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Shayu posted:I think it's possible for someone to starve to death, that's true. Not sure where people deserving to starve to death came from, though. You were mulling over how to tell the people who deserve assistance from those who don't. Who do you think don't deserve assistance?
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Apr 22, 2015 22:14
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Caros posted:
quote:Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks. I'm not arguing either way that they either need or don't need help but that help should be given and not taken. Nolanar posted:You were mulling over how to tell the people who deserve assistance from those who don't. Who do you think don't deserve assistance? I have a finite amount of money to give so I have to select what I wish to give toward, if I could give to everyone I would. Sorry but sometimes decisions like that have to be made.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:16
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Shayu posted:I have a finite amount of money to give so I have to select what I wish to give toward, if I could give to everyone I would. Sorry but sometimes decisions like that have to be made. I'm not asking about your personal charitable giving habits. I'm asking about government assistance. Who do you think doesn't deserve assistance?
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Apr 22, 2015 22:18
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Shayu posted:I'm not arguing either way that they either need or don't need help but that help should be given and not taken. I agree. However, humans are selfish, and won't give enough to make sure that people don't starve to death or die on the streets. This is empirical fact. Which do you think is morally worse: take some money from people who don't need all of it and won't willingly donate a significant amount, or let people starve and die on the streets?
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Apr 22, 2015 22:20
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Shayu posted:I'm not arguing either way that they either need or don't need help but that help should be given and not taken. Oh great, we've gotten to the "taxation is theft" part of the full course idiocy meal.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:27
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Thread Libertarians Maintain Shocking Silence in Watermelon Inquiry
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Apr 22, 2015 22:28
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Shayu posted:I'm not arguing either way that they either need or don't need help but that help should be given and not taken. We don't have the luxury of a choice between the help being "given or taken." Charitable giving can't cover everyone, as you admitted in your own post. So we have to make a different choice: do we provide assistance for people via taxation and government programs (the "taking" you'd prefer to avoid), or do those people not get helped? Which do you prefer?
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Apr 22, 2015 22:39
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I listen to a lot of Coast to Coast.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:46
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Shayu posted:I'm not arguing either way that they either need or don't need help but that help should be given and not taken. If wishes were horses all beggars would ride. I agree, given the choice I'd prefer we live in a world where everyone voluntarily agrees to provide food for people who would otherwise literally starve to death, but history has shown us that bar legislation this will not happen. So barring utopia we are left with two choices, either we tax people and provide a basic minimum floor below which people cannot fall, or we let children starve to death. This is not a hard decision for me. This is of course leaving aside the very real argument that society is in fact agreeing on the whole that we need to provide these programs and doing it via their government.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:49
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Hey Shayu, I'm giving you a pass for being a 20-year-old student who has never had to deal with the real world yet saying "sometimes tough decisions have to be made and children have to starve to avoid the greater evil of Mitt Romney not being able to fit his yacht inside another yacht" because you have no direct experience with anything you're talking about nor any idea of how horrible the policies you're advocating have played out in history. But now people are posting actual evidence contradicting your gut feels and you're just saying "Oh I'm not ignoring them, I'm just going to keep believing the same regardless" and it makes me think you're either trolling this thread with vague unfalsifiable bullshit like asdf, or you're aggressively ignorant and proud of it, which is something you should work on.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:26
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Shayu posted:I have a finite amount of money to give so I have to select what I wish to give toward, if I could give to everyone I would. Sorry but sometimes decisions like that have to be made. We have more food and housing than our population can consume, yet we have hungry and homeless people. All we need to do is establish access. Also have you ever heard of economies of scale, or have you not gotten that far in life yet?
