7 ms·

Those pesky moral principles are also getting in the way of growth. If you want real growth, force people to work for you for free. If they stop working you can

by otikik 2y ago

Those pesky moral principles are also getting in the way of growth. If you want real growth, force people to work for you for free. If they stop working you can always sell their organs.

WalterBright 2y ago
> If you want real growth, force people to work for you for free Countries with free labor bury slave economies. Every time. I see the notion that slaves are more productive than free labor all the time. What is missing is any evidence of it. For an example, the US initially divided itself into two countries - North and South, free labor and slave labor. Guess which one economically and then militarily buried the other. For another, Korea divided into two countries. One buried the other economically. Germany split in two. The free one buried the slave one. How much more evidence do you need?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > see the notion that slaves are more productive than free labor all the time It's estimated "that emancipation generated aggregate economic gains worth the equivalent of a 4% to 35% increase in US aggregate productivity" [1]. To look at the slave economies favourably, you have to exclude slaves from per-capita measures of productivity [2]. That said, Southern farms were more efficient than Northern ones. Not because they used slaves. But because they embraced economies of scale. [1] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/one-giant-leap-emancipation-and-aggregate-economic-gains/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/one-giant-... [2] https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/economics%20of%20slavery.asp https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/economics%20of%20slavery.a...
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > Southern farms were more efficient than Northern ones I don't believe it. Evidence: they couldn't feed the Confederate army.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Evidence: they couldn't feed the Confederate army You can't feed an army with cotton, tobacco and sugarcane, the "main prewar agricultural products of the Confederate States" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_Sta...
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        They could have switched to food crops at any time. BTW, the reason the South seceded was to protect itself from the Northern market economy. The slave economy was also unable to supply its army with shoes, uniforms, guns, cannons, powder, etc. The reason General Lee was at Gettysburg is because he was marching towards Harrisburg, which had a shoe factory he wanted to loot to shoe his barefoot army.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > could have switched to food crops at any time They started. But as the article mentions, that happened amidst a drought and the beginning of the war, which destroyed distribution. > slave economy was also unable to supply its army with shoes, uniforms, guns, cannons, powder, etc. Sure. Not arguing for the strength of the Southern economy. Just pointing out that their farms were more efficient. But not because of slaves. Because of the thing this article is about.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        The North didn't have problems with drought or distribution. Even though they were invaded by the Confederate army.
    - mountainb 2y ago
      This is a big subtopic within this period. They had trouble with feeding the people because Southern policy to deter the war (Cotton is King speech) was to stop the cultivation of cotton. The CSA decreed that all the cash croppers convert to food farming. This did not work very well, they self-collapsed their own economy, and the hoped for British intervention never happened.
- eesmith 2y ago
  > North and South, free labor and slave labor That summary is overly simplistic. Northern textile mills did not get their cotton from free labor. Also, "From an economical standpoint, the emancipation in the West Indies and the general abolishment of slavery was a failure for Britain", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton . Opinions of course differ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Effects_on_the_British_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Effects_o... The US has non-free labor in the form of penal labor supplying some $10 billion in goods and services. Last I checked it was not being buried by countries with only free labor.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > Northern textile mills did not get their cotton from free labor. The North continued to prosper after the war, and their economy was not based on textiles. They also imported Egyptian cotton.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      That doesn't affect my point that the North and the South cannot so easily be described as free labor vs. slave labor. Just like how England didn't have slavery in the 1700s, but the English still profited from slavery elsewhere in the British Empire.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        The English would have profited more with free labor.
        eesmith 2y ago
        Are you being deliberately obtuse? My objection is to how your description needless obscures that the North was a mixed economy based on mostly free by also decidedly slave labor. Surely you know there's a long history of Yankees taught that they were on the good side, because they didn't want anything to do with slavery, because that's the more comfortable history to teach, rather than the real history of how many Yankees profited off of slave-made goods, just like those English not-so-gentle-men still honored today whose wealth was built on the backs of black slaves. Surely you are also aware that apologists for the treasonous Confederacy say the Union should have just waited a few decades for slavery to reach its natural dead end, rather having all those poor white boys die for a few black folk. Given that knowledge, please try to not sound like a supporter of either false narrative.
- otikik 2y ago
  They failed because they didn’t sell their dissidents’ organs.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  It works on a smaller scale too. Higher minimum wage, more (reasonable) employment benefits, and less control of the firm over the employers also tend to lead fast growing economies. But people will discuss endlessly about what direction the causation goes.
gruez 2y ago
This but unironically. Communism arguably has pretty good "moral principles" behind it. I mean, how could you be against everyone being equal and laborers owning the means of production rather some fatcat capitalist who doesn't even work? However, we all know empirically how that worked out.
- m0llusk 2y ago
  That argument collapses pretty quickly. Attempts to build Communist nations failed so completely from the start that all involved high levels of confiscation of property and forced employment and work rules which closely resemble slavery.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  I don't think "everyone being equal" was ever a stated or practiced goal in communism. Even if the means of production was owned by laborers (the state), all aspects of society is still ordered hierarchically in all real-life examples of communism. The Soviet Union, China, both had/have big businesses with company leaders, bosses, middle managers, and so on. Not to speak of the military forces, academia, or the arts. If anything, the communist nations had meritocracy instead of equality. At least in how claimed their nations were organized, and many times in practice as well.
  - andriesm 2y ago
    I suspect communism and socialism is usually sold with claims about how equal everyone are and how much more equal everyone will be. But then when it is actually implemented... a lot depends on how high your friends are in the government and how high your rank is! And of course 'the supreme leader" and those closest and most loyal to him cannot be expected to live like the masses now?

by otikik 2y ago

Those pesky moral principles are also getting in the way of growth. If you want real growth, force people to work for you for free. If they stop working you can always sell their organs.

