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Slavery - Renting Vs. Owning labour (self.badeconomics)

CaptainBloodloss が 投稿

A long time ago I heard someone recite to me what I thought was a powerful argument for slavery (if there every was one). I don't remember what the source of this thesis is, but I believe it came from a slave owner somewhere in southern US.

The slave owner basically argues this: You Northerners... you simply rent your labour (through wages); you therefore have little incentive to care for your workers. Where-as we Southerners... we own our labour, and because we own them we take better care for our workers. As a result, our workers are better off.

Thoughts?

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[–]alexhoyerhoard plywood now for our ANCAP overlords 7ポイント8ポイント  (1子コメント)

Couple of things, first you'll need an R1 soon to pass the Great Wall of Wumbo. Second, this isn't really the right place to post this question, I would try the stickied post at the the top of the sub. Lastly, wrt to your question, the empirical evidence of the horrific conditions that accompanied slavery in the US are well documented. While more frequently practiced in South America, it was still common to work a slave to death and replace him/her, as replacement costs were lower than upkeep. As it turns out, owning labor eliminates the competive labor market forces that actually lead to improvements in the quality of life for workers. The argument here depends on the idea that worker productivity can only be maximized if laborers are treated well. Turns out the threat of punishment/death also works to extract productivity, to the detriment of slaves. That threat isn't present in competitive labor markets.

[–]CaptainBloodloss[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks for the RI heads up. And you're right, this would have been better in the stickied post. And thank you for your response to my question.

[–]venuswasaflytrap 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Historical evidence doesn't lend credence to this theory. Slaves were treated terribly - much worse than comparable paid labourers at the time. So we know the argument is not true - but that's just badhistory rather than bad economics

Relevant thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3886v6/slaves_werent_treated_that_bad_guys/

I'm sure you could contrive an economic argument for why this isn't true, but the evidence is pretty clear that it's not.

[–]aquaknox 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

I mean, the main difference between slavery and working for a wage is voluntaryism. Maybe if the slaves had sold themselves into slavery there could be comparison, but slavery is generally exploitative, i.e. people are coerced into becoming slaves therefore they can be attained at a discount from their captor compared to what they would maybe be willing to sell themselves for.

[–]jmo10 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Fogel and Engerman, two economists (the former won the Nobel Memorial Prize), argued that slaves had just as high of a living standard as free laborers in the North.

They were wrong and the one who provided, I'd say, the best evidence on their living standards was economist Richard Steckel. He was the first to use anthropometric data, height (a consumption and expenditure measurement with significant limits), to reflect living standards that's still used by others.

Data showed that male slaves were physically stunted and shorter than whites of the same age up until they were 10 years-old. Then there was a stage of rapid catch-up growth where soon after their heights were roughly the same as whites.

Slave-owners wanted to profit maximize just like other firms -- a condition for profit maximization is cost minimization. They were feeding their slaves gruel for the the first 10 years of their life. Gruel was cheap and it wasn't nutritious so the children had no energy to run around and cause a mess (less people and time needed to watch them). When they turned 10, they were old enough to work out in the fields so they started feeding them meat and other nutritious food so the slaves could be more productive workers.

And this malnourishment is seen in descriptions of slave children having pot bellies and shiny skin (symptoms of protein deficiency). While physically they were able to catch-up (because they were finally eating more nutritious food), mentally, they were stunted for life. Your brain, from an early age, needs nutrients to become fully developed.

So no, they weren't better off. The slaves were damaged for life.

[–]LordBufo 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

They were wrong on standard of living but their motivation was not to justify slavery and they had other important findings: slavery was a profitable system, slave plantations were more efficient than small free farms, and slavery wasn't on it's way out before the war.

The book was intended to do more than just straighten out the traditional interpretation of the economics of slavery. It aimed to “strike down the view that black Americans were without culture, without achievement, and without development for their first two hundred and fifty years on American soil"

As one might expect, two of the propositions that were not very controversial in 1974 — those having to do with the profitability and viability of slavery — were still uncontroversial and agreed to by nearly 100 percent of both economists and historians. More surprising is that most economists and historians accept Fogel and Engerman’s proposition that slave agriculture was efficient compared with free labor. Some of those who agreed did so with unspecified provisos, but only 28 percent of economists and 35 percent of historians disagreed. Their proposition about the material standard of living has not fared as well,percent of historians and 42 percent of economists disagreed with the proposition that the material condition of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers..

[–]CaptainBloodloss[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

RI: I've posted this in badeconomics because the argument, at least to me, seemed interesting, but silly. I wanted to see if there is any economic empirical evidence to support the claim that by owning slaves there could be instances where-by this is beneficial to labour.