I wouldn’t have thought that bank robbery is so profitable in this era.
Well, I’m afraid it’s you that do not understand what comparative advantages (and many other concepts you’ve been dabbling with) are. Not because you’re “too dumb” to understand it. As I’ve said, I believe you are a somewhat smart kid. But like many others smartass kids that start reading about libertarianism and suddenly think they’ve “understand it all” and that other people “are too dumb to see”, you’re suffering from a form of premature enlightenment.
How do I know that? Because ten years ago I was you. And if a guy appeared talking about “comparative advantages of slavery” and how violence and coercion are rational options under certain circumstances, I would also tell him to shut up and wouldn’t listen and go read some books.
Now, try to pay more attention to what I’m writing, it’s not that complicated, but it’s also not that superficial.
When you assume that “slave-owning cultures” didn’t outcompete “non slave-owning cultures” you are simply dead wrong, for like 99.99% of the time it was the opposite.
But cultures are complex things, and can have a complicated mixture of free and unfree labor.
And for some industries, unfree labor was the cheapest form to mobilize manpower in larger scale, and that lasted for millennia.
That is, before certain technological enablers as diverse as steam-power, financial credit and labor-contracts, it was simply easier and less costly to buy and keep slaves for certain tasks involving lots of physical force and not too much brains.
And that’s precisely why slavery was a staple of all great civilizations.
Then, little by little, many industries evolved to a technological and institutional point where it became, effectively, less costly to hire people than to buy slaves.
So when you say “they could have gained more by hiring people but they didnt realize that at the time” you’re just being completely naive and idealistic.
It’s similar to saying that the hordes of Gengis Khan could have been stopped before entering Europe if western powers decided for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It’s complete stupid revisionist non-sense. You’re assuming technologies and institutions that were simply not availiable, and thinking that a decision maker taking concrete decisions could have bypassed millienia of knowledge acquisition just like that.
Let me state it clear for you: A roman patrician would not have gained more by hiring people to substitute his slaves in most cases, otherwise he would have done it. And the same goes for a southern land owner in America. The economic structures where they were embeded created a price structure where slavery was a nice profitable option. To deny it is to attest utter ignorance of history and economics.
Non slave operations eventually became more comparatively effective, but under the conditions prevailing during most of history they were not.
When you say they simply are comparatively more effective, irrespective of their environment, you are just going full retard, kid.
It’s not your fault though, you’re just repeating some popular misconceptions that arise among people with insufficient training in economic history.
Well, of course, all that won’t help you if you stick to your bratty attitude towards me. But then again, I don’t blame you. Some motherfucker came to me ten years ago telling these things I would probably react just like you. My brain wasn’t there yet.
Far be it from me to defend Malachi, but what Toxic wrote is TIBO [= True In Bizzaro-world Only].
http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_2/3_2_1.pdf
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE7_2_2.pdf
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo29.html
One thing I learned here. With the exception of Smiling Dave, the more smug and condescending the writer, the less he actually knows.
I presume you’ve posted these links to “show” how much slavery in southern US was a dying industry with low profit margins at the onset of the civil war, as if anything of what I’ve said before meant the opposite.
That comes only to show how much our ideological predispositions can impair our reading skills and lead to pathetically biased conclusions. I invite you to read my post again and find anything that would corroborate your previous post, otherwise, it will look like just another weak attempt to mischaracterize my arguments by posting unrelated material as rebuttal.
In any case, it was not my intention to come across as too condescending towards our friend “malachi”. But that becomes increasingly inevitable once the interlocutor decides to go back to elementary school debate tactics, calling you “dumb” and “stupid” every other sentence.
Being somewhat condescending seemed like the only alternative to adopting a similar behavioral pattern, and I believe if I would be outlasted and outperformed if I did.
Of course, I could’ve ignored him altogether (like I use to do), but he’s one of the few kids here who’s giving me back at least some action, regardless of his inexperienced argumentation and ill-mannered disposition. 
