patrick.net

Where in Europe was South Africa? LOL

95+% of land mass in the British Empire was not in Europe. The 19th century enlightened society in Europe ( which was relatively new to Europe even at that time) did not apply to the rest of the world. You know what else, in the 20th century, between 1914 and the 1990's, even Europe turned its clock backwards to the darker age.

Reality says

Where in Europe was South Africa? LOL

Again, you're dodging my point, By using the example of Europe and the lack of passports, you were trying to infer the the Laissez-Faire British Empire didn't impose restrictions on people like evil Statist Socialist Governments of Today. My point was to show that it did by illustrating the authoritarianism that even well-educated subjects encountered in the other "95%" of the Empire.

De jure slavery was waning in the entire western world at the time despite massive increase in slave population -- simply because the overall population growth was much faster than slave population growth, rendering slavery less and less important factor in the economy.

The reason why all population was growing rapidly in the west was due to trade and capitalistic free market economic take off making child mortality decline rapidly. The same as the 1960's population explosion in the third world when western technology was introduced to them.

Mercantilism was not at all the father of capitalism. Georgii, you are showing the bad economics education you received in the former USSR.

Mercantilism was invented by a bunch of wannabe central planners trying to explain the British success of the earlier century. The Mercantilist policies implemented by them in the rest of Europe led directly to colonial land grab competition of the late 19th and early 20th century. Then the soviets and their communist satellites tried to implement their version of Mercantilism / ruthless colonial exploitation of their internal population. The results were invariably disasterous.

Capitalism is based on mutually willing free trade, motivated by asymmetric information possessed by the two parties in each trade. Mercantilism having central planners control the movements of trade can not lead to successful price discovery.

I was not dodging your point at all. "British Empire" was not a homogeneous empire, or even a federal system where all members enjoy equal rights everywhere. It was a tholassocracy: each region was governed according to its own peculiarities. Some parts of it even had cannibals, like Northern Borneo.

If you think the Brits should have sent red coats to stop the cannibals or enforce bussing in India or South Africa, like the LBJ adminstration used the federal troops to enforce racial integration in public schools, you have the wrong country /system in mind.

Reality says

De jure slavery was waning in the entire western world at the time despite massive increase in slave population -- simply because the overall population growth was much faster than slave population growth, rendering slavery less and less important factor in the economy.

Yes, the British Navy destroyed the Slave Trade due to activist lefties in Parliament imposing aggressive military interventions on the international Slave Trade.

However, the Slave Power of the American South was not on the wane, indeed is was growing in economic power. King Cotton:

The Civil War was fought to preserve the "peculiar Institution". However, once the war started, the Brits began growing Cotton in Egypt and India, which kept their Textile Industry afloat (which caused famines a few years down the road):

Reality says

The reason why all population was growing rapidly in the west was due to trade and capitalistic free market economic take off making child mortality decline rapidly. The same as the 1960's population explosion in the third world when western technology was introduced to them.

Thank You, Tariff:

If the Tariff rate on Imports was over 30-40% today, von Mises and Rothbard would be wailing "Statist Oppression" - yet that's just where it was during their celebrated Laissez Faire Era.

Reality says

Mercantilism was not at all the father of capitalism. Georgii, you are showing the bad economics education you received in the former USSR.

Mercantilism was invented by a bunch of wannabe central planners trying to explain the British success of the earlier century. The Mercantilist policies implemented by them in the rest of Europe led directly to colonial land grab competition of the late 19th and early 20th century. Then the soviets and their communist satellites tried to implement their version of Mercantilism / ruthless colonial exploitation of their internal population. The results were invariably disasterous.

Oh, what was Adam Smith describing in the 18th Century when he spoke of past Economic History?

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it.

Why did the Tea Party happen?

Clearly, Mercantilism was already in play in the 18th Century (at least), which should be Common Knowledge for an Austrian whose favorite websites quotes Jefferson on State-sponsored Monopolies.

Reality says

I was not dodging your point at all. "British Empire" was not a homogeneous empire, or even a federal system where all members enjoy equal rights everywhere. It was a tholassocracy: each region was governed according to its own peculiarities. Some parts of it even had cannibals, like Northern Borneo.

My point is not that the British Raj is the South African Dominion. My point is that your symbol of Free Trade Britain being a paradise of Freedom is Flawed.

