Distind

Since the quoted doesn't get it.

Free market capitalism is an economic system, not a legal one. Without some limitations on capitalism slavery isn't even the worst of the potential evils.

There are no inherent rights granted by capitalism. Those rights have been granted by the legal system which constrains the economic system within it. Until relatively recently the legal and social systems of the US didn't consider certain races to be full citizens. A hundred years before that they didn't consider them people. In both cases capitalism plowed merrily along without a concern over what or who was being bought and sold.

That said, I can make the similar points about other systems, but capitalism incentivizes the open trade in human bodies more than most others I can think of off the top of my head.

Mathius_dragoon

It's like deja vu all over again!

creativerealms

As I said before an important element to slavery is to dehumanize a group. To not treat them as people. Once that is done then using Africans or any other group as slaves is no more incomparable with capitalism then buying and selling animals is.

When someone follows a believe that says something like "everyone who does not believe in God is not truly alive." then it is very easy to dehumanize them, treat them as less human then you are and treat them as animals.

A truly horrible process.

I stand by my comments.

Quote me all you want, you haven't proven anything wrong, all you've shown is your bias against capitalism.

@Distind

"Since the quoted doesn't get it.

Free market capitalism is an economic system, not a legal one."

It's both. (If you don't have a legal system you have anarchy where NOTHING is off the table provided one has enough force to enact his will in practice.)

"Without some limitations on capitalism slavery isn't even the worst of the potential evils."

The argument that your commie friend is making is that capitalism is the MOST compatible with slavery.

I proved him wrong: absolute monarchy is much more compatible and history proves it. Slavery was rampant when monarchs with complete power ruled and it almost died out when societies become more capitalist (or when monarchs were basically reduced to figure heads with democratic oversight if they weren't completely done away with).

Secondly, no it's not because theft and fraud are technically off-limits in a free market system. The system can face human corruption, sure, but a capitalist system that permits slavery has internal contradictions and won't last long. People will revolt.

Slavery is both theft of someone's labor and theft of an entire person. Please tell me how you can make such a blatantly false statement?

Your site is a joke and you're the fundie, pal. Fuck you.

@creativerealms

Seems like a fair analysis.

Claiming however that capitalism leads to slavery is batshit crazy. I've long said that the fundies are in charge of FSTDT.

What exactly is the difference between a person claiming that free market leads to slavery and a person claiming that free dating leads to rape (or is the dating system most compatible with rape)? ZERO.

I'd say the difference is that slavery thrived under the free market in various forms; from the whip to the company store. Go back and read the arguments slave owners made. They were heavily based on capitalism. The south argued that the north was trying to wreck their economy.

What stopped slavery? Social movements. Which in turn led to worker's rights.

Where as rape is statically higher in areas where free dating is discouraged. Comparing the two is apples and oranges all the way down.

breakerslion

Slaves are piss-poor units of consumption. The slave holder will provide the minimum necessary to keep them alive and productive. Capitalist economies require both production and consumption (demand) to make them thrive. Feudalism and slave-holding autocracies by contrast are more concerned with the accumulation of wealth at the top of the hierarchical pyramid than economic growth. War and plunder was always a viable alternative to taxation. Your argument, "Capitalism is the MOST compatible system with slavery" is invalid... unless you meant, "wage slavery," which is a different construct altogether.

PS: "Trade" includes the concept of barter. Simply agreeing on equivalent value (even in coin) and swapping, is not capitalism.

@#1925662

And once again, theft is not allowed under a capitalism system. Any kind of arrangement has to be voluntary. You cannot be forced to work for anyone. If you have coercion or fraud, you don't have capitalism, you have maybe some corrupted version of it or maybe you just have anarchy.

The slave owner can try to argue for slavery from a capitalist point of view, but his argument is invalid.

Like if he can kidnap someone and steal his labor, then what's stopping others form doing the same to him? It's not enough to argue that "the economy will suffer", if that wealth was gained illegitimately, you have to stand on principle as well. Otherwise mob bosses could use the same argument to maintain their multi-billion dollar criminal empire.


Anyway it's a really stupid argument and Zachski still have yet to explain why slavery was rampant before capitalism and why it's almost unheard of today even with this flawed version of capitalism (which more closely resembles corporatism really).

The Mimic Octopus

#1925668

So you do admit that there must be at least some moral restrictions to the acquisition of wealth? You Communist!

"So you do admit that there must be at least some moral restrictions to the acquisition of wealth? You Communist! "

They're not moral restrictions outside the system, they're built into the system.

A prohibition on prostitution would be an outside moral restriction to capitalism. (Not one I agree with by the way.)

A prohibition on coercion and fraud is part of the system. If you don't have that, all you have is cut-throat anarchy.

It is cute that People still believe that self Regulation of capitalism works. IT never has because human nature works against it. It only works on paper.

Anon-e-moose

@Nameless Coward

"you haven't proven anything wrong, all you've shown is your bias against capitalism"

The wealthy William Wilberforce. Like Thomas Jefferson - and so many of the other Founding Fathers - he could have profited even more from being involved in the slave trade. It was the thing to do in those days. Why shouldn't he?

So why then, did this local hero use his wealth-based influence and his position of greater power as a politician in the cause of the abolition of slavery?

Trading other human beings as commodities: the ultimate in Capitalism. And it's worst aspect. What William Wilberforce did was exert the ultimate in control over it.

Stalinist Russia. Maoist China. Kimist North Korea. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic Norway: the only country to have emerged from the Dumbya-created worldwide recession with economy unscathed. And the likes of Dumbya became the bitch of China, who beat them at their own Capitalism game.

Norway's state-controlled economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Norway

'The incidence of reported rape in Norway for 2010 is given as ca. 35 out of 100,000'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Statistics

'According to United States Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, there were overall 173,610 victims of rape or sexual assault, or 0.1% of the US population 12 or older in 2013'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States

'A 1997 study on the non-institutionalized, non-military population by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, which defines rape as forced penetration by the offender, found that 91% of reported rape victims are female'

As per Dumbya and that 'Goddamn Piece of Paper', your boyfriend Donald Fart wants total control over US legislation. That business re. Mexicans & that 'Wall':

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431933/donald-trump-foreign-workers-american-workers-arent-good-enough

'Last year, the Washington Post reported that Trump is using undocumented workers in the construction work on his much-feted project to convert Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office Pavilion into a luxury hotel. “Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally,” the Post’s Antonio Olivo wrote in July'

If Wiggy wants that 'Wall', he can not only pay for it's construction himself, he can build it himself. If he thinks Capitalism is such a great thing.

He certainly relies on those illegal 'slaves'.

But then, he had no problem with using illegals from Poland in the construction of his penis extension in New York.

Oh, illegal immigration is a bad thing; they being used as slave labour, taking away jobs from white US-born people. Except when it suits his own bank balance.

No slaves in the Social Democratic Norway.

@1925691

There are issues with trying to implement capitalism, but slavery is hardly one of them. If what comrade Zachski says is true then you should:

1. find slavery rampant in the capitalist west (you don't, it hasn't existed in the US in 150 years and even before that it was never legal in every single state)
2. find slavery as a rarity before capitalism (it was actually rampant in history)
3. explain why property rights apply to one group of people but not to another, you cannot claim to be a capitalist and insist your right to property is sacred while at the same time denying it to other people

lofgren

Terms are not adequately defined enough to have a debate that has any hope of accomplishing anything except making both of the arguers flush with self-righteous indignation at the moral opprobrium of their opponent. Classic fundie.