BigBucnNole
Elite
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2021
- Messages
- 2,158
I saw this clip on Maher with whoever this Charlemagne guy is...
Anyway he says blacks built America so they deserve a check. This is some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.
Taking it at face value, the economics is retarded. Blacks grew and harvested cash crops. Crops are commodities and commodities always compete to zero. You don’t get any upward movement in price that you see with manufactured products through innovation and differentiation on the world market. The only incentive is to grow more and sell more, sending the price further down. At first with cash crops it’s easy money, but quickly creates a downward spiral that economies can’t get out of because it takes more and more production and money to maintain the same standard of living.
It’s why slavery has to exist in an agrarian based economy in the first place, and why slavery can’t exist in a modern industrialized one. There is a diminishing marginal return on raw labor, there is a diminishing marginal return on commodities; the two of those things mean the more people you have the less output per person you have, the more output you make the less money per unit. Money and output are synonymous, which means everyone makes less and less money until they are effectively working for free. At that point to actually keep a functioning economy moving forward you create a framework like slavery to force people in place and producing. Otherwise you face social collapse and everyone starves. I'm not saying slavery was some sort of "we're all in this together." Clearly someone was getting paid well, however if your economic framework is built off of commodities, especially agriculture, that's the only way to do it.
The industrial revolution created the concept of skilled labor where there was an incentive to work because only a handful of people had the required skillset for any number of jobs and capital changes the marginal return dynamic on output from decreasing without capital to increasing with capital. Since the North didn't have great soil and their growing seasons were short, they naturally took to industrialization. In the south that wasn't the case and the economic system provided incentive against industrializing, which put them in a terrible place when the war began.
So, by that, slavery couldn't have built this country. If slavery didn't exist the south would've industrialized quicker and we wouldn't have had two separate economies/ societies developing in this country to provide the roots for war. It was a huge negative. It was also a real problem that Southern state governments were aware of. They knew before the war they had to industrialize. In the 1860's though, industrialization was just beginning in the north and it would take time for a transfer of credit and money from the northern states to the south to break the commodity hold that the southern economies faced. Effectively the South couldn't risk their own money since they were too busy growing shit, and the North just didn't have the cash to spare to lend.
Anyway he says blacks built America so they deserve a check. This is some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.
Taking it at face value, the economics is retarded. Blacks grew and harvested cash crops. Crops are commodities and commodities always compete to zero. You don’t get any upward movement in price that you see with manufactured products through innovation and differentiation on the world market. The only incentive is to grow more and sell more, sending the price further down. At first with cash crops it’s easy money, but quickly creates a downward spiral that economies can’t get out of because it takes more and more production and money to maintain the same standard of living.
It’s why slavery has to exist in an agrarian based economy in the first place, and why slavery can’t exist in a modern industrialized one. There is a diminishing marginal return on raw labor, there is a diminishing marginal return on commodities; the two of those things mean the more people you have the less output per person you have, the more output you make the less money per unit. Money and output are synonymous, which means everyone makes less and less money until they are effectively working for free. At that point to actually keep a functioning economy moving forward you create a framework like slavery to force people in place and producing. Otherwise you face social collapse and everyone starves. I'm not saying slavery was some sort of "we're all in this together." Clearly someone was getting paid well, however if your economic framework is built off of commodities, especially agriculture, that's the only way to do it.
The industrial revolution created the concept of skilled labor where there was an incentive to work because only a handful of people had the required skillset for any number of jobs and capital changes the marginal return dynamic on output from decreasing without capital to increasing with capital. Since the North didn't have great soil and their growing seasons were short, they naturally took to industrialization. In the south that wasn't the case and the economic system provided incentive against industrializing, which put them in a terrible place when the war began.
So, by that, slavery couldn't have built this country. If slavery didn't exist the south would've industrialized quicker and we wouldn't have had two separate economies/ societies developing in this country to provide the roots for war. It was a huge negative. It was also a real problem that Southern state governments were aware of. They knew before the war they had to industrialize. In the 1860's though, industrialization was just beginning in the north and it would take time for a transfer of credit and money from the northern states to the south to break the commodity hold that the southern economies faced. Effectively the South couldn't risk their own money since they were too busy growing shit, and the North just didn't have the cash to spare to lend.
