Video: Why were Southern Whites so bad at business?

[Pelerin]

In the north, the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was coal (steam) and then later oil. In the south the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was human bondage. Absent the Civil War, what would have eventually killed off slavery would have been oil and the advent of diesel driven mechanization in agriculture.

I don’t think that’s true. That’s the same idea behind the cotton gin—that making slave labor more efficient would make fewer slaves necessary and so reduce it. But the opposite happened because cotton became more profitable and operations expanded. If any technology would have finished slavery it would be computers and robotics because robots are even cheaper than slaves. Also the jobs that those open up are inherently hostile to slavery—you can’t whip someone into programming faster or better.

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The video notes that one aspect of Southern culture was an aversion to manual labor. That’s an aspect of other cultures as well but I think that that’s another effect rather than a cause. I would suggest that cultures with an aversion to manual labor are cultures where hard work doesn’t get you much of anywhere. The South was more aristocratic with less room for advancement. Could some redneck have realistically have gotten the rights to develop the mentioned steel industry in Birmingham without some local bigwig interfering? The aristocrats themselves were doing very well for themselves in agriculture, why risk trying something new?

[barnhart]

...The South was more aristocratic with less room for advancement. Could some redneck have realistically have gotten the rights to develop the mentioned steel industry in Birmingham without some local bigwig interfering? The aristocrats themselves were doing very well for themselves in agriculture, why risk trying something new?

This part I agree with. One of the strategies of reconstruction governments was to raise the millage rate on property tax to force fat cat land owners to either set their excess land to rent or sell portions to pay the accumulated tax. Without this, land lies fallow and willing hands are cut out of the growth economy and reduced to servitude.

[Ken]

In the north, the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was coal (steam) and then later oil. In the south the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was human bondage. Absent the Civil War, what would have eventually killed off slavery would have been oil and the advent of diesel driven mechanization in agriculture.

I don’t think that’s true. That’s the same idea behind the cotton gin—that making slave labor more efficient would make fewer slaves necessary and so reduce it. But the opposite happened because cotton became more profitable and operations expanded. If any technology would have finished slavery it would be computers and robotics because robots are even cheaper than slaves. Also the jobs that those open up are inherently hostile to slavery—you can’t whip someone into programming faster or better.

///

The video notes that one aspect of Southern culture was an aversion to manual labor. That’s an aspect of other cultures as well but I think that that’s another effect rather than a cause. I would suggest that cultures with an aversion to manual labor are cultures where hard work doesn’t get you much of anywhere. The South was more aristocratic with less room for advancement. Could some redneck have realistically have gotten the rights to develop the mentioned steel industry in Birmingham without some local bigwig interfering? The aristocrats themselves were doing very well for themselves in agriculture, why risk trying something new?

The cotton gin is only part of it. Mechanized tilling, planting, and harvesting is the bigger part.

For example, the average size family cotton farm today in Texas is about 500 acres. Which one family can work with a couple tractors and other diesel powered equipment. In the antebellum south the formula I've read is that cotton planters needed about 1 slave for every 2 acres in production. So that same 500 acre cotton farm that one family can work in 2023 would have required about 250 slaves in 1860.

It wasn't the cotton gin, it was the internal combustion engine that would really have made slave agriculture obsolete.

[barnhart]

It wasn't the cotton gin, it was the internal combustion engine that would really have made slave agriculture obsolete.

I hear you but...
This sounds very logical, in fact it seems a lot like the arguments of the founding fathers who lacked moral courage to disassemble the economic machinery of their day and pacified their consciences with the mythology that enslavement would wither away naturally. A harder look reveals how durable and flexible the system was. Even in their day it had survived hundreds of years and metastisized to fit each economic system that presented itself.

[Ken]

It wasn't the cotton gin, it was the internal combustion engine that would really have made slave agriculture obsolete.

I hear you but...
This sounds very logical, in fact it seems a lot like the arguments of the founding fathers who lacked moral courage to disassemble the economic machinery of their day and pacified their consciences with the mythology that enslavement would wither away naturally. A harder look reveals how durable and flexible the system was. Even in their day it had survived hundreds of years and metastisized to fit each economic system that presented itself.

Two separate arguments here.

First, the agrarian slave economy of the south probably was doomed with the advent of mechanization. That's the economic argument. The slave economy that made the south rich was on borrowed time.

However slavery itself is indeed highly persistent. In fact one could argue that the mechanism of slavery really didn't end in the south until World War 2. The toxic blend of racism and white supremacy that fostered it did not die easily.

[Josh]

Yet there is more slavery now than there was in 1860.

[Pelerin]

The cotton gin is only part of it. Mechanized tilling, planting, and harvesting is the bigger part.