You try to have it both ways: Have the Industrial Power of the US explained by Laissez Faire, when in the first case it had what today would be considered crushingly high tariffs. While blaming the Oppression of Colonialism on Mercantilism of the late 19th Century, when at the same time the British Empire was at it's peak, it was eliminating Tariffs and embracing Free Trade.

British Tariffs declined as the Victorian Era of Maximum Colonialism advanced:

Let me get this straight, you are for raising tariffs and raising income tax . . . Why are you then against slavery since you are for partial slavery anyway? LOL

You may want to look up what is "dutiable." Many goods were not. Income tax was much lower back then, and there wasn't the payroll tax.

British navy was outlawing slave transportation on the high seas because the slave abduction trade carried out by the Africans and Arabs in Africa was financing powers hostile to British interests. The slave abduction trade was one of the primary sources of income that those native and "native" anti-British powers had.

In case you forgot, Adam Smith was rebutting what later would be theorized as "mercantilism founding capitalism." He was arguing against the conquest and control of natural resources for ruthless exploitstion. His idea of trade and division of labor (the source of the wealth of nations) was not exchange at the point of a musket. LOL. But free trade!

The Boston tea dumping incident was another case of Mercantilism didn't work. British attempt to impose tax and grant monopoly to cronies (trying to stamp out "pirates") led to a massive loss not gain. Nobody said British ran a paradise; just something more functional than the typical Russian central planned wasteland. Of course the Brits made many mistakes along the way, such as the tea dumping incident and causing the 13 colonies to secede.

What looks like crushing rates of tariff today may not be so bad back them in comparison to worse ways of government building "negative bridges" via tariffs and letting cronies monopolize trade. Just like 16 knots is unbearably slow today for shipping, but back then clippers making that speed was considered very fast.

The US industrialized despite the tariffs not because of the tariffs . . . Just like youngsters today are literate despite many public school monopolies not because of them.

Reality says

In 1790, slave count was close to 0.7 mil out of a US population count of close to 4 mil, or close to 18% of the population were slaves

Reality says

You are trying to bullshit: the single snap shot you took had little meaning. The deep south had even higher slave population percentage in 1790. Slaves and slave holders as PERCENTAGE OF population was declining.

So your single snap shot has meaning but mine doesn't? How is that? Where is the proof that the deep south had even higher slave population percentage in 1790? No it didn't in the 1790 census VA,NC,SC,GA (the only southern states that existed 1790) had a population of 1,472,173 with 526,768 slaves for 35% slave population vs the exact same states population 3,716,534 with 1,686,528 slaves for 45% slave population in the 1860 census. Not a declining percentage by any reasonable (well that leaves you out) persons definition. Keep on slinging your sons of the south apologist bullshit, no one is buying it.

Reality says

You may want to look up what is "dutiable." Many goods were not.

Feel free to point out what percentage of imports were dutiable and what percentage wasn't.

Reality says

Let me get this straight, you are for raising tariffs and raising income tax . . . Why are you then against slavery since you are for partial slavery anyway? LOL

Taxes are Slavery, Food Stamps are Slavery, Section 8 housing is Slavery - anything less than Total Feudal Rule of 1%ers to you is Slavery, no?

But hoping (perhaps wrongly) for a moment you aren't an Anarcho-Capitalist, if there is no Tariff and no Income Tax, where is the money for military, roads, etc. coming from? Probably a fundamentally regressive per capita tax or sales tax. But then, how is taxing consumption rather than income not a form of slavery? And isn't a tariff basically a sales tax collected on imported goods?

Reality says

You may want to look up what is "dutiable." Many goods were not. Income tax was much lower back then, and there wasn't the payroll tax.

There was no income tax, except during the Civil War and an attempt at one in the 1890s to offset tariff reductions. The income tax was not established until 1913.

Reality says

British navy was outlawing slave transportation on the high seas because the slave abduction trade carried out by the Africans and Arabs in Africa was financing powers hostile to British interests. The slave abduction trade was one of the primary sources of income that those native and "native" anti-British powers had.

Right, prior to the Napoleonic Wars, the French, British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese didn't dominate the seas. They were powerless in the face of North African and Indian Ocean Arabs, which regularly took multi-gunned European East Indiamen and Frigates, and so desperate to achieve victory, that, led by the British, the banned Slavery in their own colonies just to spite the Turk. And then magically, the European Navies of the 19th Century began defeating Arab and Asian pirates that had heretofore swept them from the seas.

