Should government policies be decided by referendum?

[dps]

Uh, the reason wealthy whites liked slavery is that slaves as workers are cheaper than paying wages at all. 

How can a free whilte worker compete in ecomomic terms with a slave?

No room, board, guards, or social pressure necessary.

Slaves are still cheaper. Historically, plantations did not rely on employing guards, but on externalizing that cost - contracting out to slave-catchers. Plantations employed "drivers" essentially to keep an eye (and whip) on the slaves to ensure that they worked, but what kept them imprisioned was the sheer hopelessness of resistance - and certainty of being caught if they ran (in spite of that, some did run, making it all the way to Canada).

Room and board generally was provided by the slaves, who were expected, in their copious spare time, to make their own shacks and grow their own food.

In fact, one of the complaints about how harsh slavery conditions were in the new cotton plantations of the deep south was:

Slaves were driven much harder than when they had been in growing tobacco or wheat back east. Slaves had less time and opportunity to improve the quality of their lives by raising their own livestock or tending vegetable gardens, for either their own consumption or trade, as they could in the east.

The result was not that the owners were put to the expense of feeding them, but that the owners worked them to an early death through malnutrition:

The death rate was so high that, in the first few years of hewing a plantation out of the wilderness, some planters preferred whenever possible to use rented slaves rather than their own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#High_demand_and_smuggling

If slavery did not "pay", people would not have used it.

People "thought" that it paid.  In the long run, it was economically ruinious (though more at the macro level, rather than for individual slave-owners).

[viper37]

If slavery did not "pay", people would not have used it.

You are forgetting one important variable: resistance to change.
When you do things in a certain way for a long time, and everyone else around you is convinced there are no other way, and of course the few examples of people paying their workers are either very poor plantation owners or total failures, you get convinced your way is the right way, and no amount of rationality will convince you otherwise.

Industrialisation made things better for the average people, better than the serf system in Europe, better than being in a slave. Yet, there was resistance.

In the 80s, where plants started to robotize, there was a lot of resistance to that, people said we were creating unemployment with "robots".

Yet, would we turn back the clock?

I figure it must have been the same with slavery.

[Razgovory]

People "thought" that it paid.  In the long run, it was economically ruinious (though more at the macro level, rather than for individual slave-owners).

What are you a communist now?  Enlightened self-interest isn't interested in the macro level.

[Razgovory]

If slavery did not "pay", people would not have used it.

You are forgetting one important variable: resistance to change.
When you do things in a certain way for a long time, and everyone else around you is convinced there are no other way, and of course the few examples of people paying their workers are either very poor plantation owners or total failures, you get convinced your way is the right way, and no amount of rationality will convince you otherwise.

Industrialisation made things better for the average people, better than the serf system in Europe, better than being in a slave. Yet, there was resistance.

In the 80s, where plants started to robotize, there was a lot of resistance to that, people said we were creating unemployment with "robots".

Yet, would we turn back the clock?

I figure it must have been the same with slavery.

It was not.  In fact I seem to recall studies done comparing slavery with the later sharecropping models used in the South.  Slavery was much more profitable.  Slavery is a bit like outsourcing labor.  It's less efficient, but the low cost of labor make it more profitable.  If it was legal, people would be using slaves today.  Hell, in some countries, they do.

[Razgovory]

As far as race riots go, it generally wasn't people opposed to the Civil Rights Act that were rioting.

Oh they did plenty of rioting.  Also bombing, shooting, lynching and murder.  Look at the anti-busing riots they had.

[Scipio]

Rights should not be determined by government policies.  If you have a theory of rights where your rights are dependent on your government, you have a real problem.

Additionally, rights should not be determined by referenda, because rights by definition offer protections not otherwise recognized by law.

RE: slavery.  Economic slavery is right now, due to low food cost and general sanitation, more profitable than it ever has been.  Kevin Bales, the world's foremost leading expert, has an excellent book out there.  Even if he is a lefty frootloop that doesn't believe in the right of self-defense (caveat: we had that argument when we were both extraordinarily drunk, so I may be misremembering, but I do recall that he dismissed the idea that legally excusing the murder of slaveowners by their slaves was an appropriate resolution of the problem).