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Apr 22, 2015 23:57
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I guess there's an economic argument to be made that it's more expensive to buy, train, and house slaves than it is to pay workers less than subsistence wages, as many conservatives would like. It's a dumb argument but that's kinda asdf32's specialty
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Apr 23, 2015 00:10
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QuarkJets posted:I guess there's an economic argument to be made that it's more expensive to buy, train, and house slaves than it is to pay workers less than subsistence wages, as many conservatives would like. It's a dumb argument but that's kinda asdf32's specialty It's just not true though. A lot of people on the left as well as the right wanted the history to say that free labour was better than slave labour, but the truth is slaves were enormously efficient economic assets. And why wouldn't they be? It's precisely the horror of modern proto-industrial slavery that it is the conversion of people in to pure economic engines at the expense of anything else.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:13
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Disinterested posted:It's just not true though. A lot of people on the left as well as the right wanted the history to say that free labour was better than slave labour, but the truth is slaves were enormously efficient economic assets. And why wouldn't they be? It's precisely the horror of modern proto-industrial slavery that it is the conversion of people in to pure economic engines at the expense of anything else. Just look at Prison Labour
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Apr 23, 2015 00:19
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I don't doubt that free labour is better than slave labour in some disciplines, but when it comes to picking cotton slaves are just better at it. The slaves themselves innovated new ways to do it better than white smallholders ever could; it wasn't just the cracking of whips and poo poo.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:24
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Disinterested posted:I don't doubt that free labour is better than slave labour in some disciplines, but when it comes to picking cotton slaves are just better at it. The slaves themselves innovated new ways to do it better than white smallholders ever could; it wasn't just the cracking of whips and poo poo. That and they had no choice on crop diversification, which white smallholders (and freedmen immediately after the war, for that matter) tended to favor rather than just growing cash crops.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:31
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Yeah the "practical" antislavery argument that free labor is superior backfired in some unfortunate ways. It gives confederate apologists the talking point that slavery was on its way out in some economic determinism so the war was just evil Yankee slaughter, and it encouraged people not to give a poo poo when the Freedmen were imprisoned in an economic system created by those same slaveholders under conditions little better than slavery because hey the workers are free now, any problems will solve themselves. Slavery and colonialism are quite simply profitable as gently caress for the people doing it, and they only end when the rest of the people organize and stop them by force.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:36
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VitalSigns posted:Slavery and colonialism are quite simply profitable as gently caress for the people doing it, and they only end when the rest of the people organize and stop them by force. It can be ended to some degree by peaceful political agitation, as in Britain, though Britain still had to become an overseas enforcer of the prohibition which people were continuously trying to break.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:39
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Sure sure, I was including government action like voting to ban it as force. And of course in England the question of whether parliament or the king is the sovereign was quite literally decided at gunpoint, and that's the only reason anyone in power had to give a poo poo about popular support.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:44
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VitalSigns posted:And of course in England the question of whether parliament or the king is the sovereign was quite literally decided at gunpoint, and that's the only reason anyone in power had to give a poo poo about popular support. It's both together 
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Apr 23, 2015 00:45
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Disinterested posted:It's just not true though. A lot of people on the left as well as the right wanted the history to say that free labour was better than slave labour, but the truth is slaves were enormously efficient economic assets. And why wouldn't they be? It's precisely the horror of modern proto-industrial slavery that it is the conversion of people in to pure economic engines at the expense of anything else. I absolutely agree with most of this. From a landowner/employer's perspective there is literally nothing better than paying people just enough to survive. It's just that this is only realistic in very low skill activities and these only apply in certain instances. Plantations being one of them. The economic-moral component is therefore important in understanding the timing of the deliberate eradication of slavery.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:47
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Plantations also had a lot of light industry and several test efforts were made to implement slavery in the factory with encouraging results. The idea that slavery only worked for picking cotton and tobacco is a base oversimplification.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:54
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asdf32 posted:I absolutely agree with most of this. From a landowner/employer's perspective there is literally nothing better than paying people just enough to survive. Why do you find a way to be idiotic even when you're trying to be conciliatory? Generally slaves were not paid, at least not for their typical work. And often, though not close to universally, they were sustained at a better than subsistence level to allow for increased productivity. Working people to death is a lot less profitable than stacking them up with cheap calories to work even longer hours. asdf32 posted:The economic-moral component is therefore important in understanding the timing of the deliberate eradication of slavery. Put forward an actual comprehensive thesis of what you believe the causes for abolition were or be quiet. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 00:55
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Effectronica posted:Plantations also had a lot of light industry and several test efforts were made to implement slavery in the factory with encouraging results. The idea that slavery only worked for picking cotton and tobacco is a base oversimplification. Yeah, the lack of developing slave industry in the south other than as adjunct to plantation agriculture owes a lot more to Southern anti-modernism and romanticism than it does to chattel slavery being somehow only useful in the fields. Hell, even some Southerners acknowledged this, particularly as it gave them another avenue to complain about the free states. The Charleston Mercury, 28 February 1860 posted:When the gold mines of California were discovered, slaveholders of the South saw that, with their command of labor, it would be easy at a moderate outlay to make fortunes digging gold. The inducements to go there were great, and there were no lack of inclination on their part. But, to make the emigration profitable, it was necessary that the property* of Southern settlers should be safe, otherwise it was plainly a hazardous enterprise, neither wise nor feasible. Few were reckless enough to stake property, the accumulation of years, in a struggle with active prejudices amongst a mixed population, where for them the law was a dead letter through the hostile indifference of the General Government, whose duty it was, by the fundamental law of its existence, to afford adequate protection-executive, legislative and judicial-to the property of every man, of whatever sort, without discrimination. Had the people of the Southern States been satisfied they would have received fair play and equal protection at the hands of the Government, they would have gone to California with their slaves...California would probably now have been a Slave State in the Union. *property here being code for slaves, though since the author uses the term outright later on one wonders why he bothered.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:09
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"It's those abolitionists who are prejudiced against our laws and traditions and discriminating against us for who we are" Ahahaha, the rhetoric of "you're the real bigots" hasn't changed in two hundred years, wait poo poo 
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Apr 23, 2015 01:15
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Disinterested posted:Why do you find a way to be idiotic even when you're trying to be conciliatory? Generally slaves were not paid, at least not for their typical work. And often, though not close to universally, they were sustained at a better than subsistence level to allow for increased productivity. Working people to death is a lot less profitable than stacking them up with cheap calories to work even longer hours. I already did. You didn't.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:19
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asdf32 posted:I already did. You didn't. No, you just vaguely alluded to a mesh of social and economic causes without ever being direct or particular. Be specific. What were the primary causes of abolition? Name them, explain in a few sentences why you believe them to be relevant. If I say 'what caused the end of slavery' and you say 'hmmm well social and economic factors changed' that is a failing answer at all but the preschool level pretty much. For example: was a decline in profitability responsible for the end of slavery? You have previously argued yes but backtracked. If not, then what? Disinterested fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 01:20
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This should be interesting. His whole schtick is just posting vague useless truisms and then acting as if they proved the worth of the highly specific policy positions he is simultaneously advocating and nothing more needs to be said nor conflicting evidence addressed.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:30
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I think "because Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War" is pre-school but it seems to be what you're looking for. No you idiot, I argued that profitability was an important factor relating to slavery in general.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:31
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asdf32 posted:No you idiot, I argued that profitability was an important factor relating to slavery in general. And how does that relationship function? Come on now, if you have a firm grip how hard can it be to spell it out?