Riiiiiiiight.

Virginia and North Carolina were not deep south, and they accounted for the majority of the population of the 4 states you cited in 1790.

Slavery being on its way out as an economic/ political system was clearly understood even among the southerners by 1860's US. Otherwise, it would be quite pointless for the slave holding class to seek secession in order to preserve the institution.

As for your sons of south apologist accusation, you are quite mistaken. My position is that the southern states had the right to secede just like the slaves on the plantations had the right to secede from the plantations and escape to Canada or to as close as Pennsylvania after CSA became independent. That is the only logically consistent stand on both issues gainst slavery (holding people in bondage against their own will).

Rothbard on Slavery.

Source: Rothbard, M. N. 1998. The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, N.Y. and London.

"The Ethics of Liberty", just a great example of how fanatical pursuit of couch-based a priori "logical" argument subject to no empirical verification can send one straight to the Funny Farm of Looneyville, Crank County.

Rothbard on Prisoners

Rothbard on David Duke:

Well, they finally got David Duke. But he sure scared the bejesus out of them. It took a massive campaign of hysteria, of fear and hate, orchestrated by all wings of the Ruling Elite, from Official right to left, from President Bush and the official Republican Party through the New York-Washington-run national media through the local elites and down to local left-wing activists. It took a massive scare campaign, not only invoking the old bogey images of the Klan and Hitler, but also, more concretely, a virtual threat to boycott Louisiana, to pull out tourists and conventions, to lose jobs by businesses leaving the state.

Invoking Images of the KKK? There's no need to invoke an image, when there is an actual image:

4. Take Back the Streets: Crush Criminals. And by this I mean, of course, not "white collar criminals" or "inside traders" but violent street criminals – robbers, muggers, rapists, murderers. Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.

5. Take Back the Streets: Get Rid of the Bums. Again: unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society.
Source, including more fruitcakery, such as railing against Public Schools and demanding their total elimination and no replacement by state funding or vouchers for any education:
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html

What a coinky dink that Austrians have common ground with Kidnapper Confederates.

"If there is no tariff and no income tax, where is the money for military and roads coming from?"

LOL, your Soviet education is showing. A standing military is actually forbidden in the US constitution. The idea that government is needed for roads would have sounded preposterous to the Founding Fathers. Turpike Roads were built by private entities long before the federal government got involved. That's how you prevent bridges to nowhere pet projects by politicians at the expense of taxpayers.

Moving the bums and vagrants from the street to productive life was good advice, as evidenced as recently as the Baltimore riots.

Reality says

Hilary....

was a "Goldwater girl." Are you calling the '64 Goldwater campaign communist, or a violent terrorist organization? By 1972, she had become a Democrat and volunteered for the McGovern campaign, not communist and definitely not a terrorist organization.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama was ever associated with a violent terrorist organization, nor to my knowledge a communist. Those accusations require such a pile of distortions that they add up to lies. I am guessing they relate to Professor Bill Ayers (born 1944), who had been involved in the Weather Underground (1969-85). Barack Obama (born 1964) had nothing to do with the Weather Underground; at the organization's peak, he was a small child living thousands of miles away. Ayers was a professor in Chicago by the time he met Obama, where they were neighbors.

Reality says

A standing military is actually forbidden in the US constitution.

What?!

Your Thomas Woods Crankery is showing.

Article I, Section 8:

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

>

The US had a standing military force since Washington's Presidency and every day since that moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_six_frigates_of_the_United_States_Navy

Washingtons #1 Complaint during the Revolutionary War was the lack of Professionalism in the Militia.

Clearly we have a separation of the Army and the Navy from the Militia:

Article II, Section 2

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Reality says

The idea that government is needed for roads would have sounded preposterous to the Founding Fathers. Turpike Roads were built by private entities long before the federal government got involved. That's how you prevent ridges to nowhere pet projects by politicians at the expense of taxpayers.

WHAT?!

Article. I, Section 8

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

So you now prefer to leave out the government roads issue. Good. Some improvement. I know, it takes some time to deprogram that Soviet education you received in Russia.

