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>Chattel slavery was exceptionally profitable. it wasn't. Slave economies are exceptionally unprofitable and unproductive. To take the US as an example. Liquid
by Barrin92 5mo ago
>Chattel slavery was exceptionally profitable.
it wasn't. Slave economies are exceptionally unprofitable and unproductive. To take the US as an example. Liquid wealth, i.e. capital, was vastly larger in the North than in the slave owning states, the industrial output of New York exceeded the entire Confederacy and it was that profitability, wealth and mechanized agricultural production that did them in.
Even Marx recognized this by the way, following feudalism capitalism was a progressive force, it was profit, productivity and surplus that enabled civil society, the north was more civil because it was rich and had unlocked modern forms of production. The problem of capitalism is not profit or lack of civil society.
- ch4s3 5mo agoContemporary anti-capitalists are way to influenced by the "king cotton" theory, which as you point out is completely wrong.
- watwut 5mo agoNone of that implies slavery was not profitable. You got richer by owning slaves. You got a lot of profit out of them.
- Zigurd 5mo agoTrue, but "better than slavery or feudalism" isn't a winning tagline. Nor should it be an excuse for letting capitalism tear down civil society as it has been doing in the US recently.
- OhMeadhbh 5mo agoI'm going to start singing the Internationale here in a second. (not snarky. I'm feeling pretty revolutionary after that last comment.)
- GerryAdamsSF 5mo agoIt was profitable for the slave owners. History is not a Paradox game where there is rational top down control.
- gruez 5mo agoProfitable/unprofitable is the wrong way of looking at it, because it implicitly ignores opportunity costs. Putting your money in a savings account at a big bank might be "profitable" in the sense you're getting paid some meager interest rate (eg. 0.1%), but it's definitely not the best option, like a money market fund or equity ETF. What OP probably meant was that slavery was worse than the alternatives, like putting your money in a savings account with meager interest rate.
- chadgpt3 5mo agoThen why didn't slave owners sell all their slaves and put the money in savings accounts?
- tonfreed 5mo agoI think you're missing the point OP was making. He's saying it's profitable but not optimal, those who recognised that quickly outstripped the slave owners in wealth. I could ask you about your spending habits and why you don't pump all your money into an S&P 500 ETF, but that's ignoring time and consumption preferences you have, as well as perceived opportunity cost. It's not a useful observation to make at an individual level.
- greenie_beans 5mo agoa major source of the north's wealth was because of its trading relationship with the antebellum south