How viable would a plantation slave economy be in the modern world?

[Fredrick II Barbarossa]

For those arguing that if cotton price collapsed large plantations qould not be viable not so. Look at the Chesapeake tobacco planters in the 17th and 18th century. Harold inner staples crop thesis coupled with economie's of scale and tech innovation/costs for production falling means slavery can be viable but it would lead to by the 1900s further reduction in plantation numbers but those that consolidate will survive. Course slavery is bad and would fail with social unrest but excluding politics and social variables it can last horrible as that sounds which it is. Read up on the study done a while back by a few economic historians arguing that slavery in the south was sustainable from an economics standpoint

 

[Jared]

And I never denied that it happened

The disagreement is not over whether slaves using machinery happened at all, it is over whether it is feasible to be used on a large scale without sabotage. The impression you've conveyed is that you think it was not feasible, or at least that it was not as efficient as free workers.

In this exchange here:

Edit added for clarity: This post was replying to CaliBoy1990, with one quote included from Alex Zetsu directly below as part of an exchange. Only the quote which states it has come from Alex Zetsu is from him; all other quotes are from CaliBoy1990.

Um, not at all. Keeping slaves means you have to guard them. With big machines, you have to extra guard them so that they don't sabotage the machines or even destroy them out of stupidity (plenty of slaves who didn't try escape seemed... not too bright). As long as non-union labor is available to operate modern equipment, using that is going to be cheaper than monitoring slaves to make sure they don't destroy the precious equipment.

You replied:

It only takes one disgruntled-or bungling-slave to break an expensive machine enough to the point where it can't be used anymore.

This gives the impression that you think sabotage is a significant problem. If you think otherwise, then we have no disagreement on this point. However...

And again, I should point out that while we may never know exactly how many more such incidents of sabotage were either lost to time-or covered up, there is also nothing out there that can positively disprove that such happened, to one extent or the other.

Yes, you've said this about three times. It also gives an impression that you think that sabotage may have been a significant problem.

What you don't seem to realise is that an argument which boils down to "I have no evidence, but I'm going to argue that if my opponent can't disprove something, therefore it happened" is not going to get given any credence at all.

Let me put another argument into those words, so you can see how meaningless such an argument is. Say I (hypothetically) argued that slaveowners used lots of positive rewards, and my only argument was [1]:

"We may never know exactly how many incidents of positive rewards were either lost to time-or covered up, there is also nothing out there that can positively disprove that such happened, to one extent or the other."

If I advanced such an argument, I would not be taken seriously. Nor would I deserve to be.

[1] In reality, of course, we have the historical evidence of both positive and negative rewards being used by slaveowners.

Tens of thousands?

Yes, tens of thousands. Starobin estimated that there were between 140,000 and 160,000 slaves performing industrial or proto-industrial tasks in the 1850s.

Only I never said or implied anything was impossible.

Again, the argument was over whether something was impractical, not whether it was impossible.

In my defense, however, not all of us have immediate access to vast libraries of specialized material.

I found those citations online in a few seconds. People quoting them rather than the original articles, but enough to know what was said. And by using a few key words like "sharecroppers slaves productivity", not the names of the authors.

That said, of course there's nothing wrong with not having access to specialised material. What is a problem is if when people who do have access to such material tell you what happened, the response is to argue that those people are wrong, without any evidence whatsoever, but on the basis of "logical sense".

Case in point: you refused to believe that sharecroppers were less productive per capita than former slaves. When told that, rather than accepting it, you just argued that it didn't make logical sense.

Which is something I was already aware of. Which was part of my point, even(yes, I of course counted self-employed farmers as free workers).

I was responding to an assertion of yours that you doubted that sharecroppers were less productive than slaves, because free labourers were more productive than slaves per capita pre ACW, and summarised the cases which show that while a few self-employed farmers worked longer hours, on the whole slaves worked longer hours than free labourers. I only provided a brief overview of the kinds of workers which should be considered, because I wasn't trying to deluge with too much information (something I've been accused of in the past).

But if you like, let's unpack things a bit.

In a typical free farming family, the free (self-employed) farmer works the longest hours of all. The other family members work fewer hours. The "hired help", if any, works more hours than most family members but less than the self-employed farmer.

In a family of owned slaves, all of them work long hours: fathers, mothers, children. The slaveowners push everyone. (This is why the labour force participation rate for slavery was so high).