Now, it may come as a surprise to you, in traditional English, "miltary" means the Army. The constitutional suggestion not to have military funding authorization beyond two years was a sound one in terms of preserving liberty. Being tight on money when it comes to funding a standing military is a good thing. In case you did not realize, the income tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913 quickly led to the financing of the devastating World War I.

Reality says

Moving the bums and vagrants from the street to productive life was good advice, as evidenced as recently as the Baltimore riots.

How about cops administering Instant Punishment?

As an alleged Freedom Lover, that doesn't bother you - but a standing Army and Navy does?

This kind of mindset illustrates how Austrians are really Ultra Conservative Radicals hiding behind the rhetoric of Liberty.

So too did the Nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth describe their "Golden Liberty" to not support the King, but had no problem enforcing their domination of Serfs.

Hilary was a Goldwater libertarian during her college years, but became an Ayer acolyte by the time of law school and afterwards.

Reality says

Virginia and North Carolina were not deep south, and they accounted for the majority of the population of the 4 states you cited in 1790.

There was no deep south in 1790. Only VA,NC,SC,GA. Comparing those states head to head with 1860 is the only way to look at it. You brought up the 1790 and the 1860 census you dufus, now you don't want to know about it? Slavery grew both in numbers and percentage all through the slave owning states right up until the civil war. That's a fact that can't be disputed no matter how much you try squirm around it. The idea that it was in decline because the rest of the country grew faster than the south is absurd even for you. Been taking math lessons from CIC?

Which part of "subject to liabilities when they are in error" did you miss? You seem to have a habit of deliberately overlook context. Most petty crimes simply do not rise to the cost of court precedings.

Your comment on barons not serving the king but having no qualms about dominating their serfs was not unique to Polish-Lithuania, but also to England, where post - Roman Empire liberty found its seedling in Magna Carta. Liberty is not something granted from high up, but to be found in the crevices of multiple competing rulers: your ability to escape from one and serve a competing ruler is what limits the power of any given ruler . . . Just like your ability to shop elsewhere is what keep prices down at the stores. Think of the government as a perveyor of a service called "government." It is not a charity; it is not almighty or always right.

Those four states were not at all representative of how slavery system was doing in the US or even in the South from 1790 to 1860.

You can not argue against the simple math that slave population declined from 18% of US population in 1790 to less than 13% in 1860.

Reality says

Which part of "subject to liabilities when they are in error" did you miss? You seem to have a habit of deliberately overlook context. Most petty crimes simply do not rise to the cost of court precedings.

Liabilities when they are in error is after they administer instant punishment. The whole point of Civil Liberties is to avoid authoritarian behavior in the first place by separating the Executors of the Law from the Authors of the Law from the Judges of the Law. What Rothbard is advocating here is that Cop be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, worrying about "Errors" later.

In this he is no different than the image of Jacobins you allegedly oppose.

Reality says

Liberty is not something granted from high up, but to be found in the crevices of multiple competing rulers: your ability to escape from one and serve a competing ruler is what limits the power of any given ruler . . .

Reality says

Think of the government as a perveyor of a service called "government." It is not a charity; it is not almighty or always right.

Nor are individual actors. Nor are the collective decisions of individual actors.

Think about that last one for a minute. I mean the Landlords, and the Supreme Soviet, and the Whims of the Market.

Reality says

Those four states were not at all representative of how slavery system was doing in the US or even in the South from 1790 to 1860.

You can not argue against the simple math that slave population declined from 18% of US population in 1790 to less than 13% in 1860.

You cannot argue that the Slave Population didn't increase 600% in 70 years, or that Cotton Production went from being a fraction of US exports, to the single dominant export (not including other Slave State cash crops like Tobacco and Indigo)

Once again, your Soviet education is showing. No, small degree of street justice ( that is already taking place everyday in real life) administered at petty crimes is not the same thing as Jacobian organized mass slaughter of political opponents. Quantitative difference, when big enough, makes a qualitative difference.

Not sure what your citation of that ad is about. I'm very much against a government that enforces fugitive slave laws, especially that of a federal government that enforces out of state claims against fugitive slaves who are already on free soil. Medieval Europe had precedence on a similar issue: if a runaway serf is able to support himself in a free city for a year, his previous Lord's claim of lordship over him is extinguished. That system gave western and central europe the potential to embrace industrialization much quicker than other places like Russian, Chinese and Ottoman empires.

