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hm... I haven't posted stuff from Beckert today (#1434507), what in the world are you talking about??
also, economists in particular (and Adam Smith definitely) were foundational in doing something no civilization had ever done before: get rid of human beings as property (and then the Brits used their navy to hunt down the trade and stop it globally...). So, em, wth are you smoking, bro?
no it wasn't, idiot. (this is a common, leftist myth... start learning by reading my follow-along review of Beckert -- one of said myth propagators -- book: #1416318).
also, to your substantive question: no, my post is about the industrial revolution. Which happened in BRITAIN, and to which the U.S. is just an uninteresting second/third act.
You’re acting like slavery was irrelevant to industrialization. It wasn’t.
Slave labor produced ~12–13% of U.S. GDP at its peak, which is equivalent to $3.5–4T/year today.
And ~75% of global cotton, which was the core input of British industry, came from U.S. slave plantations.
That’s not a side note. That’s the supply chain.
It was irrelevant to industrialization, and in no way correspondent to that sort of modern figures #1422896
The only thing interesting about slavery is its abolishing
If slavery was irrelevant, why did British industry depend so heavily on slave-grown cotton?
Are you saying CPI is flawed, or that slavery didn’t matter? Those are different claims.
If cotton was the main input for British textiles, and slaves produced the cotton, where does “irrelevant” come from?
It didn't... It was immaterial. Take away slavery, and British industrial revolution would have happened just as well.
And no, you're the one invoking some modern-day equivalent number. Don't do that
A system is not moral just because it produced wealth, especially when that same system could price, trade, and exploit human beings as property.