@TA:
Do you think what you are saying plays into what peter leeson was talking about when he says "effecient institutions are context dependent?
http://www.coordinationproblem.org/
(2nd post down)
If so, I think you are more right than wrong - I’m not too sure about the historical narrative, or the details that would require some serious thought - but the broad overarching theory is probaly good.
I presume you’ve posted these links to “show” how much slavery in southern US was a dying industry…
You didn’t actually read them, did you?
That comes only to show how much our ideological predispositions can impair our reading skills and lead to pathetically biased conclusions.
We agree on something.
I invite you to read my post again and find anything that would corroborate your previous post, otherwise, it will look like just another weak attempt to mischaracterize my arguments by posting unrelated material as rebuttal.
You wrote, “slavery was a staple of all great civilizations.” The links show that to be TIBO.
I understand first hand what you are saying about insults bringing out ones dark side. Had my share of that, trust me.
Just the last one, I’m not opening useless pdfs.
Oh really, that might be insteresting. I might read some day when I’m feeling game for some revisionist bullshit. Maybe after I see a few DVDs on how the aliens build the pyramids. Then I give you my opinion.
And you know they are useless without actually reading them.
I might read some day when I’m feeling game for some revisionist bullshit.
To quote your earlier words, "That comes only to show how much our ideological predispositions can impair our reading skills.’
Anyway, my last post on this subject. Good luck in your studies of this fascinating topic.
I don’t know, maybe. I would need to read his argument, but the notion of context dependency is really key here.
Keep in mind I was trying to keep it simple to help out our friend “malachi”, so I might have sacrificed a bit of accuracy here and there. But thanks, I’m glad someone finally shoew some appreciation for my effort here
I was getting kinda tired of being called “dumb” and “stupid” and “ignorant of austrian school of economics” by everybody. But then again, I had seen it coming.
Oh, really? So you take it seriously every time some internet jerkoff tells you that the Holocaust didn’t happen and get all excited to read his material?
Because that’s what you’re telling me to do.
But let’s make a deal. The day you feel like telling us how slavery was not a staple of past civilizations, and that’s all a big fat lie we’ve been told, write your own post outlining the main arguments and I might give it a look. But don’t go around dumping pdf files before people ask you for your sources, this is annoying and useless, and every internet dumbass who believes reptilians are putting fluoride in his water and Hendershot generators are being kept a secret by the CIA/big Oil lobby could be doing just the same. And guess what, that’s exactly what most of them are doing.
See you around kid.
no need to be afraid, I understand these concepts quite well. youre the one who needs help, in fact even Smiling Dave tried to educate you but for some reason you arent interested in the actual facts pertaining to the examples that you referred to. perhaps thats also part of the reason you cant seem to talk about slavery except in the most vague and general terms.
any reason for your reluctance to discuss those certain circumstances?
can you give me examples? what were the slave owning cultures and what were the non-slave owning cultures they outcompeted?
is this supposed to be your escape hatch? why wouldnt the “unfree” labor outcompete the “free” labor? is it because the circumstances you are reluctant to discuss were not in effect?
I’m impressed at how much falsehood you crammed into that one sentence. you think credit is a recent innovation, haha ok.
it was less costly to keep slaves, haha, ok why? why didnt the slaves just leave? could it be that, due to ideology, there was no local place to go? could it be that these slaves were taught that slavery is a normal part of society, being conditioned to accept the phenomenon? could it be that the rest of the people were also conditioned to support the institution of slavery?
or do you really think that the costs associated with making people do things they dont want to to for their whole life are less than the costs associated with obtaining a temporal agreement?
let me ask you this, do you own slaves? why or why not?
my statement is true so the only recourse you have is to dismiss it out of hand, even to countenance such an idea would shatter your entire thesis.
can you tell me why not? or will you ignore this question too?
youre wrong on this one, I would post a link but you already admitted you arent willing to consider the possibility that youre wrong so why bother?
I know, youre ridiculous.
what are the relevant conditions?
apparently it still isnt. you have trouble following your own posts, I guess I should understand when mine go right over your head.
its alright, Dave, he does in fact know better, so he has no need to read the links. he’s just trolling because its fun to troll.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the skills of Smiling Dave that much to waste my time reading every paper he dumps here just to find out in the end that either Smiling Dave got it all wrong (most probable scenario) or the scholar writing the paper is as clueless as he is (an improbable scenario, but not impossible).
