Ep. 28 Economics of slavery...Did slavery make the west rich? Is the 1619 project/Chomsky correct?

The Mindcrime liberty show discusses arguments about the economics in favor and against slavery. If you take the 1619 arguments seriously, as well as some Third Worldist and Chomskyite ones, the “West” is primarily rich thanks to this institution if one really gets to the bottom of their arguments. We think this argument has a ton of holes in it and lots of special pleading definition aside.

We try to at first define slavery noting that the institution is not merely a white on black scenario: Christians were enslaved by the Romans and the Ottomans enslaved Europeans. It’s also worth pointing out that Africans local were a key cog in the slave trade itself and it was the British who ended it. That aside, why is it that even though the Ottomans, the Chinese, the Russian tsar, as well as many Africans and South Americans practiced a form of slavery did not industrialize or are comparatively less rich? Why was the American South less industrialized then the American North? Why was the comparatively freer western Europe ahead of the less free tsarist system of serfdom in Russia? These are the cases that must be answered by the Chomskyites, the third world Carsonites, as well as the 1619 project people.

We at the Mindcrime liberty show do hold there is no universal argument in favor of slavery as profitable. It may be profitable for the slave holder to hold slaves but it’s not profitable for the slaves themselves. The West got rich materially thanks to the Nuclear family, some form of markets or capitalism (depending on ones parlance and in spite of the crony capitalism not because of), IQ, Christianity, and the demystification of the environment. Slavery largely harmed the West on balance (hence its not in the long run economically effective) and its worth pointing out the only two forms of “slavery” today either occur in failed states like post Hillary Clinton and Nobel prize winning Barack Obama intervention Libya or its merely taxation by progressive governments, which as Robert Nozick would point out almost no one thinks the former is legitimate (buying and selling slaves) but still thinks the latter is. We do touch on the idea that taxation might be slavery or that living in East Germany might be a form of slavery but recognize there is a sliding scale.