So yes, as individuals, the self-employed farmers (usually male) work the longest hours. As families or collectives, the slaves work longer and harder hours.

Which may be true. And?

Which may be true. And?

The bold doesn't really help your case, TBH.

The point is that that the gang system involved harder work per hour than other forms of labour. Slaves worked at a harder pace than free workers, not just number of hours. (Although as per above, slaves as a group worked longer than free workers as a group, too.)

You haven't offered any real evidence to contradict that, however. Nobody-least of all myself-denies slavery was still turning some profits for those who remained engaged in it. But you have not reliably demonstrated any contradiction to the idea that slavery was outdated by the eve of the Civil War, and that may be perhaps because none really exists.

I deleted my first response to this statement because it might have gotten me kicked.

Suffice it to say that over the years I've provided numerous citations about many aspects of how antebellum slavery worked, how profitable it was, and so forth. You've been involved in several of those threads. I'm not going to waste my time retyping all of that now. Anyone who wants to find out more details can feel free to search my posts. Or better yet, go straight to the sources.

To be truthful, though, the info you cite later on, isn't exactly "basic", outside of perhaps an academic sense. But since most of us on this site aren't academics, that is kind of a moot point.

I'm not an academic. I consider basic research to be something which could be found out within a couple of minutes on google. It's not hard.

No offense, but Fogel isn't exactly the best source out there.

No offense, but you make this statement based on what, exactly? Fogel is a widely-cited source in the field. As with all researchers, he has his mistakes, and later researchers have pointed out flaws in some aspects of his work. In other areas, they've supported his claims. I list him as one source amongst several, and he should be taken as such.

Or to put it another way, you claim Fogel isn't the best source. Fine. Tell me what the best source is, and why it's the best source. Then we can have a discussion about the relative merits of sources. At the moment, you've given me nothing to evaluate.

Which may well be true; but that wouldn't really prove much of anything by itself, though.

You think that the number of hours being worked per capita dropping by a third doesn't prove much? It supports my point that, contrary to your claims, slaves were more productive per capita than sharecroppers.

If you can offer something more substantive in this regard, however, I'll give it a look.

I've just given you the reference. Go look it up, seriously. It's a whole phreakin' book, and one which has been called "path-breaking" by reviewers a generation later (here).

If you'd like the citation in full, it's Roger L. Ransom & Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Only problem is, the historical record has clearly shown that a majority of slaves, by and large, generally only worked as hard as they needed to to avoid punishments, and this wasn't just true in the American South, but in many places elsewhere in the New World as well. That does not mean that there were not those who did go above and beyond(some of whom may indeed have been rewarded with extra privileges), of course-but again, it's also true that those slaves were rather more the exception than the rule.

Do you base this on this historical record, or on "logical sense"? You keep claiming that something is fact, but don't provide any sources worth mentioning to support it.

To be truthful, Jared, the main problem here is that it does appear pretty clear that you seem to be relying on a fairly limited variance of sources with a fairly limited range of views.

To be truthful, I can't recall you providing any sources which have made a thorough analysis of these matters. They may have slipped my memory. Feel free to relist your sources.

 

[The Uchronian]

The disagreement is not over whether slaves using machinery happened at all, it is over whether it is feasible to be used on a large scale without sabotage. The impression you've conveyed is that you think it was not feasible, or at least that it was not as efficient as free workers.

Generally speaking, it's really indisputable that it holds just as true that slaves were not quite as efficient as free workers with machinery, per capita, just as in the plantations. I'm not saying that there was no efficiency, or that some slaves could not be efficient workers-it is true that some slaves were indeed efficient workers. But again, it just seems that you're sort of missing the forest for the trees here.

You replied:

This gives the impression that you think sabotage is a significant problem.

To be honest, you were the only one that made that particular jump, though, in regards to that particular comment; my point was-regardless of the prevalence of slave sabotage-it wouldn't necessarily take much more than one disgruntled slave to break a complex machine-as you yourself pointed out, free laborers also did similar things out of protest as well.

If you think otherwise, then we have no disagreement on this point. However...

Yes, you've said this about three times. It also gives an impression that you think that sabotage may have been a significant problem.