Had Smiling Dave really wanted to “educate” me, he would have at least outlined a few arguments on his own words, and then, if he wanted or if I asked, pointed out to external sources corroborating his argument. Instead, he just dumped a few texts he likes and thinks it makes a valid counter-argument to my analysis.
But even skimming the begining of DiLorenzo’s text in Lew Rockwell’s site we see that he does not deny that slavery was profitable in the institutional environment of the South. His claim is basically that this profitability, in the mid nineteenth century, was dependent on laws that subsidized slave holders.
That might very well be true (however it’s also a very hard claim to very with data), but it’s similar to saying that Microsoft’s profits are not real because of laws of intellectual property that subsidize them.
And that doesn’t refute my general point, which is that profit making operations are conditional to their (institutional) environment, a point that only “vive la revolution” seems to have grasped. It actually confirms it even further.
But I’m not a college student anymore, I just have a few moments in my day I can spend reading crazy stuff, and right now I’m wasting all of that trying to get yourself acquainted with some very basic economic and historical facts, and it has been an uphill battle, I must say.
Imagine if I also had to read all the crap Smiling Dave links to just to try to infer where the poor guy is getting things wrong? I would have to quit my job.
Who’s being reluctant?
The circumstances under which slavery is a good industry are quite well known. But I can repeat them here:
Relative concentration of military and organizational technology by an elite group, relative abundance of exploitable unskilled human capital, and relative scarcity of installed capital structure and/or technological knowledge and/or institutional contract-based labor supply that can offer cost-efficient alternatives to the coercive use of raw manpower.
Whenever these conditions are present, institutional slavery emerges as an economic efficient pattern of resource allocation.
And those conditions were precisely the conditions throughout the lion’s share of human existence. Not surprisingly, slavery has been the norm, rather than the exception.
Now let me use my psychic powers here and predict what you’re going to say next (which of course, you will deny later and call me troll, but what the heck).
You will tell me that my assumption of “scarcity of technological knowledge of efficient alternatives [to slavery]” is exactly what you’ve meant by them using slaves because they, as you’ve said, “did not know better”.
Well, if that’s what you’ve meant by them “not knowing any better”, then I have to agree, even though you’ve chosen a very stupid way to say it.
“Knowing better” here actually mean having access to a framework of institutions and technologies that were not available or entirely developed at the time, and knowing also that other economic partners were using them.
It was not “knowing better” like in the simple decision some business men might face at some point of using either slaves or contract laborers, and the former being more efficient in every circumstance to those who “know better”.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect that’s exactly what you’ve meant. I suspect you’ve meant that slave-owners could’ve been more productive and profitable if they, individually, opted for creating themselves, regardless of their surrounding environment, contract based alternatives for his slave-driving operations.
And that each slave-owner didn’t chose to hire free labor because unfortunately “malachi” wasn’t born yet to him he was being stupid all along in his business practices.
And if it’s that what you’ve meant by “they didn’t know any better”, then you are dead wrong.
You’re not being stupid per se, though. You’re just not thinking at all. You’re repeating some simplistic misconception that are fairly common among inexperienced “free-market” enthusiasts like you.
You’re echoing a group-think stance, and this group-think is stupid, not you.
Yes.
Basically every major civilization that existed before the consolidation of the British Empire in the 18th-19th centuries.
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Cartagenese and other semitic peoples; Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celtic and Germanic and Slavonic Barbarians and the European kingdoms of the Middle-age and modern age, the Hindu people and other Indo-European cultures; Mongols, Chinese, Indochinese, Japanese and other East Asia and Oceania cultures, Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Olmecs and other Pre-Colombian cultures; Zulus, the Malinese Empire, and many other african cultures, and so on.
Of course, there are differences between slavery in Ancient egypt and serfdom in the Carolingian empire, if you want to nitpick.
