounts of particulates, large waste byproducts of coal ash and more. It is legal and profitable, so there are many companies doing it, despite the clear external costs to environment and the health of the population. Is this not part of capitalism?

scythe 7y ago
What is capitalism? Is capitalism any system that uses money? Doesn't that make most "socialist" countries capitalist? To me, capitalism is about guaranteeing people's property rights. Some forms of indentured servitude might be considered a type of capitalism, but certainly not 19th-century American slavery, in which slaves had almost no rights (and the situation got worse as time progressed). In the very early days, slaves could even work for pay and eventually buy their freedom, but as the years went on, they were banned from this and later from owning property altogether. Furthermore, history clearly shows that slave codes were continually tightened not because it was believed to be economically viable but because the population of the South was afraid of black people. Already in the eighteenth century it was made illegal for a slaveowner to free his slaves by fiat. It required approval from the government. How is that capitalist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States >A 1723 law stated that slaves may not "be set free upon any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious services to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council." This isn't some perverse overinterpretation of slaveowners' property rights. It's about fear, plain and simple. White people in the antebellum South did not want black people to be part of society. Capitalism can't explain that. There was a brief respite after some slaves fought for the patriots in the war and manumission was reinstated, but then: >However, as population of free Negroes increased, the state passed laws forbidding them from moving into the state (1778)[34] and requiring newly-freed slaves to leave within one year unless they had special permission (1806).[35] This was not just about money. Money doesn't explain "freed slaves must leave".

zdw 7y ago

I think I stated this poorly - optimization in most economic systems ends up causing problems of morality. Any number of non-capitalist systems have their own host of problems that are comparable in magnatude. Most of the other responses in this thread point out rightly that your predicate in item b) is the core problem of capitalism - profit is frequently optimized by creating negative externalities.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

As another commenter pointed out, slavery was a modern version of feudalism, not so much capitalism. I am not an economist or historian, but I'd say the difference is that in a capitalistic society, the employees are also consumers, part of - if not the drivers and backbone of - the economic system. That is, simplistically speaking, employer pays employee, employee has steady income, employee goes to bank to deposit savings and take out a mortgage to buy a house, vastly improving quality of life. Bank uses savings to give out loans and mortgages allowing for people to start businesses and family lives, gains interest back, pays it back to savings accounts, etc. Well, that was how it worked for a while anyway, nowadays I have no clue, outstanding mortgages are speculated with at high risk, banks spend your savings and the debt of your mortgage ten times over at least in financial constructions of exponential complexity, etc.