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Originally posted by Jake Benson I'm building challenges to your original argument and you clearly want to tip-toe around them. Isn't it true that every super power also had an advanced agricultural system. How do you know agriculture did not lead to super power? All I'm saying is correlation people!

You misrepresented my original argument into something I never stated. I never said countries dependent on slave labor become super powers. I said many of the world's super powers were dependent on slave/forced labor. When I let you know this, now you tell me I'm tip toeing around.

Every super power had an advanced economy. Like I said, most super powers were dependent on slave/forced labor, or at least very low wage labor. Notice how America's manufacturing base has been shipped of such low wage locales as China and Vietnam?

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN You can't possibly connect the two. The single biggest factor in the US becoming a superpower was WW2.

I have to agree that the Second Great War was the catalyst for the US becoming a superpower; however, that's not the biggest factor. The biggest factor is industrial capacity... the US has the most of it, which allows them to generate great wealth, which can be used to create superior and more plentiful weaponry, which allows them to be a superpower. One could argue that the wealth required to create the industrial capacity the US enjoys would not have been accrued so quickly without slavery; however, I think that would be a rather simplistic argument(although I admit that I've never actually studied it so take that with a grain of salt). Regardless, of what the biggest factor or catalyst to the US becoming a superpower was I would argue that neither are the proximate cause (meaning what set the chain of events in motion)... the proximate cause of the US rise to being a superpower was the will of the American people.

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Originally posted by RickyM you're just a shit version of Moral Hazard. At least he knows what he's talking about.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN lol, i love it when moral feels the need to lay the smack down

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard I have to agree that the Second Great War was the catalyst for the US becoming a superpower; however, that's not the biggest factor. The biggest factor is industrial capacity... the US has the most of it, which allows them to generate great wealth, which can be used to create superior and more plentiful weaponry, which allows them to be a superpower. One could argue that the wealth required to create the industrial capacity the US enjoys would not have been accrued so quickly without slavery; however, I think that would be a rather simplistic argument(although I admit that I've never actually studied it so take that with a grain of salt). Regardless, of what the biggest factor or catalyst to the US becoming a superpower was I would argue that neither are the proximate cause (meaning what set the chain of events in motion)... the proximate cause of the US rise to being a superpower was the will of the American people.

but the catalyst for that industrial capacity to dominate to such a degree as to differentiate the US from the other powers of the time, was that the US was the only country not to have been devastated by the war.

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Originally posted by Krypton Military strength is dependent upon economic strength. Slave labor is always advantageous economically.

how did slave labor, which was largely confined to the south (and mainly limited to the agricultural arena), improve our industrial output in our industrial powerhouse areas of new england and the great lakes regions?

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Originally posted by Krypton Well, slavery after 1865 really just took on different forms. Sharecroppers who were basically serfs. Labor was usually paid slave wages so it could be said we still had a form of slavery all the way until Roosevelt's New Deal.

again, this was confined to the south and limited to agriculture. How did that increase our industrial strength of the time?

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Originally posted by Krypton No other power rivaled the Frankish Empire at its height.

you missed it. i know charlemagne was king of the franks at the height of their power. However, charlemage was just a person, not a nation.

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Originally posted by Krypton No doubt but much of this progress has been on the backs of slaves, and even more, unskilled low wage labor.

what's your evidence that our progress was built on the backs of slaves, other than your self-serving conclusory statement?

Don't confuse slaves with low wage labor. Slaves are forced to do the work without choice. While low wage employees may have economic pressures exherted upon them, they have other opportunities that were unavailable to slaves and they make their choice based on free will, not the will of their owner. In any event, low wage labor will always be important for an progressing nation because it is a progessing nations competitive advantage against other nations. Moreover, much of america's low wage labor during our industrial boom was not former slaves, rather, it was european immigrants (and now it's latin american immigrants).

Would you argue that China's rising status is a result of slavery (i.e., since you are implicitly equating slavery and low wage labor, and since china is increasing its global status on the backs of low wage labor, then your position seemingly would be that china's status is a result of slavery)?

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN but the catalyst for that industrial capacity to dominate to such a degree as to differentiate the US from the other powers of the time, was that the US was the only country not to have been devastated by the war.

australia and canada weren't devasted by the war either, and neither of those countries are superpowers: population was important also. People aren't attributing enough of america's success to our immigration policy during the period that allowed an enormous pool of both low wage labor, and highly educated academics and professionals.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN but the catalyst for that industrial capacity to dominate to such a degree as to differentiate the US from the other powers of the time, was that the US was the only country not to have been devastated by the war.

You might have a valid argument if not for the fact that US industrial capacity was dominate over all others prior to the first Great War as well.

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Originally posted by RickyM you're just a shit version of Moral Hazard. At least he knows what he's talking about.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN lol, i love it when moral feels the need to lay the smack down

It's not an uninteresting theory, I suppose...

But I would say the procurement of slave labour is a symptom of empires and superpowers; not the cause.

I think the 'why' of this is slightly more interesting.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Slaves were not the reason America became powerful. If raw muscle is all it takes to become a superpower then countries with massive armies like North Korea should be ruling the world by now. Clearly they are not. You need more than muscle to dominate others.. You need ideas and a climate where the free exchange of ideas (and products) can thrive. America grew strong because we had an extremely limited government for the first 150 years. We had a country founded on individual liberty with a constitution designed to restrain GOVERNMENT, not the citizens. This was something unique in the world at the time and it is that which laid the foundations for our becoming a superpower. We avoided the collectivist mindset for much longer than the rest of the world and consequently had the economic muscle to beat fascism and communism.

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard You might have a valid argument if not for the fact that US industrial capacity was dominate over all others prior to the first Great War as well.

yes, but they wouldn't have been dominant (to such a huge extent) without europe taking it in the bum on a regular basis. not to mention the fact that their "empire" was stretched all over the world by '45. everyone needed the american dollar and everyone needed the american reconstruction effort.

without the need for massive mobilisation, massive loans and massive restructuring, i'd say they would have been one of many powerful influences during the 20th century, instead of #1 of 2. and of course there's the fact that they sat on their collective arses for 2 more years than everyone else.

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Originally posted by jerZ07002 australia and canada weren't devasted by the war either, and neither of those countries are superpowers: population was important also. People aren't attributing enough of america's success to our immigration policy during the period that allowed an enormous pool of both low wage labor, and highly educated academics and professionals.

hey! darwin was bombed! but you're absolutely right in your analysis. far far far more fucking accurate than this nonsense:

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Originally posted by Capitalizt You need more than muscle to dominate others.. You need ideas and a climate where the free exchange of ideas (and products) can thrive. America grew strong because we had an extremely limited government for the first 150 years. We had a country founded on individual liberty with a constitution designed to restrain GOVERNMENT, not the citizens. This was something unique in the world at the time and it is that which laid the foundations for our becoming a superpower. We avoided the collectivist mindset for much longer than the rest of the world and consequently had the economic muscle to beat fascism and communism.

The USSR was a super power for much of the 20th Century and it had none of those characteristics. indeed, i can think of many examples where 'minimal government' and 'free exchange of ideas' were anything but an american institution. honestly

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Didn't you learn anything in school, pkc? America invented freedom.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

ya, rly.