Erm, there's no conclusive evidence that it was exactly super rare, however, be it in the factory or on the field. (it's entirely possible that the truth may well lie somewhere in the middle)

What you don't seem to realise is that an argument which boils down to "I have no evidence, but I'm going to argue that if my opponent can't disprove something, therefore it happened" is not going to get given any credence at all.

I was well aware of the risks, yes. But I came to the conclusion it was a point worth making.

Let me put another argument into those words, so you can see how meaningless such an argument is. Say I (hypothetically) argued that slaveowners used lots of positive rewards, and my only argument was [1]:

"We may never know exactly how many incidents of positive rewards were either lost to time-or covered up, there is also nothing out there that can positively disprove that such happened, to one extent or the other."

If I advanced such an argument, I would not be taken seriously. Nor would I deserve to be.

Perhaps, but in my defense, though, my original argument actually does make some sense, given the context of the times(and the passage of time). Again, I am-I assure you-well aware of the downsides of more speculative arguments, but one has to admit it does at least make people think.

Yes, tens of thousands. Starobin estimated that there were between 140,00 and 160,000 slaves performing industrial or proto-industrial tasks in the 1850s.

Well, alright. I'll definitely look into it.

I found those citations online in a few seconds. People quoting them rather than the original articles, but enough to know what was said. And by using a few key words like "sharecroppers slaves productivity", not the names of the authors.

That's basically what I did, though, using a very similar search term. On Google. Now, to be fair, it's entirely possible this may simply have been due to a quirk in the system when I was using it, amongst other things, but the effort certainly was made. (I also realize that it wouldn't hurt to expand my research to include other search databases as well)

What is a problem is if when people who do have access to such material tell you what happened, the response is to argue that those people are wrong, without any evidence whatsoever, but on the basis of "logical sense". Case in point: you refused to believe that sharecroppers were less productive per capita than former slaves. When told that, rather than accepting it, you just argued that it didn't make logical sense.

The only issue here, though, is that Faeelin-the person who originally made the argument, did not offer any citations of his own. He simply just threw it out there. OTOH, I must give you credit for actually taking the time to at least offer a few sources.

I was responding to an assertion of yours that you doubted that sharecroppers were less productive than slaves, because free labourers were more productive than slaves per capita pre ACW, and summarised the cases which show that while a few self-employed farmers worked longer hours, on the whole slaves worked longer hours than free labourers. I only provided a brief overview of the kinds of workers which should be considered, because I wasn't trying to deluge with too much information (something I've been accused of in the past).

But if you like, let's unpack things a bit.

In a typical free farming family, the free (self-employed) farmer works the longest hours of all. The other family members work fewer hours. The "hired help", if any, works more hours than most family members but less than the self-employed farmer.

In a family of owned slaves, all of them work long hours: fathers, mothers, children. The slaveowners push everyone. (This is why the labour force participation rate for slavery was so high).

So yes, as individuals, the self-employed farmers (usually male) work the longest hours. As families or collectives, the slaves work longer and harder hours.

That may well be true. No real dispute here.

The point is that that the gang system involved harder work per hour than other forms of labour. Slaves worked at a harder pace than free workers, not just number of hours. (Although as per above, slaves as a group worked longer than free workers as a group, too.)

When things went according to plan, at least, yes, that is true.

Suffice it to say that over the years I've provided numerous citations about many aspects of how antebellum slavery worked, how profitable it was, and so forth. You've been involved in several of those threads. I'm not going to waste my time retyping all of that now. Anyone who wants to find out more details can feel free to search my posts. Or better yet, go straight to the sources.

Again, I did not deny that slavery was still profitable for those who engaged in it even circa 1860.

I'm not an academic. I consider basic research to be something which could be found out within a couple of minutes on google. It's not hard.

Sometimes, though, Google doesn't always do the best job in providing the most relevant results. Again, to be fair, perhaps it may simply have worked better for you than for me, and I can accept that(it has happened before).

No offense, but you make this statement based on what, exactly? Fogel is a widely-cited source in the field. As with all researchers, he has his mistakes, and later researchers have pointed out flaws in some aspects of his work. In other areas, they've supported his claims. I list him as one source amongst several, and he should be taken as such.

Or to put it another way, you claim Fogel isn't the best source. Fine. Tell me what the best source is, and why it's the best source. Then we can have a discussion about the relative merits of sources. At the moment, you've given me nothing to evaluate.

