Globalisation

[viper37]

Except that the sharpest decline in the homicide rate is achieved by the end of the 16th century - not an especially shining moment of medical prowess.

The rest of your post is, paradoxically, a reiteration of technology as an independent force, and an economicist reading of it - which I am not getting into. We know where we stand on this topic anyway.

Hanging everyone who comitted a violent (or even not so violent) crime in society for 500 years likley culled some of the genes correllated with a tendency to committ impulsive violence from the population.

No, I side with Oex on this one.  Romans, Greeks, they all condemned urban violence pretty harshly, and after the fall of the Empire, when some semblance of authority was re-established locally, the local rulers never hesitated to employ violence against common criminals that got caught.

[PRC]

In what possible situations would one be looking at porn on their phone?

Phones these days are like mini-tablets with internet browsers, games, YouTube and all that social channel bullshit. You can even read your email on them.

[Zanza]

Is there anything you consider good that isn't social democracy and is there anything you consider bad that is?

Yes, a lot of things. Without the aforementioned technological advances and a capitalist economic order, social democracy has no wealth to redistribute and it is inherent in it that it stifles both innovation and entrepreneurship. It's a very fine balance between redistribution that makes society fairer and better and redistribution that is punitive, inefficient or anti-innovative.

Furthermore social democrats tend to favor other feel-good or nanny state policies that I do not support in many cases, either by treating different people too equal ignoring their differences or by outright trying to legislate a "better" society. Examples would be too much emphasis on non-productive immigration, all that modern gender stuff including women's quotas, opposition against free trade and technologies like gene modifications etc.

I am merely a supporter of the social state that createday institutions to alleviate some of the basic life risks from citizens through various insurances etc. and I think that strong collective labor rights are good.

[viper37]

The economy is based on industry, it cannot be described as being in opposition to industry when it is dependent on it. Especially not to the point it would result in a war. And the north was still overwhelmingly agricultural anyway, indeed the free soil platform was in service of agricultural interests not industrial ones.

Well, if you take it that way, then there is really one single economic activity in the whole world: industry.
Fishing?  It's for industries to transform the fishes.
Oil?  It's for the industries to transform it into gazoline and motor oil and plastic.
Lumber?  It's for the industries to make paper, construction wood and furnitures.

That's a little too broad to be practical.  That's akin to saying there's only one human species, so whatever political solutions makes sense for America is just as good for Sweden, France, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Yet supposedly having these supposedly vastly different economies was the real cause of the war? Marxist nonsense. Granted nobody here was saying that but I just had to get that off my chest

I never said they were the real cause of the war. Having different economies certainly was a cause.  Would the South have rebelled over States' rights if it didn't involved slavery?  A mass rebellion, with an organized army and overwhelming support from all classes (except the slaves, and the free blacks of the area, most likely, but not many Southern Whites seemed opposed to the war (yes, some fought for the North)) over trade tariffs imposed by the US Congress?

Slaves weren't useful for factories in the North. Had they been an economically viable alternative to the industrial labor used by the factories, the North would have still be trading slaves as it was in the 1600s.
Quebec had slaves, but never in numbers comparable to the Southern US states or the British&French sugar plantations in the Carribeans because there was no need for them here.  There was usually one crop per year and the fields weren't that large, so people usually banded together and made one field after another.  Richer people had slave servants though, as well as religious communities.  And there was identured servitude, but that's not cheptel slavery.  And defeated ennemy indian tribes were traded as slaves by allied indian tribes too.  I'm too lazy to search for their exact status compared to black slaves in the US at the same time, so I'll let Oex and his fantastic memory do it for me   (althoug I suspect he keeps a 3rd screen active with ready made links&references just for the purpose of impressing us )

So, again, I don't think it's just a question of morality that slavery tended to not appear or disapear from some areas and not others.  They had a better alternative, everything considered, they used it.  Capitalism is all about optimisation of resources.   To use a modern example, if a company requires many, many more hours of training and work for its employees to use a free software and a paid one, they'll take the paid option (MS Office at 100$/license/year) over the open source option (Libre Office totally free) nine times out of 10.

[Valmy]

And now we have solved Mass Effect greatest mystery.  Lawyers are the greatest evil of this universe, they are the ones pulling the strings behind the Collectors.

I knew it! They are just preparing to harvest us later!

[jimmy olsen]

there was a philosophical belief by certain Founding Fathers that American political evolution would eventually cast off slavery as an antiquated concept--but that shit went out the window with the following generation, the cotton gin and the admission of new states.

Yeah, Southern politicians started moving from defending slavery as a necessary evil to extolling it as a positive virtue sometime around the War of 1812.  By the mid-1840s, you couldn't find hardly any politician in the South who hadn't adopted the latter notion.

