Comment by loeg
1 day ago
My impression is that slavery was economically disadvantageous the whole time, but persisted in the South because of the relative power of the slaveholders.
1 day ago
My impression is that slavery was economically disadvantageous the whole time, but persisted in the South because of the relative power of the slaveholders.
Exactly. As distasteful as it is to put it in these terms, some slaveholders had massive "balance sheets" consisting of thousands of human "assets". Outlawing slavery meant reducing the value of these assets to zero.
Which is identical to all the balance sheets today will oil and gas infrastructure and the billions dumped into ICE R&D they were hoping to amortize over the next 30 years.
They’ll fight tooth and nail
Identical might be a bit strong. It's only identical if we signed a law that made oil and gas illegal tomorrow. There are definitely parallels, but this is much more of a normal market situation where most things are handled through incentives, not regulation to such an extreme degree we make the common immediately illegal.
Perhaps most importantly, it not being an immediate change allows the entrenched interests time to shift their strategies and portfolios over time to take advantage of the more economically advantageous option. Many people aren't happy with the time frames that generally requires, but they also seem to be very happy with reliable energy and and economy that doesn't collapse overnight and having invested a year or two ago in a car which would become worthless tomorrow.
I thought it was getting increasingly disadvantageous and on the way out, then cotton mill suddenly make it advantageous again, recementing slavery.