In regards to that last sentence, I was merely saying that there are arguably better sources, not that any one was the literal best. Herbert Gutman is a source I've relied on in the past, though there've been others, as well, whose names I may have simply forgotten at the moment.

You think that the number of hours being worked per capita dropping by a third doesn't prove much?

While it does look convincing at first glance-and I'm not disputing the possibility that you may be correct on this particular thing after all-more information would be needed, like how sharecroppers reacted to their conditions in comparison to slaves, etc., in order to form a complete picture.

I've just given you the reference. Go look it up, seriously. It's a whole phreakin' book, and one which has been called "path-breaking" by reviewers a generation later (here).

If you'd like the citation in full, it's Roger L. Ransom & Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Thank you for providing that link. I will take a look through as soon as possible.

Do you base this on this historical record, or on "logical sense"? You keep claiming that something is fact, but don't provide any sources worth mentioning to support it.

You do realize I posted several sources to back up my assertions, right?

Feel free to relist your sources.

Since you asked:

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/Ref...iccenhs&jsid=7abcf6b362e5e22bf93696e5224f9c9f
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/58/slave-resistance-in-natchez-mississippi-1719-1861
https://books.google.com/books?id=e...AhUF2IMKHX81DbU4ChDoAQhBMAY#v=onepage&q=slave sabotage&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=l...AhVh1oMKHRywBcQ4FBDoAQhCMAU#v=onepage&q=slave sabotage&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=L...UqyoMKHUdqA4Q4HhDoAQguMAE#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/slavery-united-states

All these were found with a 10 minute search on Google late last night. If I have time(and if I can remember), I can try to find some more detailed sources elsewhere, but these excerpts that I've found should do decently for now. In the meantime, it may be best to simply pause the conversation for now, as I'd rather give us both a chance to cool this down for a bit. Fair, I hope?

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Wait, what? I didn't even say half of that! Jared is putting quotes of stuff I never said into quotes. I never said "Only I never said or implied anything was impossible." I never said "To be truthful, though, the info you cite later on, isn't exactly 'basic', outside of perhaps an academic sense. But since most of us on this site aren't academics, that is kind of a moot point" I never said "To be truthful, Jared, the main problem here is that it does appear pretty clear that you seem to be relying on a fairly limited variance of sources with a fairly limited range of views"

Considering you edit my quotes directly instead of deleting parts for brevity and you use Make-up-25%-of-my-stuff Fogel, I'm not included to believe anything you say about the viability of plantation slavery. And some of what you said doesn't even apply to PLANTATIONS.

Only the first quote you have was accurately ascribed to as "not me." I did say "Um, not at all. Keeping slaves means you have to guard them. With big machines, you have to extra guard them so that they don't sabotage the machines or even destroy them out of stupidity (plenty of slaves who didn't try escape seemed... not too bright). As long as non-union labor is available to operate modern equipment, using that is going to be cheaper than monitoring slaves to make sure they don't destroy the precious equipment." and then you put almost a dozen lines into my mouth as fake quotes.

 

[The Uchronian]

Wait, what? I didn't even say half of that! Jared is putting quotes of stuff I never said into quotes. I never said "Only I never said or implied anything was impossible." I never said "To be truthful, though, the info you cite later on, isn't exactly 'basic', outside of perhaps an academic sense. But since most of us on this site aren't academics, that is kind of a moot point" I never said "To be truthful, Jared, the main problem here is that it does appear pretty clear that you seem to be relying on a fairly limited variance of sources with a fairly limited range of views"

Considering you edit my quotes directly instead of deleting parts for brevity and you use Make-up-25%-of-my-stuff Fogel, I'm not included to believe anything you say about the viability of plantation slavery. And some of what you said doesn't even apply to PLANTATIONS.

Only the first quote you have was accurately ascribed to as "not me." I did say "Um, not at all. Keeping slaves means you have to guard them. With big machines, you have to extra guard them so that they don't sabotage the machines or even destroy them out of stupidity (plenty of slaves who didn't try escape seemed... not too bright). As long as non-union labor is available to operate modern equipment, using that is going to be cheaper than monitoring slaves to make sure they don't destroy the precious equipment." and then you put almost a dozen lines into my mouth as fake quotes.