Started more around 1830s I think. Slavery was debated in the Virginia legislature in 1831-32

[jimmy olsen]

Hanging everyone who comitted a violent (or even not so violent) crime in society for 500 years likley culled some of the genes correllated with a tendency to committ impulsive violence from the population.

Whereas, clearly, harsh punishments were unknown before, and endemic warfare couldn't possibly provide an outlet for the vast amount of genetically designed monsters who roamed the countryside. Amazingly, this remarkable genetic selection manifested itself in a weirdly compact moment of time, a mere 50 years.

Terrible science AND terrible history.

The death penalty in Western Europe was very limited after the fall of the Roman Empire due to the collapse of state power, the rise in influence of Christian bishops and the belief in retalitory violence among the new Barbarian elites as a positive good. The Death penalty was mostly limited to treason, cowardice in battle, etc. Murder you could pay off via wergild. The death penalty only really started to come back in vogue around the 13th century IIRC.

[Valmy]

Started more around 1830s I think. Slavery was debated in the Virginia legislature in 1831-32

No I think dps has it right. Certainly the 1830s were pivotal but opening up the gulf states after the War of 1812 was a pretty important moment.

[Valmy]

Well, if you take it that way, then there is really one single economic activity in the whole world: industry.
Fishing?  It's for industries to transform the fishes.
Oil?  It's for the industries to transform it into gazoline and motor oil and plastic.
Lumber?  It's for the industries to make paper, construction wood and furnitures.

Not every economic activity then or now was to produce raw materials for factory production. That was the only client for Southern cotton. its price and viability was completely dependent on those factories and the planters and their business partners watched them closely to maximize their profits. Like any businessmen operating within an industrial economy.

That's a little too broad to be practical.  That's akin to saying there's only one human species, so whatever political solutions makes sense for America is just as good for Sweden, France, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

I don't think so. I think it is pretty specific.

I never said they were the real cause of the war.

Indeed. Nobody here said it. I just had to get that off my chest

Having different economies certainly was a cause.

The northern states had pretty dramatic economies from each other. The western states were pretty rural, New England was mostly based on shipping, etc...

Would the South have rebelled over States' rights if it didn't involved slavery?  A mass rebellion, with an organized army and overwhelming support from all classes (except the slaves, and the free blacks of the area, most likely, but not many Southern Whites seemed opposed to the war (yes, some fought for the North)) over trade tariffs imposed by the US Congress?

The tariff issue had already been won by the Democrats, since the South was not the only region of the US that was against the tariffs. The northern middlemen were not particularly happy about them. The tariffs only started to return when the southern states started seceding.

Slaves weren't useful for factories in the North. Had they been an economically viable alternative to the industrial labor used by the factories, the North would have still be trading slaves as it was in the 1600s.

Slaves are fantastic for factories. Virginia was able to achieve miracles during the war using slaves in their factories. And many other countries since have done so. But the north was hardly a giant industrial power in 1860, especially compared to Britain and sure as hell was not an industrial power back when most of the Northern States got rid of slavery.

Kind of glad they only discovered that right as slavery was ending.

[MadImmortalMan]

I come from a formerly industrial area that went to hell after the 80s. I managed to get out eventually, but the journey wasn't fun.

Me too, but the damage is considerable for the people who stayed.

I don't know what you did, but I fled to Texas.

The old coal mining towns of north England have nothing on the shitholiness that happened to my home town in Ohio. Today, the place survives on disability, narcotic prescriptions and the heroin trade.

[MadImmortalMan]

Obamaphone credits are an alternative currency. Not kidding.

[Tamas]

I think you guys were too romantic about hunting-gathering earlier.

In what way is that more comfortable or safe than agriculture? With agriculture you can stockpile, and predict. If you are a hunter-gatherer you are not less exposed to unpredictable natural forces, but more, much more.

[MadImmortalMan]

Wrong. You are exposed to risk, only more in the large events, and less in the small ones.

The h-g can scatter the flocks, but if the crops burn, you're done.

[Tamas]

Wrong. You are exposed to risk, only more in the large events, and less in the small ones.

The h-g can scatter the flocks, but if the crops burn, you're done.

At the most, this danger was/is to the excess population that's over the limit that can be supported by hunting and gathering - I am pretty sure the farmers supplemented their diet with hunting and gathering. I am quite sure they had done so as recently as 50 years ago - for variety and not for necessity of course, but still.

However, when you are a hunter-gatherer you never know if you will eat something the next day or not. Not an issue with agriculture.

Besides, there had to be a good reason why farming overtook h&g in all civilisations that ever discovered it. You can't seriously propose that in all cases it was forced upon by some leadership in an unwilling population for generations until they were unable to return to h&g. I also saw that Antony Hopkins movie with the gorillas, you know, and it was silly.

[grumbler]

Wrong. You are exposed to risk, only more in the large events, and less in the small ones.

The h-g can scatter the flocks, but if the crops burn, you're done.

Hunter-gatherers don't have flocks.