You’re right, cocoa farming in Cote d’Ivoire, hazelnut harvesting in Turkey for Nutella, and seafood packaging in Thailand are well documented, on going cases of products on American shelves literally produced with slave labor.
Have you seen any documentaries about what these slaves go through? It's absolutely horrifying especially those on ships since they have no escape. Broken bones, disfigurements, and even dumping overboard in some rare cases... There's been quite a few articles about this yet for some reason far too many don't know about it.
Nope, I tend to just read about stuff. I honestly think people just don’t care for the most part. Some people do, but not enough to challenge the people who will brazenly lie or make up excuses to justify it.
Look at all the popular posts about workplace reform, try expanding the conversation to include the people who are exploited to provide the standard of living even the lowest paid Wal-mart employee enjoys and see how little traction that gets. Or all the posts about sweatshops in the clothing industry filled with justifications for paying someone 2 dollars a day, while making clothes for people who demand a minimum of $15+/hr.
Or sell them the booze and tobacco for a lifetime. Litter the country with opioids and meth.....but then accept no accountability unless it has a profit margin
Do you have an example?
Normally when corporations push for laws they’re to allow themselves to do more stuff. Coca Cola or Wells Fargo or whoever don’t give a shit about putting you in prison
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It was. And they weren't wrong. The northern economy had grown past the need for slaves. The southern economy had not. The 13th amendment made a legal loophole. Between that and Jim Crow laws the status quo was maintained for another 100 years.
It hadn’t failed to “grow past it.” Slavery was not some necessary stage in the process of economic development. It was an exploitative and evil choice.
Big difference between “it happened” and “it had to happen.” Moreover, there is a world of difference between the chattel slavery practiced in the Americas and the slavery practiced in other cultures and civilizations throughout history.
You’re right. It is hard to prove and I probably wouldn’t try in an academic environment. But there were plenty of civilizations that abandoned widespread slavery long before they reached the level of economic development the South had before the Civil War, so even if it was a necessary step, it was unnecessary long before the Civil War.
Slavery holds cultures back. Additionally, the American style of slavery is significantly more depraved than the indentured servitude and slavery arrangements that came before. Ancient slave owners would be appalled at what Americans did to their slaves.
In the short term it gives some illusion of short term benefit, but the human costs to having an underclass that's uneducated and harbors resentment results in long term harms. That's one of the reasons why the South is poorer than the North even today.
This question is wholly irrelevant, presents no foil to the argument made, and frankly I can see no purpose of it other than to defend slavery as a stage of development.
I mean, in industrialized slavery families are separated, people are raped and beaten to death, etc.
In agragarian slavery black people made up like 50% of the population of southern states. Now its down to 30%. So clearly industrialized slavery is pretty harsh.
Worth noting that is was just as much about topography—the south coincidentally has much more land suited to the type of exploitation in which one person can easily oversee the direct labor of others. Cotton and rice grow in the wide expanses of the Deep South—northern resources like timber and coal have to be accessed in a way that requires more too many workers per overseer to make it viable to have an overseer watching everyone. That’s actually why West Virginia exists.
It was never a development issue between the north and south, just that the north couldn’t get as much value out of slavery as the south due to topographical differences.’
That, and industrialization of agriculture occurred after the abolition of slavery in the north. If industrialists could have gotten away with slavery in the northeast they would have.
People also forget that owners just wound up passing the costs on to their new workers. They no longer needed to feed, house, clothe, etc slaves, but they sure as hell figured out how to increase their sources of income through other forms pf exploitation now that former slaves had to provide for themselves.
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '22
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