To be quite fair to Jared, though-he was actually quoting comments that I had written, and may simply have mixed things up somehow. (It has happened to me on a couple of occasions, btw)

(Edit: That said, though, as for Fogel, did he really have that problem you mentioned? That is rather unfortunate if he did. Do you have any sources I can look at?)

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Railroads and American Economic Growth, The slavery debates, 1952-1990, and Which Road to the Past have plenty of "facts" that aren't in the citations they mentioned. To be fair, for most of them, the facts were gathered in 3-10 sources and he cites them over dozens of sources. Some are just made up. And I'm not like Jared, I'm too lazy to drag out each and every example, so feel free to think I mistook Fogel for some other writer with the name that starts with "F" and has two syllables in his name who is an economist who gets things wrong when he does history.

 

[Kwisatz Haderach]

A plantation slave economy would be a massive inhibition to progress in just about every field - social, scientifc, industrial, economical, etc.
Rome is a good example of the stagnation this type of economic system creates

 

[Jared]

Wait, what? I didn't even say half of that! Jared is putting quotes of stuff I never said into quotes. I never said "Only I never said or implied anything was impossible." I never said "To be truthful, though, the info you cite later on, isn't exactly 'basic', outside of perhaps an academic sense. But since most of us on this site aren't academics, that is kind of a moot point" I never said "To be truthful, Jared, the main problem here is that it does appear pretty clear that you seem to be relying on a fairly limited variance of sources with a fairly limited range of views"

I was replying to Caliboy1990, not you, and indicating one time when he had replied to a statement of yours as to why I believed he held a particular position.

All other quotes in that thread were from Caliboy1990. I thought that was clear from the way I phrased it, quoting Caliboy first, then a quote from you, then the next quote "You said" (meaning Caliboy), then continued from there with all other quotes from Caliboy.

Apologies if you received a different impression. I will add a clarifying edit to the post to make it clear that only that one quote (which was correct) was from you.

Considering you edit my quotes directly instead of deleting parts for brevity and you use Make-up-25%-of-my-stuff Fogel, I'm not included to believe anything you say about the viability of plantation slavery. And some of what you said doesn't even apply to PLANTATIONS.

I have not edited any quotes from you, as far as I know. In terms of Fogel, I use him as one source amongst several. If you're doubtful of any particular point I've raised, I'm happy to look for alternative sources.

 

[Jared]

Railroads and American Economic Growth, The slavery debates, 1952-1990, and Which Road to the Past have plenty of "facts" that aren't in the citations they mentioned. To be fair, for most of them, the facts were gathered in 3-10 sources and he cites them over dozens of sources. Some are just made up. And I'm not like Jared, I'm too lazy to drag out each and every example, so feel free to think I mistook Fogel for some other writer with the name that starts with "F" and has two syllables in his name who is an economist who gets things wrong when he does history.

This was uncalled for. You misread my post; I've since clarified the matter. My clarification was posted after you made this particular post, so I'm not offended by it this time, but please refrain from personal attacks in future.

 

[Jared]

Happy to leave this for a cool-down in general, but one particular point is relevant since you've mentioned finding other sources.

You do realize I posted several sources to back up my assertions, right?

Since you asked:

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/Ref...iccenhs&jsid=7abcf6b362e5e22bf93696e5224f9c9f
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/58/slave-resistance-in-natchez-mississippi-1719-1861
https://books.google.com/books?id=e...AhUF2IMKHX81DbU4ChDoAQhBMAY#v=onepage&q=slave sabotage&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=l...AhVh1oMKHRywBcQ4FBDoAQhCMAU#v=onepage&q=slave sabotage&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=L...UqyoMKHUdqA4Q4HhDoAQguMAE#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/slavery-united-states

All these were found with a 10 minute search on Google late last night. If I have time(and if I can remember), I can try to find some more detailed sources elsewhere, but these excerpts that I've found should do decently for now. In the meantime, it may be best to simply pause the conversation for now, as I'd rather give us both a chance to cool this down for a bit. Fair, I hope?

I asked for sources which have made a thorough analysis. The sources you provided are fine to document that there was slave resistance and slave sabotage. (Well, except the first, which I couldn't access since it asked for a password). What they don't provide is a detailed analysis on the broader questions of whether slavery as a system was economically viable or not.

