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'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

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Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#291

Post by rayiner »

jahaja wrote: post #287
bhupy wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That both slavery and Colonialism flourished under such an incentive structure should not be a surprise. But that's factually untrue, slavery held back the accumulation of capital. American agriculture became MORE profitable after slavery was abolished. Once the actual cost of manufacturing had to be factored in, planters were forced to find more productive crops to grow. That process led to: 1. the decimation of t…

That's outrageously ahistorical. The former slaves weren't suddenly "free" and unexploited in the US after the civil war. In many aspects they were still enslaved through various direct and indirect means. If you're interested in not just regurgitating propaganda you can read this book: "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II". Furthermore your entire premise…

His point is well established and and not controversial, except in Marxist and “new history of capitalism” circles: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html

The supposed “wealth” of the anti-bellum South is based on a rhetorical fallacy: that by categorizing human beings as “property” you could treat their long term earning power as an asset. But that’s now how economies work. We can label things whatever we want, but they are what they are. (For example, the entity that ultimately bears the economic burden of a tax in practice doesn’t depend on who the law nominally assigns to pay the tax.) Put differently, if you draw a box around the economy, you can’t increase the productive output of that box by imposing slavery. It might change the distribution of wealth within the box, it not for the economy as a whole. Economic theory says the productive capacity of the box will be maximized when labor is not coerced.

Almost all of the “slavery was economically efficient” notions come from a handful of scholars, who are historians and not economists: https://economicsdetective.com/2019/09/cotton-slavery-and-th...

The work is not only methodologically flawed, but depends on shifting definitions of “capitalism”: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3191210060650810...

A leading NHC scholar has refused to define what he means by “capitalism” preferring to let the term “float as a placeholder.”

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#292

Post by jahaja »

bhupy wrote: post #290
jahaja wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's outrageously ahistorical. The former slaves weren't suddenly "free" and unexploited in the US after the civil war. In many aspects they were still enslaved through various direct and indirect means. If you're interested in not just regurgitating propaganda you can read this book: "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II". Furthermore your entire premise…

> That's outrageously ahistorical First of all, there's nothing "ahistorical" about the simple fact that the South's economy was decimated after the abolition of slavery, and to this day the industry that utilized slavery the most continues to be weaker than elsewhere in the Union. That is your original allegation here: that slavery necessarily flourishes under a capitalist incentive structure. That's plainly untrue,…

What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves. In fact, it's important to establish how much the cost of labour even went up after all the manipulative methods to ensnare former slaves into a new servitude were applied?

Your entire reply are still ignoring that I'm not talking about what the best and most profitable "production method" turned out to be. You're applying the benefit of hindsight to prove that the former method was in-fact outside of the incentive structure of capitalism. That makes no sense. They are obviously not mutually-exclusive.

There's a lot of "correlation is not necessarily causation" points to explain in your argument too, but I don't want to be further ensnared in a "what was the most profitable" discussion since it's beyond the point. You can't cherry-pick the best outcome and dismiss all the other ones.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#293

Post by jahaja »

rayiner wrote: post #291
jahaja wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's outrageously ahistorical. The former slaves weren't suddenly "free" and unexploited in the US after the civil war. In many aspects they were still enslaved through various direct and indirect means. If you're interested in not just regurgitating propaganda you can read this book: "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II". Furthermore your entire premise…

His point is well established and and not controversial, except in Marxist and “new history of capitalism” circles: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html The supposed “wealth” of the anti-bellum South is based on a rhetorical fallacy: that by categorizing human beings as “property” you could treat their long term earning power as an asset. But that’s now how economies work. We can label things…

I have zero idea what the point of your post is except calling my reply "Marxist" then linking to right-wing blog posts to prove something?

It's still controversial even if you label the other side as Marxist.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#294

Post by bhupy »

jahaja wrote: post #292
bhupy wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's outrageously ahistorical First of all, there's nothing "ahistorical" about the simple fact that the South's economy was decimated after the abolition of slavery, and to this day the industry that utilized slavery the most continues to be weaker than elsewhere in the Union. That is your original allegation here: that slavery necessarily flourishes under a capitalist incentive structure. That's plainly untrue,…

What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves. In fact, it's important to establish how much the cost of labour even went up after all the manipulative methods to ensnare former slaves into a new servitude were applied? Your entire reply are still ignoring that I'm not talking about what the best and most profitable "production method" turned out to be. You…

> What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves

Yes, and what I am saying is that it has nothing to do with the central argument: that "slavery is capitalism" or "capitalism encourages slavery" or "slavery flourishes under a capitalist incentive structure" (there are N iterations of your argument, pick one and commit to it).