[Admiral Yi]

I sort of like the type of referendii that are proposed by governments around the world.  As Beeb mentioned, it's a nice clear-cut way of establishing a mandate for a certain policy.  Not that much different from a parliamentary government dissolving and calling an election on a single issue.

What has not worked at all in practice is the citizen-initiated process such as they have in California, as Joan mentioned.

[Sheilbh]

No.  This is one of the rare things I agree with Maggie on.  Referendums and plebiscites are the tools of autocrats. 

The only exception I can think of is the constitution of a state - major changes to borders or independence and like should reflect the popular will.

[crazy canuck]

If slavery did not "pay", people would not have used it.

It depends which time period you are speaking about.  Initially indentured workers were cheaper.  Land was plentiful and the small amount of land they would be given after their contract ended was inexpensive.  But as time went on and those new land owners also began to compete for both labour and market share it become less economical.  Add to that increasing economic prospects back in Europe and the price for an indentured worker become less attractive.

Historian Robert Brugger has noted that the price of an indentured servant hovered around ten to twelve English pounds, while a healthy adult male African could be purchased from slavers for twenty-three pounds in 1674.  Four years of labor from an indentured worker did cost less initially, but lifetime forced labor proved to be a cheaper proposition for the owner in the long run.

http://www.stmaryscity.org/history/Servants%20&%20Slaves.html

[Valmy]

People "thought" that it paid.  In the long run, it was economically ruinious (though more at the macro level, rather than for individual slave-owners).

I don't know man.  Specific circumstances before the American Civil War meant it paid like hell.  The cost of Southern cash crops like Tobacco and Cotton were extremely high, in fact Cotton was so high the need for cash to continue to buy it was a big factor in the Opium War IIRC.  I have a hard time imagining the share cropping system after the war being more profitable, in that system not only did you have to share the crop with your tennants but cotton prices were much lower due to competition from India and the huge depression that hit the world economy in the 1870s.  Before the Civil War boomtown conditions existed throughout much of the South, afterwards people were not exactly flocking southward to take advantage of the lucrative sharecropping opportunities.  Sharecropping was an important thing in the post Civil War South where there was little cash money, it made the economy continue to function.

When looking at the really impressive industrial production the South managed to achieve in the Civil War, basically starting from nothing, using slave labor sometimes I really think we dodged a bullet.  If people at the time had realized how amazing slavery could be in industrial production the grip of the institution would have been much tighter and much harder to get rid of.  It also makes me doubt the idea that it would have died a natural death anytime soon without emancipation.

But I guess you are refering to the phenomenon that slavery tended to slow technological innovation and so forth. 

[Valmy]

It was not.  In fact I seem to recall studies done comparing slavery with the later sharecropping models used in the South.  Slavery was much more profitable.  Slavery is a bit like outsourcing labor.  It's less efficient, but the low cost of labor make it more profitable.  If it was legal, people would be using slaves today.  Hell, in some countries, they do.

Yep.  There is a reason the institution has been around forever.  Unfortunately it works.

[Martinus]

Then why did gays just get the right to marry in Maine and Maryland a couple of weeks ago?

Ultimately I think these kind of societal changes are best done with the explicit approval of society, and not when imposed from upon high.  Slavery was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation, but the south resented it for generations and continued to treat blacks very, very badly.

The laws came first, which forced the change. Had it been left on its own, I can't imagine that it would ever have happened.

Yeah, it's a chicken and an egg situation. The problem with Barrister's approach is that it is all fine and dandy only if you completely disregard human lives and human tragedies that are involved in allowing the injustice to continue until the majority is against it.

[Martinus]

And to respond to the OP, I think in 99% of cases referendums, especially at a national/state level are a bad idea. They could work in a relatively small and homogenous community, where people have, largely, similar goals and interests, but this is unworkable in most modern democracies. The point of representative democracy is that representatives are paid for the job of understanding and passing laws, not to abdicate this obligation to voters who elected them.

[Josquius]

Referendums tend not to work. If they were a regular thing then only people who cared deeply about issues would come out to vote- all our referendums would be on ridiculous extremist ideas that only a few people care about....and some of them will pass because the "gun to the head no but I don't really give a shit" vote will be large.

[Valmy]

They could work in a relatively small and homogenous community, where people have, largely, similar goals and interests, but this is unworkable in most modern democracies.

Really?  That strikes me as the worst place to have them.  The few people people who do not fit that community would be hopeless.