In the spirit of finding alternative sources, here's one which I found recently online by Coclanis who tried in 2010 to summarise the research into the economics of slavery. I haven't read it thoroughly yet, though I do have some quibbles about a couple of points in the parts I have read, but it's a useful place to start reading from since it refers to lots of other sources for further exploration.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

I was replying to Caliboy1990, not you, and indicating one time when he had replied to a statement of yours as to why I believed he held a particular position.

All other quotes in that thread were from Caliboy1990. I thought that was clear from the way I phrased it, quoting Caliboy first, then a quote from you, then the next quote "You said" (meaning Caliboy), then continued from there with all other quotes from Caliboy.

Apologies if you received a different impression. I will add a clarifying edit to the post to make it clear that only that one quote (which was correct) was from you.


I have not edited any quotes from you, as far as I know. In terms of Fogel, I use him as one source amongst several. If you're doubtful of any particular point I've raised, I'm happy to look for alternative sources.

When I said you edited quotes, I was talking about the part Caliboy said that you seemed to attribute to me. Saying I'm too lazy to look up isn't an attack

 

[ben0628]

It depends how we define slavery. I believe if we use indentured servitude instead of chattle slavery, it can be efficient enough.

Edit: For example, have a country that is a corporatocracy. Everyone works for a company, is required to live in the company town, becomes indebted to their company store, and is forced to work against their will, but as hard as possible so that they can pay off their debt and earn their freedom from the company.

Just apply the example above to agricultural corporations and Bam! You get modern slave plantations.

2nd edit: Either that or turn criminals into slaves and force them to work on farms as punishment. Apartheid South Africa did this.

 

[Aphrodite]

There are several reasons that slave labor was more efficient than free labor


1) Female labor was much more efficient. On a plantation, the traditional female tasks (cooking, washing) could achieve economy of scale. It doesn't take any longer to cook for twenty than it does for one. This was especially true for child care where all the children could be watched by a single elderly woman. This made all the women much more effiicient. Trust me, you get little done when you have to stop and chase a two year old all the time

2) Slaves were capital and could be used as collateral. A 12 year old free child is a burden, a twelve year old slave is worth quite a bit. This let the plantation owner operate on a much larger scale

3) Slaves are never unemployed. The marginal cost of using a slave is zero so something will always be found for him to do

4) It doesn't take anymore time to supervise a slave than it does an hourly worker. Both have the same incentive to do as little as possible

And while it doesn't raise productivity, the slave owner captured a labor earning than an hourly employees

That said, agriculture has been so mechanized that its hard to find a way to use slaves on a plantation. It took a day to plow an acre with a horse. With a sixteen bottom tractor, it takes about five minutes

Slavery would still be viable economically in a labor intensive field- say a supermarket

 

[HunterX]

Slavery would still be viable economically in a labor intensive field- say a supermarket

I don't think you'd want slaves in customer facing positions. And overnight stock jobs can be done cheaply with part time labor that you don't need to even pay healthcare costs for. Slavery doesn't fit the needs of retail particularly well.

 

[Aphrodite]

I don't think you'd want slaves in customer facing positions. And overnight stock jobs can be done cheaply with part time labor that you don't need to even pay healthcare costs for. Slavery doesn't fit the needs of retail particularly well.

hIstorically, slavery has been used in all manners of fields including retailing, factories, mines and agriculture. Even highly skilled professionals have been slaves The institution existed to maximize the earnings of the slaveholder not the overall economy. there are few jobs that you couldn't force a slave to do. It just depends on what works best for the slaveholder

Retail jobs might not pay much but if that's the best use for your slave, that's how you would use him. A slave making $7 an hour is doing better than one sitting at home

 

[Mackus]

You can't use slaves in highly skilled jobs long term, because that'd trigger cognitive dissonance in owner, and anyone who is aware of such slaves.
Moral and philosophical justification for slavery in modern and early modern periods (This doesn't apply to places/times like China or ancient Rome, which had different moral basis for slavery than early modern west), was primitive and and savage state of enslaved ethic groups. They're such good for nothing, cant even take care of themselves, so for their own good and for the good of society, lets give them purpose and productive job.
But when you have intelligent slave, who can read, works at job that that required above-average mental capacities and responsibility, well, that kinda proves he shouldn't be slave.
You can get away with occasional such slave, because then they're just a curiosity, like dancing bears. But if you have entire social class, lets call it "middle class slaves", its gonna be harder to justify to yourself their subservient state. It will evaporate popular willingness to keep slavery. Hence, slaves will not be used for anything but physical labour in large numbers.
You can keep slavery around indefinitely if you have the will. We know the west did not had the will.