And it’s interesting to note that the Islamic civilization was one of the first to incorporate very clear abolitionist ideals, but slaves were still intensely used by Arabs, Ottomans and other turkish peoples, typically as galley slaves and concubines and sex-slaves and eunuchs and household servants for centuries.
So, go ahead, pick your favorite.
Oh, right, you’re going to ask me now about the non-slave owning cultures that were outperformed. I’m sure a better historian than me can find a rich sample of smalish cultures that existed during the periods of those above and whose labor organization didn’t incorporate slavery. Those were basically hunter-gatherer cultures with insuficient gross population and social stratification to accommodate the complex class structures which are required by the institution of slavery, like many of the indigenous tribes in North and South America, Africa, Polynesia and Australia.
But as we can infer, they were not as extensive or notorious as those above, most don’t even have recognizable lasting names, and there’s a reason for that: slavery was efficient.
Of course, you can say that ultimately the British Empire outperformed Mesopotamia and all the rest, but that’s equivalent of saying that a modern penguin outperformed a velociraptor.
By the time the Britsh Empire became a dominant force, those conditions for profitable slave-driving were no longer valid, at least in the Britsh Isles, so much that britsh people there could afford taking a self-righteous negative view of slavery around the world, even in those places where slavery would remain economically justifiable and inevitable.
Yes. All of those “ideological” and “educational” factors contributed to the cost-effectiveness of slavery. They were not the original factors that generated slavery, nor the most relevant in keeping slavery going on, but still.
So what’s your point? Don’t you see you’re shooting yourself on the foot when you assume it?
I mean, if you agree that in a slave-holding society where slavery is a established institution it’s comparatively cheap to keep a slave in bondage since he has little opportunity to survive if he breaks free and little incentive to rebel, you’re just acknowledging the point in question.
Of course, for idealistic young libertarians like you, these institutional points of ideology or education do seem easy to rationally overcome, specially now when we live in post-slavery societies.
But that’s only due to a ridiculously hindsight-biased perspective.
It’s easy now to see the economic advantages of free labor, under certain institutional conditions that are valid today. But it was not so easy back then. Actually, it was false, given the economic incentives of the institutional situation of those times.
And people cannot forecast the economic incentives of institutions of the future, no matter how much they think they can.
I mean, don’t you ever stop to think that men like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were slave owners?
Do you consider yourself smarter than these men?
Note to those following this discussion.
Just because Toxic doesn’t want to read the links provided above which refute all he wrote about Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicians, etc., doesn’t mean you have to go ostrich, too.
He is old and settled in his ways. He knows all the answers because ten years ago he was as smart as Malachi.
But you, oh curious onlooker, know where to go. Cast thine eyes up to a few posts ago to find the links, listed in order of importance.
I’m 27. Not that old overall, but as old as Methusalah compared to the average user here, who writes like a high school dropout (and reads even worse).
I don’t know Malachi’s age, but his opinions, the structure of his argumentation and thought process, his overall culture (or lack thereof) and even his insolent attitude are very much like mine when I was 16 or 17. That’s why I’ve ballparked a 10-year developmental gap.
It might be less, I’m a slow learner.
But whatever his age is, he still has a lot to learn, like I did back then. And like I still do myself, albeit in a more advanced level than his. In any case, I’m always glad to help.
those points are actually quite relevant to our main topic. you would do well to note them. I also suggest that you focus less on personalities, and more on the topic at hand.
look here dude, thats what I have been telling you these past week. thats why I keep drawing your attention to the fact that these enabling conditions are ideological or technological, so that we can deal with the issue at hand.
wrong. the only necessary enabling factor is an ideology that teaches people to act in the interest of others. lower technology environments are better for slavery because people dont have to be as smart in order to do the work, and this dumbness makes them likelier to believe in an ideology where they are some sort of slave. as people get smarter, they figure out that there is no real difference between people, except their individual characteristics.
technology as a factor in enabling the forced enslavement of people is a contributing factor but, the system of ideas must support this effort for two reasons. firstly, the technology to defend is generally speaking an order of magnitude less expensive than the threat it defends against. secondly, the higher your technology level, the less likely you are to want people who have been forced into slavery anyway, because you have no jobs for them to do.
you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
case in point.