WalterBright 2y ago

> If you want real growth, force people to work for you for free Countries with free labor bury slave economies. Every time. I see the notion that slaves are more productive than free labor all the time. What is missing is any evidence of it. For an example, the US initially divided itself into two countries - North and South, free labor and slave labor. Guess which one economically and then militarily buried the other. For another, Korea divided into two countries. One buried the other economically. Germany split in two. The free one buried the slave one. How much more evidence do you need?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> see the notion that slaves are more productive than free labor all the time It's estimated "that emancipation generated aggregate economic gains worth the equivalent of a 4% to 35% increase in US aggregate productivity" [1]. To look at the slave economies favourably, you have to exclude slaves from per-capita measures of productivity [2]. That said, Southern farms were more efficient than Northern ones. Not because they used slaves. But because they embraced economies of scale. [1] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/one-giant-leap-emancipation-and-aggregate-economic-gains/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/one-giant-... [2] https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/economics%20of%20slavery.asp https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/economics%20of%20slavery.a...
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > Southern farms were more efficient than Northern ones I don't believe it. Evidence: they couldn't feed the Confederate army.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Evidence: they couldn't feed the Confederate army You can't feed an army with cotton, tobacco and sugarcane, the "main prewar agricultural products of the Confederate States" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_Sta...
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      They could have switched to food crops at any time. BTW, the reason the South seceded was to protect itself from the Northern market economy. The slave economy was also unable to supply its army with shoes, uniforms, guns, cannons, powder, etc. The reason General Lee was at Gettysburg is because he was marching towards Harrisburg, which had a shoe factory he wanted to loot to shoe his barefoot army.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > could have switched to food crops at any time They started. But as the article mentions, that happened amidst a drought and the beginning of the war, which destroyed distribution. > slave economy was also unable to supply its army with shoes, uniforms, guns, cannons, powder, etc. Sure. Not arguing for the strength of the Southern economy. Just pointing out that their farms were more efficient. But not because of slaves. Because of the thing this article is about.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        The North didn't have problems with drought or distribution. Even though they were invaded by the Confederate army.
  - mountainb 2y ago
    This is a big subtopic within this period. They had trouble with feeding the people because Southern policy to deter the war (Cotton is King speech) was to stop the cultivation of cotton. The CSA decreed that all the cash croppers convert to food farming. This did not work very well, they self-collapsed their own economy, and the hoped for British intervention never happened.
eesmith 2y ago
> North and South, free labor and slave labor That summary is overly simplistic. Northern textile mills did not get their cotton from free labor. Also, "From an economical standpoint, the emancipation in the West Indies and the general abolishment of slavery was a failure for Britain", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton . Opinions of course differ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Effects_on_the_British_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Effects_o... The US has non-free labor in the form of penal labor supplying some $10 billion in goods and services. Last I checked it was not being buried by countries with only free labor.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > Northern textile mills did not get their cotton from free labor. The North continued to prosper after the war, and their economy was not based on textiles. They also imported Egyptian cotton.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    That doesn't affect my point that the North and the South cannot so easily be described as free labor vs. slave labor. Just like how England didn't have slavery in the 1700s, but the English still profited from slavery elsewhere in the British Empire.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      The English would have profited more with free labor.
      - eesmith 2y ago
        Are you being deliberately obtuse? My objection is to how your description needless obscures that the North was a mixed economy based on mostly free by also decidedly slave labor. Surely you know there's a long history of Yankees taught that they were on the good side, because they didn't want anything to do with slavery, because that's the more comfortable history to teach, rather than the real history of how many Yankees profited off of slave-made goods, just like those English not-so-gentle-men still honored today whose wealth was built on the backs of black slaves. Surely you are also aware that apologists for the treasonous Confederacy say the Union should have just waited a few decades for slavery to reach its natural dead end, rather having all those poor white boys die for a few black folk. Given that knowledge, please try to not sound like a supporter of either false narrative.
otikik 2y ago
They failed because they didn’t sell their dissidents’ organs.
marcosdumay 2y ago
It works on a smaller scale too. Higher minimum wage, more (reasonable) employment benefits, and less control of the firm over the employers also tend to lead fast growing economies. But people will discuss endlessly about what direction the causation goes.

gruez 2y ago

This but unironically. Communism arguably has pretty good "moral principles" behind it. I mean, how could you be against everyone being equal and laborers owning the means of production rather some fatcat capitalist who doesn't even work? However, we all know empirically how that worked out.

m0llusk 2y ago
That argument collapses pretty quickly. Attempts to build Communist nations failed so completely from the start that all involved high levels of confiscation of property and forced employment and work rules which closely resemble slavery.
carlosjobim 2y ago
I don't think "everyone being equal" was ever a stated or practiced goal in communism. Even if the means of production was owned by laborers (the state), all aspects of society is still ordered hierarchically in all real-life examples of communism. The Soviet Union, China, both had/have big businesses with company leaders, bosses, middle managers, and so on. Not to speak of the military forces, academia, or the arts. If anything, the communist nations had meritocracy instead of equality. At least in how claimed their nations were organized, and many times in practice as well.
- andriesm 2y ago
  I suspect communism and socialism is usually sold with claims about how equal everyone are and how much more equal everyone will be. But then when it is actually implemented... a lot depends on how high your friends are in the government and how high your rank is! And of course 'the supreme leader" and those closest and most loyal to him cannot be expected to live like the masses now?