Why Objectivism is Not An American Philosophy

[BaalChatzaf]

On 8/1/2017 at 0:25 PM, Marcus said:

Slavery is an evil institution that should have never occurred in this country. But it did tragically. Slavery aside, the constitution is the foundation on which the unity and prosperity of America is built. The "people" get in the way half of the time. The other half doesn't care.

 

How else would you get the cotton  harvested and deseeded in an era prior to the machinery for harvesting cotton.  The first practical cotton harvester came on the market  about  1935.  Cotton is a very tough plant to reap and process, but it is one the premier sources of thread to make cloth.    If paid labor were used, cotton would have been as expensive as silk.  As things were it was the Cotton Gin that made cotton growing into the great industry it became and it was the spinning machines up North (like in Lowell MA.)  that permitted cotton fiber to be made into cloth inexpensively.  It turned out the Northern Capitalists were as responsible for the continuation of slavery as were Southern planters. 

Down in the Land of the Boll Weevil, where the laws are medieval,  that's where I want to be.....

[Brant Gaede]

10 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

How else would you get the cotton  harvested and deseeded in an era prior to the machinery for harvesting cotton.  The first practical cotton harvester came on the market  about  1935.  Cotton is a very tough plant to reap and process, but it is one the premier sources of thread to make cloth.    If paid labor were used, cotton would have been as expensive as silk.  As things were it was the Cotton Gin that made cotton growing into the great industry it became and it was the spinning machines up North (like in Lowell MA.)  that permitted cotton fiber to be made into cloth inexpensively.  It turned out the Northern Capitalists were as responsible for the continuation of slavery as were Southern planters. 

Down in the Land of the Boll Weevil, where the laws are medieval,  that's where I want to be.....

Well, the gin came along over a hundred years before the harvester. Why did it take so long to invent a harvester? The presence of cheap labor? A lot of the (black) labor departed for the north to work in factories in the last century. Is that the reason--running short of labor?

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Well, the gin came along over a hundred years before the harvester. Why did it take so long to invent a harvester? The presence of cheap labor? A lot of the (black) labor departed for the north to work in factories in the last century. Is that the reason--running short of labor?

--Brant

Right.  But cotton still had to be picked by hand.  Where are the profits greater?  When you have slaves to pick the cotton or when you pay a living wage to people to pick the cotton. Either choice has some costs but slave labor is cheaper. And that is why the U.S. Constitution was constructed and not only permitted slaves  but counted as a slave as 3/5 of a person to be counted for representation in the House of Representatives.  

[Brant Gaede]

18 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Right.  But cotton still had to be picked by hand.  Where are the profits greater?  When you have slaves to pick the cotton or when you pay a living wage to people to pick the cotton. Either choice has some costs but slave labor is cheaper. And that is why the U.S. Constitution was constructed and not only permitted slaves  but counted as a slave as 3/5 of a person to be counted for representation in the House of Representatives.  

The Constitution was the way to have a powerful and united country, though it would have to grow into that and did. Virginia would have to be part of that, also considering who lived there: Washington, Jefferson, Madison and others. This set up the country for the "Civil War" that followed. The radicalism of the Declaration of Independence was sublimated by this major impulse of being able to withstand foreign encroachments and a common law codified plus freedom of interstate commerce. I'm afraid the Constitution was inevitable and desirable for its time, but not Lincoln's War. America didn't have to butcher itself up.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

On 8/17/2017 at 1:28 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

It turned out the Northern Capitalists were as responsible for the continuation of slavery as were Southern planters.

Nope, primary cause of the Civil War was tariffs on foreign manufactured goods to protect Northern manufactures. England responded with tariff on cotton. South Carolina seceded when higher U.S. tariffs were mooted and the South lost control of the House of Representatives. When he ran for president, Lincoln said he had no legal authority to free the slaves, it would be unconstitutional. He planned to deport them to Liberia, and Congress appropriated $600,000 ($15 million today) to ship 100,000 free Northern blacks back to Africa.

Quote

Lincoln met with a black delegation at the White House on Aug. 14, 1862, and made the case for colonization. It was widely considered a failure. Lincoln offended his visitors, and others who read the after-the-fact newspaper coverage, by saying such things as, "It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated" and that for blacks to refuse to colonize elsewhere would be "extremely selfish." Undeterred, Lincoln continued to tout colonization when addressing Congress in December 1862 and asked lawmakers to offer funding. "I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization," he said.

