Who is to blame for slavery ? The answer is anyone involved in the development and maintenance of the supply chain. There is no sliding scale of blame here, either. Once you participate in something like this you are just as guilty as anyone else. Take away the market and you have no need for the slaves. Take away any step in the procurement process and the supply chain falters unless you have already established a population of slaves which you are breeding locally. If I had to say which was the most egregious of all of the crimes listed above, that would be it - establishing a population you use as breeding stock for slaves permanently. Otherwise, all of these are equally heinous crimes against humanity.
Ultimately, I think the blame, if there is any specific one, is not any of those you listed, but rather the decision of the framers of the Constitution to allow slavery, albeit with restrictions. They made the decision as a compromise because without it, the Southern states would not have bought into the Union. There would have been two unions fighting each other, and indeed that happened some 65 years later.
How to covercome bias. The language and opening framing highlight the culpability of African wars. Bias continues when agency is implied rather than stated due to the elision of subject noun phrases. Number 4 is "Sell to Europeans." It could be rephrased as "Europeans purchase". Number 5 could be rewritten as "Europeans and Americans move slaves to the US." Instead of number 5, "US Farmers buy" it could be "US slave traders buy and sell to farmers."
What has been elided here:
Massive maritime infrastructure came into play due to prior European expertise with overseas mercantilism and capitalist markets. This knowledge base revved into high gear due to the astounding profits that were available in slave trading. This machinery and expertise are tucked out-of-sight due to the strategic language used in Hanson's poll.
I have often heard about Civil-War era farmers, "they shoulda picked their own damned cotton!" In that alternative universe, the black Africans enslaved by other black Africans could have remained in what apparently otherwise would have been an ethnically-pure paradise and the USA would not still be dealing with The Original Sin. But in this current universe, I did so much appreciate all the racial healing of the Obama years.
I would love to see some data on the unusualness of "let slaves live long, and have kids". The prototypical slavery in minds (even if not in history), the Greco-Roman one, was like that; serfdoms across Europe (many of which were basically glorified slaveries) were like that; and I am pretty sure Chinese slavery was familial as well.
Actually, there are even two questions here:
1. Was it even really unusual for slavery _writ large_?
2. Even if it was, was it unusual _for European heritage_?
Also, both "enslaving is worse than killing" and "being enslaved is better than being killed" can be true, if one considers that enslaving implies keeping enslaved and so is an _extended_ moral decision.
I imagine this is a snarky reply and not an actual advice. Because, uh, I like LLMs for what they are, but I understand their flaws enough to know this is not really an LLM-reliable kind of request.
Robin, Thanks for introducing this framework to sharpen discussion when you visited my seminar about "America & _The Wealth of Nations_," and for then taking a poll at X. I expected more respondents to select Step 1 (wars of enslavement among African groups). Food for thought.
Who is to blame for slavery ? The answer is anyone involved in the development and maintenance of the supply chain. There is no sliding scale of blame here, either. Once you participate in something like this you are just as guilty as anyone else. Take away the market and you have no need for the slaves. Take away any step in the procurement process and the supply chain falters unless you have already established a population of slaves which you are breeding locally. If I had to say which was the most egregious of all of the crimes listed above, that would be it - establishing a population you use as breeding stock for slaves permanently. Otherwise, all of these are equally heinous crimes against humanity.
Ultimately, I think the blame, if there is any specific one, is not any of those you listed, but rather the decision of the framers of the Constitution to allow slavery, albeit with restrictions. They made the decision as a compromise because without it, the Southern states would not have bought into the Union. There would have been two unions fighting each other, and indeed that happened some 65 years later.
How to covercome bias. The language and opening framing highlight the culpability of African wars. Bias continues when agency is implied rather than stated due to the elision of subject noun phrases. Number 4 is "Sell to Europeans." It could be rephrased as "Europeans purchase". Number 5 could be rewritten as "Europeans and Americans move slaves to the US." Instead of number 5, "US Farmers buy" it could be "US slave traders buy and sell to farmers."
What has been elided here:
Massive maritime infrastructure came into play due to prior European expertise with overseas mercantilism and capitalist markets. This knowledge base revved into high gear due to the astounding profits that were available in slave trading. This machinery and expertise are tucked out-of-sight due to the strategic language used in Hanson's poll.
I have often heard about Civil-War era farmers, "they shoulda picked their own damned cotton!" In that alternative universe, the black Africans enslaved by other black Africans could have remained in what apparently otherwise would have been an ethnically-pure paradise and the USA would not still be dealing with The Original Sin. But in this current universe, I did so much appreciate all the racial healing of the Obama years.
I would love to see some data on the unusualness of "let slaves live long, and have kids". The prototypical slavery in minds (even if not in history), the Greco-Roman one, was like that; serfdoms across Europe (many of which were basically glorified slaveries) were like that; and I am pretty sure Chinese slavery was familial as well.
Actually, there are even two questions here:
1. Was it even really unusual for slavery _writ large_?
2. Even if it was, was it unusual _for European heritage_?
Also, both "enslaving is worse than killing" and "being enslaved is better than being killed" can be true, if one considers that enslaving implies keeping enslaved and so is an _extended_ moral decision.
"I would love to see some data" Ask a LLM.
I imagine this is a snarky reply and not an actual advice. Because, uh, I like LLMs for what they are, but I understand their flaws enough to know this is not really an LLM-reliable kind of request.
Robin, Thanks for introducing this framework to sharpen discussion when you visited my seminar about "America & _The Wealth of Nations_," and for then taking a poll at X. I expected more respondents to select Step 1 (wars of enslavement among African groups). Food for thought.
Thank you for hosting me.