The fact that, after the abolition of slavery, the former slaves still continued to be exploited doesn't tell us much about the presence of a causal relationship between capitalism and slavery, because of course if the state sanctions slavery, you can't expect things to go back to normal by themselves without some state intervention in the opposite direction.

Further, your argument loses teeth for the following reasons:

1. We have the counterfactual in the North (successful wealth/capital accumulation + no slavery) that refute your central argument that you are yet to address. The North's capitalist economy grew more than the South even while having abolished slavery.

2. The fact that in the modern world, among the top 30 most capitalist countries in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...), only one has some form of slavery, the UAE. This refutes your central argument, and you are yet to address it.

3. The fact that in the modern world, the bottom 3 least capitalist countries in the world (same list), there are forced labor camps (North Korea) or decrees (Venezuela, Cuba). This doesn't directly refute your central argument, rather it shows that capitalism isn't a strict prerequisite for slavery. You are yet to address this.

4. The fact that agriculture became more profitable after the abolition of slavery is a direct refutation to your central argument that you are yet to address.

> Your entire reply are still ignoring that I'm not talking about what the best and most profitable "production method" turned out to be. You're applying the benefit of hindsight to prove that the former method was in-fact outside of the incentive structure of capitalism. That makes no sense. They are obviously not mutually-exclusive.

This is borderline word salad, but we are applying the benefit of hindsight to prove that slavery and capitalism are two orthogonal systems that are unrelated. Slavery has existed in socialist systems (gulags, labor camps) as well as capitalist systems (international slave trade). If using historical facts to make a point is considered "using the benefit of hindsight", then using the benefit of hindsight is a valid strategy...

> There's a lot of "correlation is not necessarily causation" points to explain in your argument too, but I don't want to be further ensnared in a "what was the most profitable" discussion since it's beyond the point. You can't cherry-pick the best outcome and dismiss all the other ones.

You need to specify where the cherry picking is happening, because by and large the trend is universal. You also can't just hand-wave a correlation/causation argument just because you're unable to refute it.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#295

Post by jahaja »

bhupy wrote: post #294
jahaja wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves. In fact, it's important to establish how much the cost of labour even went up after all the manipulative methods to ensnare former slaves into a new servitude were applied? Your entire reply are still ignoring that I'm not talking about what the best and most profitable "production method" turned out to be. You…

> What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves Yes, and what I am saying is that it has nothing to do with the central argument: that "slavery is capitalism" or "capitalism encourages slavery" or "slavery flourishes under a capitalist incentive structure" (there are N iterations of your argument, pick one and commit to it). The fact that, after the aboliti…

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Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#296

Post by bhupy »

jahaja wrote: post #295
bhupy wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I called ahistorical was the massive omission of how little changed in practice for the former slaves Yes, and what I am saying is that it has nothing to do with the central argument: that "slavery is capitalism" or "capitalism encourages slavery" or "slavery flourishes under a capitalist incentive structure" (there are N iterations of your argument, pick one and commit to it). The fact that, after the aboliti…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#299

Post by dgzl »

sawaruna wrote: post #64
dgzl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think news takes more of a front seat these days. Lots of history in the making.

It does and it's important and I'm not suggesting people purposely ignore it, I just don't know how you get to the point where it's saturated your social feeds so much that you get this kind of phenomenon. I get a lot of news or people posting political commentary, which I enjoy seeing, but it's also mixed in with a lot of music or design or game dev stuff or whatever. Like another comment here mentioned, the diversi…

Well for instance, I only use Twitter for news/activism. it's not aligned for anything else

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#300

Post by dgzl »

owl57 wrote: post #106
pests wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it happening faster or are you consuming it quicker?

Hmm. Probably both. On the second thought, it seems like that's a very good question, for these two processes are maybe in a positive feedback loop. This year we pay more attention to news, and this makes us both more susceptible and more exposed to things like "the moment to act is now".

I read a few years ago that there's more history happening than historians can keep up with. Scary thoughts
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