In article <360da651.163164056 at news.blarg.net> warrl at blarg.net writes:
Rather than spam the net, I've sent the follow-ups to r.a.sf.s only.
Someone said
>>Slaves were mostly used in labor-intensive cash crops.
In the Americas that is.
He also said
>>Cotton is the
>>obvious one, but there's plenty of others.
Sugar was by far and away the most important slave crop.
>The end of slavery begins with the invention of an ox-yoke (or the
>equivalent for whatever the available non-human beast of burden is).
Then it took a hell of a long time to come about. As the ox-yoke is
found in Han dynasty China and the last forms of slavery were only
abolished in Hong Kong in the 1970s.
>However, it sometimes takes a long time for the end of slavery to
>finish.
2000 years or so. Hell, that's nothing.
>The reason the ox-yoke marks the beginning of the end of slavery is
>because without this invention, the load-pulling ability of a beast of
>burden (in relation to the cost of its food) is the same as that of a
>slave. Any greater load tends to choke the beast.
Which has what to do with the price of tea in China? Even if it is
true. This sort of historical determinancy is silly imo.
>All of a sudden, the use of humans as beasts of burden is horribly
>inefficient.
Good reason not to use them that way then.
>And every other use of slaves that is economically
>productive enough to support a slaveholding culture, draws on the
>slaves' brains.
Bollocks. Try cutting sugar. Try sex. Try pretty much whatever
you like that does not involve pulling carts.
>Slaves aren't stupid - unless being stupid is the
>smart thing for them to do. And slaves who think are extremely
>dangerous.
Which is rubbish too. Slaves who can think are valuable and even
in the Old South efforts were put into training slaves to increase
their value (something laws in the South were framed to prevent).
See Thomas Sowell's _Minorities and Markets_
Joseph
--
Reason Why I'm Never Going to Get an Academic Job Number Three:
"[Monsanto] said that they had carried out 'extensive safety
assessments of new biotech crops' including tests using rats
that have results published in journals" (http://news.bbc.co.uk)