Reality says

Hilary...became an Ayer acolyte by the time of law school and afterwards.

WTF? Citation please, and check spelling too.

Once again, the percentage of slave population went from 18% in 1790 to less than 13% in 1860. That tells you the relative significance of slavery was declining rapidly while population exploded in the US in the first 70 years.

Your silly argument overlooking relative terms is as dumb as claiming that minimum wage at $7.50/hour today is 12 times as high as Henry Ford's $5/day offer, which was more than double the average worker back then, therefore today's minimum wage worker making 24x the average worker making back then must be super rich now!

Alinsky, not Ayer. A lot of the typos in my post are due to the autocorrection of the phone.

Reality says

Alinsky....

was neither a communist nor a terrorist, and was never involved with the Weather Underground.

Reality says

You can not argue against the simple math that slave population declined from 18% of US population in 1790 to less than 13% in 1860.

I already did. You just didn't understand it. Stick with simple math.

Reality says

Those four states were not at all representative of how slavery system was doing in the US or even in the South from 1790 to 1860.

You can not argue against the simple math that slave population declined from 18% of US population in 1790 to less than 13% in 1860.

Hmmm, criticizing a claim based on the fact there were only 4 Southern States out of the 13 Colonies in 1790, ignoring the fact they had the four had the overwhelming majority of slaves*, then comparing the total slave population to the entire US population in on the eve of the Civil War, ignoring that the Slave States had the lion's share of slaves when more than half the country had completely banned slavery.

That explains nothing, it's only a dodge, and a bad one at that.

* Because you'll say in 1790, Slavery was legal in many Northern States, which is true, but a distortion since slavery was never common at all in the North.

Reality says

Once again, your Soviet education is showing. No, small degree of street justice ( that is already taking place everyday in real life) administered at petty crimes is not the same thing as Jacobian organized mass slaughter of political opponents. Quantitative difference, when big enough, makes a qualitative difference.

The police being permitted to administer "Instant Justice" is also known as "State Terror", which is exactly the thing you rail about...

... when states with policies you don't like do it.

What dodge? Numbers are numbers. The plain fact was that slave population as percentage of total population declined from 18% to less than 30%!. And that's despite the federal fugitive slave return laws. If and when the line of freedom was moved from the Canadian border south to the Mason-Dixon Line, escape for slaves would become much easier, and the slave population as percentage of total population would drop even more dramatically . . . All without a devastating war that turned the US into an empire.

Police has significant leeway in the exercising of police power. That is just reality on the ground, whether you or I like it or not. Many petty crimes do not rise to the level of court procedings; likewise many minor police abuses do not rise to the level of formal prosecution against the specific officers either. It's a numbers game, just like most minor offenses even if prosecuted result in a plea bargain that has little to do with what the accused actually did, and both the prosecutor and the defense know it. That's just reality on the ground.

None of that has anything to do with state terror. If the crime ( whether by criminal or uniformed criminal) rises to high enough of a level, lawsuits will be fought over. As simple as that.

I heard a solution on the Police abuse that sounded quite good, any civil lawsuits should be paid for by the police pension fund, i.e. no taxpayer money. Of course getting something like that passed...

Reality says

What dodge? Numbers are numbers. The plain fact was that slave population as percentage of total population declined from 18% to less than 30%!.

The plain fact is the number of slaves increased every year until the civil war. Numbers are numbers. The fact the country grew faster is meaningless. Stick to simple math otherwise your head will explode.

Reality says

scape for slaves would become much easier, and the slave population as percentage of total population would drop even more dramatically

You have been taking math lesson from cic. So how many years at the 200 per year average number of escapes to the north would it take for all the slaves to escape? Actually it's a trick question since the number of slaves were increasing far more per year than the number of escapes. Being a concerned kind of person I really didn't want your head to explode if you actually tried to figure it out.

By your logic, since minimum wage at $7.5/hr now, which is 12 times what Henry Ford offered his workers at $5/day, which itself was about double the going rate for workers at the time. That is, minimum wage now is 24 times the average worker income back then, therefore minimum wage workers today must be super rich by your logic!

You have to normalize the numbers against the rising tide in long term statistics where massive population explosion or inflation was taking place. When normalized against the population explosion in the background (infant mortality and childhood mortality declining rapidly due to trade and living atandards improving), the slave population as percentage of the total population declined from 18% to less than13%.