 

[Lord Malikai]

While most of this thread is discussing the issue of how productive slaves are, isn't the real problem with a slave based economy the institutionalized debt necessary to make it work?

If you are a plantation owner, your wealth is based in land, which is very illiquid. To get your plantation producing, you would have to take on debt - backed by your land - to purchase slaves. Then rather than pay wages from your profits - as you would in a wage-based society - instead you'd pay off your debts with your profits. In a perfect homo economicus funland wages should be exactly the same as the debt payment minus interest, if your wage-worker and your slave do the exact same work. The problem is this inherently requires a truly ludicrous private debt-to-GDP ratio.

To illustrate I'll throw down some back of the envelope calculations:

First we start with the classic GDP approximation that 2/3 is consumer spending, 1/4 is government spending and 1/10 is business investment. In a wage based economy total wages should equal total consumer spending. In a slave based economy all the wages that the slaves would otherwise earn are instead debt payments. So for simplicity, let's assume the proportion of wages that are instead slave debt payments is the same as the proportion of slaves to freemen in the population. For a full on slave economy like the CSA that's 39%, which I'll round down to 1/3. Then let's assume the debt payment is structured like a fixed-rate mortgage and that our plantation owner is paying 10% of the original debt per year (this bit is a total ass-pull but it illustrates the point). That means that from your GDP you have 2/3*(1/3)/(1/10) = ~200% private debt-to-GDP ratio. That's a higher ratio than you'd find in the U.S. right before the Great Recession or in Japan before the Lost Decade. This also assumes absolutely no other private debt which is unlikely.

Now modern economics isn't completely sure what a rampant private debt-to-GDP necessarily entails, but it can be very bad. Generally you should see a serious slow-down in investment and long-term economic growth. You may get significant bubbles as happened before the Lost Decade, Great Recession, Great Depression and the Confederate economy during the Civil War.

Having so much money wrapped up in fixed payments that essentially prop up banks who immediately re-lend that same money so others can purchase slaves would seriously impinge on any other investments or even just regular purchases. Historically, plantation owners would often be forced to pay for other goods and services by taking on additional debt as their minimal liquid wealth would be wrapped up in debt payments for the original slaves. At worst you would end up with plantation owners trapped in a permanent debt cycle - as did happen in the American South.

I suspect that the Romans and early slave based economies avoided these problems by having a significant population of first generation slaves. By capturing a large number year after year they'd be injecting a large amount of human capital into their economy, which may have been sufficient to offset the lack of investment from the huge portions of their GDP that was wrapped up in debt.

TLDR: While a slave economy in any given moment may have been as productive as a wage based economy, in the long-term, the macroeconomic disadvantage of having so much debt wrapped up in that slave economy would permanently and seriously slow down economic growth vis-a-vis a comparative wage based economy.

 

[Jared]

You can't use slaves in highly skilled jobs long term, because that'd trigger cognitive dissonance in owner, and anyone who is aware of such slaves.

Except that slaves were used in highly-skilled jobs throughout the entire period of the antebellum South. Not a majority of slaves, by any means, but sufficient to demonstrate that people were able to cope with the concept just fine.

 

[Jared]

While most of this thread is discussing the issue of how productive slaves are, isn't the real problem with a slave based economy the institutionalized debt necessary to make it work?

If you are a plantation owner, your wealth is based in land, which is very illiquid. To get your plantation producing, you would have to take on debt - backed by your land - to purchase slaves. Then rather than pay wages from your profits - as you would in a wage-based society - instead you'd pay off your debts with your profits. In a perfect homo economicus funland wages should be exactly the same as the debt payment minus interest, if your wage-worker and your slave do the exact same work. The problem is this inherently requires a truly ludicrous private debt-to-GDP ratio.

Actually, most of planters' wealth was based on their the slaves, not the land. Land was relatively cheap, slaves were in comparative terms much more expensive. From a purely economic point of view, slaves were capital assets, which could be sold, used to produce a return (i.e. forced to work), used as backing for debts, insured, etc. The Southern financial system was not of the same quality as in the North, but it did exist and did a perfectly serviceable job of supporting the Southern economy during the antebellum period. (Case in point: most Southern railroads, pre-ACW, were paid for by domestic Southern investment, not Northern or foreign investment).

