Ancient Rome, Greece, Babylon, Egypt, India, China, and Africa too, all had slavery. None of them created the Industrial Revolution. Great Britain and the United States did create the Industrial Revolution, on a foundation of economic freedom and respect for individual rights.
The great blemish of slavery played no greater positive role in the history of the US than it had played previously in the world, which is to say, virtually none.
Ignoring its overwhelming negatives, its utmost positive contribution here may have been a temporarily larger supply of raw cotton.
But even that is probably not true. Free labor could have picked cotton. True, it would have had to be paid more than a wage equal to the price of a slave’s minimum necessities, but it undoubtedly would have been less expensive per pound of cotton picked.
Free labor would have done away with the cost of a system of overseers and the cost of acquiring slaves. It could easily have been accompanied by a system of piecework and thus eager competition among workers in picking more cotton and thereby earning more money.
Free workers would also have been motivated to find brand new ways to increase production, because they would have financially greatly benefitted from doing so. Thus, improvements in raw cotton production might have come generations sooner.
People who believe that slavery is an efficient system of production are people who are ready to impose 100% marginal rates of taxation in the belief that doing so is economically harmless.
The alleged economic benefit of slavery is a core belief of the Left both in current politics and in the interpretation of economic history. It sees no connection between freedom and production and no difference between work for positive gain and work to avoid pain.
Fundamentally, the Left does not recognize the distinction between human beings and draft animals, in that it believes the value of human beings derives from their muscles rather than their motivated minds.
So far is slavery from having been a source of gain in the United States that the actual truth is that had it never existed and had no African ever been involuntarily brought to the US, the effect would have been enormously positive economically, socially, and culturally.
Incentives to produce and save would have been greatly increased. No portion of accumulated savings would have been constituted by the market value of human beings but only by that of physical assets, implying the accumulation of more physical assets.
There would have been no need for a Civil War to free the slaves, a war that killed 600,000 Americans. And today there would be no racial animosities traceable to slavery.
The US would be more the country that its fundamental principles have designed it to be. A country in which the material self-interests of men function harmoniously, to the benefit of all, because they deal with one another by means of voluntary trade, not physical force.
Slavery is as much an economic benefit as holding up gas stations. Not only does the gas station owner lose what the robber gains, but both his motivation to produce and his means of producing are reduced. A world of robbery, which is what slavery is, is a world of great poverty.
This is why the standard of living of even the kings and emperors of the pre-industrial world was far below that of the average worker in any capitalist country today.
To learn more, see my Capitalism: The Cure for Racism and then my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, both available at amzn.to/2NLvVVZ
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?