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Apr 23, 2015 01:32
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VitalSigns posted:This should be interesting. His whole schtick is just posting vague useless truisms and then acting as if they proved the worth of the highly specific policy positions he is simultaneously advocating and nothing more needs to be said nor conflicting evidence addressed. lol you expect a simple question will be enough to force him to be specific.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:35
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CharlestheHammer posted:lol you expect a simple question will be enough to force him to be specific. Yeah I have zero hope here but whatever it's worth a try. I have graduate qualifications in this poo poo so when I listen to him talk about it I just have flashes of what it would be like for asdf to spout his nonsense in a meeting with my old supervisor, it's making me reflexively testy.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:36
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Disinterested posted:And how does that relationship function? Because it explains to a significant extent where slavery spread and why. As already said.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:41
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asdf32 posted:Because it explains to a significant extent where slavery spread and why. As already said. So why did you say that a decline in economic benefit was related to abolition? If profitability only explains the rise and spread of slavery, what explains the end?
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Apr 23, 2015 02:06
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Captain_Maclaine posted:
I love this because it's just the thing for throwing in Chik-Fil-A bigots' faces when they complain about being discriminated against. They're exactly like slave owners who complained about anti-slavery views being "prejudice." Yes, how dispiriting it must have been to those entrepreneurs to consider that they might have encountered prejudice, just because they might have rolled into dusty Frisco driving fifty chained blacks before them with a whip, to toil in mines until they died.
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Apr 23, 2015 02:20
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When talking about social progress, the economic ability to support it is one of the least interesting aspects. Times when there are literally not enough resources to feed the population are rare and are typically caused by total ecological disaster or warfare. The means to feed and clothe and house the entire population has been present for centuries, and it's only politics that prevent it from happening. Take any recent famine in the developed world. In every year of the Irish Famine or the US Great Depression, each country produced more than enough food to support absolutely everyone, had their respective governments taken the well-known measures required to ensure that happens. Instead, food was exported from Ireland every year, trundled to the ports on armed wagons to keep the starving peasants away. In the United States, livestock was slaughtered en masse, and produce dumped into rivers or otherwise destroyed while millions starved. In order to find an example of starvation in the developed world that could not be ameliorated by a country's own government, you have to go to examples of literal siege and blockade or large-scale confiscation by a foreign army like the 700-day Siege of Stalingrad or the 1944 Dutch Hongerwinter. The whole "oh well workers' rights and universal education and a guarantee of basic subsistence were all the doing of the market, but Union Leaders and politicians swooped in when it was a fait accompli to pass a few meaningless laws and take the credit" is the kind of historically ignorant bullshit that rattles around the Heritage Foundation and the Von Mises institute. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 02:58
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Slavery was pretty profitable for the Slave Power.
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Apr 23, 2015 03:10
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VitalSigns posted:"It's those abolitionists who are prejudiced against our laws and traditions and discriminating against us for who we are" SedanChair posted:I love this because it's just the thing for throwing in Chik-Fil-A bigots' faces when they complain about being discriminated against. They're exactly like slave owners who complained about anti-slavery views being "prejudice."  Why won't you Northerners play fair and compete on level ground with literal slaves on the labor market in the territories? Oh, if only we had a truly fair government which could enforce such equal treatment!
Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 04:11
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Disinterested posted:So why did you say that a decline in economic benefit was related to abolition? Primarily the first thing I listed when talking about the end of slavery. Shifting economic realities causing a new moral outlook.
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Apr 23, 2015 04:46
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asdf32 posted:Primarily the first thing I listed when talking about the end of slavery. Shifting economic realities causing a new moral outlook. You are intent on just making all of life into a single image of a sage white man in fancy dress contemplating a stack of coins, aren't you?
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Apr 23, 2015 05:01
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