300 years of atlantic Slave trade - Animated

[Rudi]

Smith trying to deal with the contradictions of his theory and the actual practice of the capitalists of the day. There is a reason why the industrial era capitalists were violently anti-union and it wasn't because they wanted to see an efficient labour market a la Adam smith.

[Islandman]

OK, so the slaves over there were a brawta, to fill out the ship space?

Kind of like how today while mining for petroluem, dem tek the natural gas same time since it deh deh fe tek?

[Islandman]

Fair enough. Please note that I would not have a hypothetical argument like this one with the average person as the foundation of knowledge is not there.

However I also see a danger when those of us who mean well interpret our history with a new set of blinkers, some which are rose colored instead of, well, ***** covered .

What I mean by that for example is yes, some of the great Egyptian civilizations were Nubian, yes the Moors who conquered Europe were at least partly dark skinned Africans, etc, etc. These are things worth knowing. However if we can appreciate those achievements while ignoring or rationalizing the exploitation that went along with them , how can we from an intellectual perspective dismiss the European achievements of the Industrial Revolution /Renaissance era, or American achievements of the post 1776 era, as due mostly to exploitation? Wasn't that "par for the course" as brutal as it sounds today?

Perhaps we have been collectively battered, bruised and brainwashed for so long so that we need some propaganda to get our confidence back, so I don't make these arguments in most circles, but (with some exceptions) there is a higher level of understanding of these things here than say a typical Facebook group.

[Islandman]

Perhaps he was.

It is an argument that has held water though. Free market economies based on free labor have produced more wealth for more people than slave economies ever did. Even in the US where both existed together, the free and industrialized North developed faster than the backward slave-era South.

[Rudi]

That's a bit like saying free and industrialized Britain developed faster than slavery Jamaica. Southern slavery was for primarily agricultural products and cotton. The surplus capital from cheep raw material went somewhere. The banking was in the north ergo the surplus capital ended up there and when the switch came to industrialization there was ample accumulated capital to finance it.

[Don1]

I'm not dismissing the achievements of Europeans. I'm merely pointing out that Slavery was one of the foundations of the origin and success of the Industrial Revolution Babylon like to yap about as THE REASON for their current dominance.

This is a truth that they try every trick in the book to disguise, suppress or undermine as folly or unimportant. So in making these arguments we are establishing a baseline of truth ...a truth which is VERY destructive to their false, self-aggrandizing narrative.

For me I try to determine what reality is...based on evidence, data & logic and not self-serving propaganda from any source. But it is important to understand the propaganda spewed by both sides of any debate....because truth is usually located between the two

Most find it simpler and convenient to accept propaganda... this requires ZERO thinking or tedious fact checking.

Ignorance is bliss

[Gamma]

I think 2 things are being discussed as being parallel when they might not necessarily be so.

the north became more industrialised but not necessarily wealthier. in fact it seems to me that there is a proliferation of boutique banks down south for dealing with family money. So it was that the landed plantocracy got richer at the expense at everyone else. in the south, unless you married into money, the die was cast as far as you were concerned.

in the north a man could pull himself up and by being innovative could become wealthy. that is why poor people (black and white) always headed north, no one ever went south except for holidays.

there a lot of persons not of colour that really do not seem to have such a great job that they can live on a plantation estate with a great house and immaculate lawns etc...but the trust fund is more than adequate to care of family needs comfortably for many a generation

[Islandman]

The South had very wealthy slave and landowners, not much in the way of a middle class as most whites in the South were quite poor and didn't own slaves.

My understanding is that the wealth and GDP of the North far exceeded the South by the time the civil war began, something like 70% of the national wealth was in the North.

This is exactly Adam Smiths argument. National wealth is generated by allowing people to act in thier self interest. Slaves clearly cannot act in thier own self-interest.They also have zero wealth and little to no means of generating any.

[Gamma]

re northern GDP, you may well be right. my point was that southern landowners were not really interested in anything more than improving their own holdings ... land slaves etc. and their southern society lifestyle.

when you check out places like Savannah (GA), Charleston (SC), Montgomery (AL) Annapolis (MD) .... there are still vestiges of that southern society still very evident.

[Islandman]

No argument from me with that. Slavery was a cash cow for European royalty and governments.

It is also true that the victors write the history books, and at the time of the invention of the printing press the primary victors were Europeans so we got a distorted version of history on steroids. I get that, and there needs to be continued pushback against it. Lets just not fool ourselves into believing that other empires were built on foundations that were much different.

[Gamma]

don't forget virginia

[Islandman]

That is true. Life was good and they wanted to keep it that way.

One of the ironies of the US civil war is that the slaveowners convinced the poor white Southerners to fight and die in the thousands for the cause of slavery, when the only thing slavery did for most of them was to make them feel superior to blacks. They got little to none of the economic benefit.

[Gamma]

it was enough for them to feel kinship to these southern gennelfolk and thereby superior to slaves and descendants of slaves. it is still in play TODAY!

I had to (well I didn't have to, but I did anyway)tell a redneck that he was my intellectual and social inferior. to this day I'm sure if he got it, but the big words left him puzzled!

[Islandman]

I am thinking that the indentured servant model would have been utilized more. There was a large supply of desperate people in the world at that time.

As you say, not that far removed from slavery but there was the option to take it or not to take it.

[Don1]

Lets just not fool ourselves into believing that other empires were built on foundations that were much different.

Absolutely...

However I don't feel any need to make excuses for Babylon's atrocities committed on their epic journey to global hegemony.

When the truth is revealed to them....mek dem come wid dem excuses and "guilty wid explanation" pleas

Wi ah di prosecutor an' Babylon ah di defendant...suh mek dem defen' it ...nuh mi