For example, the average size family cotton farm today in Texas is about 500 acres. Which one family can work with a couple tractors and other diesel powered equipment. In the antebellum south the formula I've read is that cotton planters needed about 1 slave for every 2 acres in production. So that same 500 acre cotton farm that one family can work in 2023 would have required about 250 slaves in 1860.

It wasn't the cotton gin, it was the internal combustion engine that would really have made slave agriculture obsolete.

I think you’re missing the point I was making. The cotton gin made cotton processing more efficient. Eli Whitney thought this efficiency would reduce the need for slave labor and help eliminate it. Instead cotton became more profitable and it expanded with slavery into Alabama, Mississippi, and on west. All the benefits of efficiency went to the owners rather than the labor.

In other words with diesel engines and no Civil War, it would be slaves driving combines across the endless wheat fields of Kansas. Fields would be owned by a few large planters; family farms and free labor couldn’t compete. And with the profits why not expand into Nebraska, the Dakotas, and into the miles-wide wheat field expanses of Montana?

[Pelerin]

It wasn't the cotton gin, it was the internal combustion engine that would really have made slave agriculture obsolete.

I hear you but...
This sounds very logical, in fact it seems a lot like the arguments of the founding fathers who lacked moral courage to disassemble the economic machinery of their day and pacified their consciences with the mythology that enslavement would wither away naturally. A harder look reveals how durable and flexible the system was. Even in their day it had survived hundreds of years and metastisized to fit each economic system that presented itself.

I’d agree ending slavery was purely a moral question, not an economic one, meaning there was never going to be economic conditions that would have ended slavery absent some kind of abolitionist movement. If it was going to end “naturally” the best time for that to have happened would have been at the Founding. Even in 1808 the United States banned imports of slaves the first year it was constitutional to do so. After that the South trended sharply away from abolitionism whether for economic or other reasons. Compare, for example, Thomas Jefferson, an anti-slavery slaveholder who essentially conceded the central premise of abolitionism but lacked either the courage or vision to follow through on it with someone like John Calhoun fifty years later who was describing slavery as a positive good.

Even without the Civil War, sooner or later the Birmingham iron works would have been constructed and it would have been run by slave labor. And in that case could Pennsylvania have continued to compete? At best the North could have kept one or two steps ahead but I can’t think of any northern industrial jobs that couldn’t be done just as well by slaves. That’s actually kind of the point of the Industrial Revolution: interchangeable parts, interchangeable labor—you can drop just about anyone in the factory floor and get them straight to work. In fact I think I would argue that industrialism is especially suited to slavery and we’re very fortunate that slavery was concentrated in agriculture which is inherently conservative.

[Josh]

And industrial society today depends on slavery more than ever. It’s just conveniently not located inside our borders, so we can be out of sight, out of mind.

[temporal1]

I’d agree ending slavery was purely a moral question, not an economic one, meaning there was never going to be economic conditions that would have ended slavery absent some kind of abolitionist movement. If it was going to end “naturally” the best time for that to have happened would have been at the Founding. Even in 1808 the United States banned imports of slaves the first year it was constitutional to do so. After that the South trended sharply away from abolitionism whether for economic or other reasons. Compare, for example, Thomas Jefferson, an anti-slavery slaveholder who essentially conceded the central premise of abolitionism but lacked either the courage or vision to follow through on it with someone like John Calhoun fifty years later who was describing slavery as a positive good.

Even without the Civil War, sooner or later the Birmingham iron works would have been constructed and it would have been run by slave labor. And in that case could Pennsylvania have continued to compete? At best the North could have kept one or two steps ahead but I can’t think of any northern industrial jobs that couldn’t be done just as well by slaves. That’s actually kind of the point of the Industrial Revolution: interchangeable parts, interchangeable labor—you can drop just about anyone in the factory floor and get them straight to work. In fact I think I would argue that industrialism is especially suited to slavery and we’re very fortunate that slavery was concentrated in agriculture which is inherently conservative.

This is thoughtful and considered, but i recommend giving serious study to Thomas Sowell, his views of economics and morality.
He’s not a cut+paste wizard! The OP video is an excerpt from a longer lecture/book.

It seems to me you’re kinda auto-presuming slavery is controlled by political policies (??) more than free market enterprise?
Politics are powerful. But, when considering market changes (without gov interference, for or against) - changes can and do occur, sometimes swiftly. The free market is required to be accountable. No customers, no business.

So, for me, i can accept TS’s ideas on the long world history of slavery, not just about brief U.S. history.

Yet there is more slavery now than there was in 1860.

In my view, today’s great slavery/indentured servants are cunningly+willingly acquired through unsecured debt.
It took flight in the early 70’s. Presently growing exponentially as many are in denial about how bad inflation is, using unsecured credit to pretend it’s not so bad.

Are we headed for a time when credit card holders will demand Uncle Sam pay for egregious credit card debt? (As is happening with school loan debt?) In the least, increased foreclosures-bankruptcies. As has happened in the not-distant past.