The Economics of Slavery, the Real Cause of the Civil War, and What We Need to Do to Fix This Shit
Preface to the Essay
Sometimes when I'm reading books that are helping to change my worldview, I like to compose short essays that let me organize and capture what the author is saying in my own words but try and bust it down to an even simpler expression and hopefully take it beyond to a directly related argument in language that any reasonable person can read and understand. This should be the purpose and goal of good expository writing (many journalists and bloggers would do well to heed its magic and obey--I don't make the rules, I just define them).
I've been using this process to formulate my thoughts on slavery and the civil war, following reading
Thomas Sowell's book
Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
.
Reading this book was one of those blessed paradigm-shifting moments where the myst that obfuscates the inside of the crystal ball has shifted away from an area where I can almost see the other side.
Before reading the essay, you should know that Dr. Sowell is one of the most brilliant social thinkers alive at this time on Earth...and yes, he's a black man if that should matter to you in any way (let's be honest, that biological fact will validate or invalidate the ideas he is expressing in the minds of many people who read them). But I ask that you engage these ideas on their merit as successful and brilliant ideas; because that is how Dr. Sowell would treat you.
Two years ago, I got an email back from Dr. Sowell about a question I had about the gold standard and how it affected currency. I remember thinking,
Wow, this guy took five minutes from his day to email me back. That is just stand-up and his character shines through in a universally obvious way.
On a professional level, Dr. Sowell has dealt with race from every aspect and his economic and moral philosophy of how the world best works for a free people left to trade under noble pretenses has been an anchor for me as I have defined and documented my individual core values. His arguments have risen so far beyond and above race that he should be immediately recognized and fraternally revered as the beacon of liberty that he is.
The Economics of American Slavery, the Real Cause of the Civil War, and What We Need to Do to Fix This Shit
by Joshua Minton
Being Worked to Death
Consider that most of the inmates in Communist-run forced labor camps were worked completely to death. And where privately-owned slaves were cheap and easy to replace, they were most often worked to death and replaced with the next body. These slaves were treated as livestock that was killed but didn't get eaten or as tools which once broken couldn't be fixed (which meant they were worth even less to a farmer or manufacturer).
But where slaves were privately owned and had to be imported, there was a completely different economic attitude towards them and thanks to many of these slave-owners also being devout Christians, a whole new value system emerged regarding slaves and their humanity and ultimately their freedom. But this paradigm revolution that saw slaves going from chattel to equal human beings began as a worship of value that came about because slaves were so difficult and expensive to procure in pre-Civil War America.
From this property worship, the Christian concept of brotherly love merged with a changing social atmosphere that favored individual liberty over collective tyranny and ultimately resulted in the overall decimation of slavery in the civilized Western world.
Every lash of the whip has been repaid by the slash of the sword (or any available thermonuclear device) and we are culturally ready to face and finally go beyond our nation's birth of spiritual freedom from the bowels of moral tyranny.
Some Slaves were Worth More Than Others
The next thing I'd like you to consider is that it was paid immigrants (Irish mainly), and not enslaved Africans, who were hired and allocated toward the most dangerous tasks like draining malarial swamps, working directly with steam, building the railroads (along with the Chinese), etc.
African slaves in the Antebellum South were far too valuable to be used so willy-nilly in dangerous tasks that any "Paddy" could do and significantly lower the risk factor of losing valuable property to the inevitable accident.
Sowell asks a pertinent question that every Economist worth their signature would also ask:
How does involuntary labor in general affect the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses? (50)
When you're forcing someone to perform involuntary labor, labor they are being threatened by
force or even murder to perform; your resources are not being diverted based on a price reflecting their value.
In other words, you could be wasting and overpaying for far less than the best your resources could be bringing you. You might think that you're winning, but it's likely you'd be losing your ass.
The cool thing about the global market is that usually when you negotiate your goods and services based on their price value in a market with minimal restrictions (enough to keep you and the other honest person from getting ripped off by swindlers and frauds), you
know that they're going to their most efficient uses. You know why you're winning--because you are offering the best that the market has to offer in your area and you are constantly improving upon it to meet your audience's needs and desires. And when you win like this, the living standard of everyone rises and there is more happiness.
And likewise, when you enter the market behind tyrannical tax loopholes and ridiculous tariffs set up for political or corporate rather than economic reasons, or you legislate and regulate based on corporate special interest groups who each have a separate and divisive agenda, then the living standard of everyone ultimately suffers and there is more misery in the world.
It basically comes down to whether you are an Enlightened human being committed to the principles of individual liberty that this country was founded upon or if you're a rotten prick who is attracted to the over-regulation and immovable governing infrastructure that has marked every fascist, socialist and communistic regime in recorded history (all being left-leaning ideologies favoring state power before the individual and directly undermining the
Declaration of Independence upon which our
Constitution is founded).
A Short History of Slave Economics
The word
slavery comes from the word
Slav which is in almost every major language spoken. The slavs of Europe were slaves hundreds of years before Africans were ever negotiated for, seized, and forced into slavery.
The slavs were the true chattel and timbers in the history of slavery--they were a seemingly inexhaustible resource that could be burned out like coal and then thrown away when they had burned down to ash. These were the least valuable human beings who ever lived and I'd like to give them a moment of mental silence in reverence for their collective suffering.