[politifact.com]

Could have saved everybody a lot of grief. 600,000 dead whites, 5 x GNP of 1860, income tax, paper money, welfare dependency, ruination of Detroit, endless gang wars.

New York Mayor Fernando Wood was opposed to war: "Let the erring sisters [slave-holding South] go in peace!"

 

 

[Brant Gaede]

The primary cause of the "Civil War" was the refusal of Lincoln to let South Carolina go.

Of course, if he had some more states would have eventually gone. I think Virginia would have stayed.

The primary cause--stated differently--was the worship of Federal power centered in one place: Washington DC. Or, the seen necessity of the preservation of the Union.

It was the triumph in blood of the Constitution. It sweep everything before it.

Force rules. Then you may add the ideas, if you can, to explain and control it somewhat.

It's not Trump's ideas so much. It's his anti-status quo force expressed as such. That's the frequent sometimes irrational bombast. It's a true civil war. It's bombs away!

--Brant

IT'S WAR!!

[Peter]

8 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Nope, primary cause of the Civil War was tariffs on foreign manufactured goods to protect Northern manufactures. England responded with tariff on cotton. South Carolina seceded when higher U.S. tariffs were mooted and the South lost control of the House of Representatives. When he ran for president, Lincoln said he had no legal authority to free the slaves, it would be unconstitutional. He planned to deport them to Liberia, and Congress appropriated $600,000 ($15 million today) to ship 100,000 free Northern blacks back to Africa.

Could have saved everybody a lot of grief. 600,000 dead whites, 5 x GNP of 1860, income tax, paper money, welfare dependency, ruination of Detroit, endless gang wars.

New York Mayor Fernando Wood was opposed to war: "Let the erring sisters [slave-holding South] go in peace!"

 

 

That video is a typical weekend in Baltimore. I was watching a PBS detective show set in the Turks and Caicos Islands last night and the largest, semi indigenous island population consisted of blacks. The Whites were the comparatively rich “recent settlers.” I wonder what the black population in the Caribbean area and America would be if slavery had stopped when our Constitution was created? Maybe one hundredth of what it is today?

We blocked groups of people from immigrating throughout our history, but slavery thwarted the effort to bring people into America with European heritage, the ability to assimilate, and the ability to “add something” to our country, and that was a bad thing for America. Though I have no doubt the number of blacks that would have been slaughtered in Africa by Africans, was less that it could have been. So, population wise, blacks lucked out by being slaves. (Semi-Joke.) Now they slaughter each other here, but “the law” keeps their natural propensity to murder each other down. I think this judgement is not racist. Rather it is observational, provable, scientific, and “admitted to” by intelligent black people. And in no way, seeking an unfair privilege for Whites.

Peter

[Wolf DeVoon]

9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

It's not Trump's ideas so much. It's his anti-status quo force expressed as such. That's the frequent sometimes irrational bombast. It's a true civil war. It's bombs away!

--Brant

IT'S WAR!!

Uh, it seems evident to me that Dems and community organizers are the ones throwing bombs, clamoring for war on a fairly ordinary President.

Republicans are crumbling. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-charlottesville-republicans-remain-stymied-over-what-to-do-about-trump/2017/08/19/774bddd4-81d4-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html

[Samson Corwell]

On 8/1/2017 at 1:08 AM, Marcus said:

 

Going by that logic I guess communist China (a growing superpower) also qualifies as "close to Objectivism"?

Most of the growth in the American economy occurred during its freest period (1800's) which further underlies my point. America is today sailing off of the past. America today is technologically stagnant, with low GDP growth rates, high taxes, and endless state interventions and programs.

Countries have cultures and individuals follow cultural rules and ideas. We don't live in a cultural vacuum devoid of the influence of others. Observing simple trends in society you can get a general sense of what ideas people do or don't accept. It's quite clear that Objectivism is not well liked or accepted within the American ideascape.

The people of America are nowhere near close to Objectivism. The constitution and early founding documents which we rely upon to run our society is. That is the difference and the only reason America is still a relatively wealthy, functioning country. 

 

I'd dispute the notion we were freest in the 1800s.