As an aside, the relatively higher value of slaves versus land actually led to one of the more significant observable macroeconomic effects of slavery (per Gavin Wright, among others): investment in fixed capital was measurably lower in slaveholding states when compared to free-soil states. So improvements to land, infrastructure etc were lower. They weren't zero, but they were measurably lower.

To illustrate I'll throw down some back of the envelope calculations:

First we start with the classic GDP approximation that 2/3 is consumer spending, 1/4 is government spending and 1/10 is business investment. In a wage based economy total wages should equal total consumer spending. In a slave based economy all the wages that the slaves would otherwise earn are instead debt payments. So for simplicity, let's assume the proportion of wages that are instead slave debt payments is the same as the proportion of slaves to freemen in the population. For a full on slave economy like the CSA that's 39%, which I'll round down to 1/3. Then let's assume the debt payment is structured like a fixed-rate mortgage and that our plantation owner is paying 10% of the original debt per year (this bit is a total ass-pull but it illustrates the point). That means that from your GDP you have 2/3*(1/3)/(1/10) = ~200% private debt-to-GDP ratio. That's a higher ratio than you'd find in the U.S. right before the Great Recession or in Japan before the Lost Decade. This also assumes absolutely no other private debt which is unlikely.

Re: the bolded point above: no, they weren't. Debt payments only last until the slaves were paid off; after that, what is being produced is profit for the owner, which is in large part spent on consumption.

The purchase price of a prime field hand in the Cotton South, even at their sky-high prices, could be paid off within five years: and every year after that, the slave's labour was pure sweet profit to the owner. Poor plantation managers could go broke very quickly... but good or even average ones could make a fortune very quickly. High-risk, but high reward, too. At a macroeconomic level, the debt was manageable. The South had its economic busts, but no worse than the North in the same era - the nineteenth century saw a lot of economic panics/busts throughout North America.

Now modern economics isn't completely sure what a rampant private debt-to-GDP necessarily entails, but it can be very bad. Generally you should see a serious slow-down in investment and long-term economic growth. You may get significant bubbles as happened before the Lost Decade, Great Recession, Great Depression and the Confederate economy during the Civil War.

One of those things is not like the others. An economic collapse caused by war and - principally - a wartime blockade is not at all comparable to the other bubbles. Although if you want to mention economic bubbles in the nineteenth century, think Panic of 1819 and Panic of 1837, both of which hit both North and South severely (if anything, worse in the North). Or the Panics of 1873 and 1893, both of which were severe bubbles and collapses across the now-free-soil USA.

TLDR: While a slave economy in any given moment may have been as productive as a wage based economy, in the long-term, the macroeconomic disadvantage of having so much debt wrapped up in that slave economy would permanently and seriously slow down economic growth vis-a-vis a comparative wage based economy.

TLDR: Debt per se was not a significant problem in a Southern USA style slave economy. It may have been in others. Economic bubbles and collapses were no worse than in the closest comparable free-soil economy (the North).

 

[Mackus]

Except that slaves were used in highly-skilled jobs throughout the entire period of the antebellum South. Not a majority of slaves, by any means, but sufficient to demonstrate that people were able to cope with the concept just fine.

What high-skilled jobs? I assume you mean stuff like artisanship. Even today many people don't understand how much skill it takes, because they label it as "physical labour", under impression "physical labour"="unskilled labour".
Slaves were not permitted to learn to write or read in many states, which demonstrates that most people were not able to cope with the concept easily, even though over time, there will less and less jobs one could do without knowing how to read and white. Even Nazis had official policy that their future slaves were to have basic knowledge of written German to be able to read instruction manuals for their work tools. But then, Nazis had different moral justification for slavery than CSA.

I remember a case of runaway slave. She was very light skinned. From strictly legal POV, slavemaster was in the right. He had documents to prove she was his, and demander her returned, trial was just formality.
Woman's lawyers arguing that "she looks white, she acts white, she's obviously smart and educated, how possibly she could be slave? Are you gonna trust some scrap of paper, or your own eyes?"
Jury seemngly couldn't comprehend white-looking, intellectually bright slave, and declared her free.