While slavery enriched slave owners, it impoverished not only the slaves but also the United States as a whole. Its impoverishment of the US can be measured by the difference between what the slaves produced as slaves and the far greater amount they would have produced if free.
Slavery was particularly damaging to the South, because it created in the market value of slaves a fictional capital that made the accumulation of real capital in such forms as factory buildings and machinery seem unnecessary. The South’s economic backwardness was a result.
In the North, a factory owner calculated his wealth as the sum of the values of his factory buildings, equipment, and inventories. In the South, a plantation owner counted as the main part of his wealth the mere presence of workers on his land, who were regarded as his property.
Thus, compared with the Northern factory owner, the Southern planation owner had a major deficiency of real capital. He was missing the factories, machinery, & materials that made up the Northerner’s capital. Instead, his wealth consisted mainly of the market value of his slaves.
Without slavery, Southern capitalists would have had to accumulate vastly more actual capital to be as rich as slavery gave them the illusion of being. And correspondingly, without slavery, the South as a region would have had to have accumulated far more real capital.
To learn more, read my “Capitalism: The Cure for Racism,” available for 99¢ at amzn.to/3g2EJkh
WARNING: Now and then there is talk of using “lockdowns” as a means of combatting climate change. If this were to happen, the next step would be mass extermination. Those “locked down” [up], would be forcibly prevented from contributing anything to the economic system except CO2.
They could not help but be viewed as constituting a class of destructive parasites. The Left’s logic already implies that billions should be slaughtered, especially where prosperity and thus CO2 emissions are greatest.
To the Left, such lockdowns would make the case for mass murder seem irresistible. The Left, with all of its alleged “Love,” is nothing but a swarm of little murderous monsters waiting for an excuse. They will make Hitler and Stalin seem small by comparison. Keep your guns!
Columbus Day, which this year marks the 528th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, is tomorrow.
Everyone who identifies himself as a member of Western Civilization should acknowledge the greatness of Columbus. He brought the Western Hemisphere into the orbit of Western Civilization and thereby correspondingly increased the civilized area of the earth’s surface.
Here's my preference: I prefer global warming and rising sea levels to socialism and a life of deprivation and poverty..
I prefer my car, my A/C, refrigerator, and all the other goods that fossil fuels make possible to holding down the global mean temperature a few degrees over the course of centuries. I have the same preference vis-a-vis a 50-100 foot rise in sea levels over 500-1000 years.
Capitalism can handle such problems, with minimal loss of human life. Against a backdrop of continuing economic progress, history will barely notice them.
The purpose of my life is my own happiness. It is not to serve as a conscript in anyone’s cockamamie scheme to “bend a curve,” hold back the seas, or hold down the mean temperature of the globe.
That is government central planning, which violates my individual right to plan and pursue my own goals, i.e., my right to the pursuit of my own happiness.
I, and everyone else, engages in individual economic planning that is aimed at making us happier, which often means, making us richer. Our individual plans are harmonized, coordinated, and integrated by the price system. (See chaps. 6-8 of my Capitalism for details.)
Kamala Harris praises BLM, says ongoing protests are 'essential' for change in US fxn.ws/32ZVkSy#FoxNews
A vote for Biden and Harris (who will likely become President sometime in Biden’s term) is a vote for the black equivalent of the KKK and continuing rioting in the streets.
"Peaceful protests" for Biden and Harris include throwing Molotov cocktails, smashing windows and looting stores, and beating, terrorizing, and killing people, especially police officers.
Irresponsible Reporting Causes Needless Outrage Two Times Over
The Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, KY is an example of today’s media doing such an irresponsible job of reporting, that the result is needless outrage, followed by rioting and destruction, two times over.
First, the media allege, and then repeat ad nauseam, heinous crimes committed by the police, ignoring such major facts as were the police acting without cause or in self-defense?