Okay the moment has passed--let's get back to the topic at hand.
Sowell points out that the more skilled and harder the task being performed by a slave, the higher the slave's value was in their owner's mind. This was based on their value to produce in the marketplace or on a more personal level (I don't need to go into specifics here).
Sowell's whole point in bringing up this distinction is to show that there were many areas of value between the paradigms of slavery and individual freedom and that these areas were based upon and can be studied in terms of the market value of the individual slave.
So if, like Antebellum Southern Americans of the past, you had to import slaves and encourage them to procreate in order to increase their production value (hence the slave population which would ultimately drive down their cost as more supply was raised to meet demand); then you would begin looking upon your slave as a very valuable investment, as much as you would your home and other major assets.
In essence, slaves at that time were the biggest and most versatile tool in the southern chest and the bread and butter would have stopped coming if the tool was taken away from them.
This is a very important point to make because many people excuse modern day issues of health care, civil defense, and the tax structure as social issues far too complex to solve in our time. Well, how do you think the Founders felt about slavery, knowing its economic stranglehold on the country as well as its ugly, evil, spirit- and value-killing truth?
It wasn't until a great fusion of ideas, principles, and morality that slavery began to socially self-destruct.
- The principal was the Christian concept of foundational love for one's neighbor
- The moral, economic, and legal ideas were those of John Locke, Frederic Bastiat, and the American Founding Fathers who all stated unequivocally that every human being is born with certain inherent rights that can never be taken except by voluntary submission through ignorance, complacency, or sheer evil
This is still the spiritual struggle for America and has been from the beginning. We continue to wrestle with being founded upon individual freedom but supported by cultural tyranny. This has, in fact, now become the overall struggle in the world and the winners of this war might not even have a world and society left worth fighting for.
Like Kevin Kostner's character said in
Open Range, "Someday you're going to realize that there are things worse than dying and that those are the things worth fighting for."
Every World War, Civil War, and straight up War of Invasion ever fought by the United States has been sold as securing territory in the paradigmatic area between complete slavery and complete individual liberty a little closer to the final touchdown pass on our side (which is Liberty, in case you forgot).
But America isn't just a contestant in this game--we're the game board and the game rules. We control the pieces. We control the dice. And we are dealing the cards.
But once those cards are dealt, they have to be played and the rules take over at that point.
Conclusion: The Real Cause of the American Civil War and Starting the Clean-Up
Slavery is the most inefficient and ineffective way to get things done that require manual labor. Not only does it waste valuable resources through ineffective planning that stems from ignorance of the labor value, but it robs the spiritual and moral energy from the slave-holder.
This was obvious to our Founding Fathers and Congress; and slavery was well on its way to being outlawed in the 1850s and this would have been accomplished in the next thirty years had the American South chose to sit still and let it happen as quietly and smoothly as possible.
The Southern leaders saw what was coming as clearly as a thundercloud in a blue sky. And instead of passively laying down to watch the foundation of their entire society be gradually pulled out from under their feet, they acted according to the spirit of the Constitution--seceding from a union they felt was no longer protecting their best interests.
A freshman President, as virgin to being Commander-in-Chief as Bush was on 9/11, had to make the biggest cultural, political, and martial decision ever made in American history up to that point (even bigger than
The Louisiana Purchase which started the entire cycle of going beyond the boundaries of
The Constitution).
He decided to hold the Union together at any cost.
Initially, this meant keeping the south just as it was, slaves and all, but as time progressed it became apparent that the Union would not win until the war acknowledged and joined the greater paradigm war going on for individual liberty against moral, spiritual, and social tyranny.
So the Emancipation came followed by the slaves being freed from legal bondage through the laws of the Federal Constitution.
Of course, changing the legal bondage at the state and local level took another hundred years and the cultural bondage is just now beginning to break.
Progress in this last phase of the Race War has been retarded due to various in-group focusing of resources into cultural identities far different from that which
The Constitution demands of its citizens.
We are called upon by a higher order to be socially and morally responsible individual citizens driven by our spiritual passions for greater lives for ourselves and those around us instead of pathetic and herded social groups being hauled around by the nosering of our group-defined definition of collective suffering.
The gradual destruction of the values and principles that our Holy social union was founded upon has resulted in a fragemented people who aren't even united under a common Federal identity and purpose. And it is this struggle for definition that was the real cause of the Civil War and is the root cause of every other war ever fought.
Recognizing this as a fact like you do when you see the moon in a dark night sky, you should realize that we must do something to fix all this bullshit before our species teeters off the edge as one more failed experiment that fell prey to the physics, biology, and sociology of entropy (in other words, we ignorantly remain closed systems which are inevitably torn down by the physics of corporeal reality).
We must first define our cultural vision and personal identities in terms of individual liberty. And We must recognize and overcome the horrors and fears of the past so We have the strength and determination to take advantage of the the opportunities of the present and turn them into the hopes for the future.
Tags:
Slavery,
Economics,
Politics,
Spirituality,
Philosophy,
Joshua Minton,
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I didn't get a blogger press pass to see Serenity like some of my more connected comrades in the blogosphere, so I shelled out six bones to see the movie on the IMAX/Ultra screen here in Columbus. 
