Well, thats debatable as to it "working". Crops did get harvested. Crops were sold and money was collected by the plantation owners, who built houses and maintained their plantations. There were downsides to slavery of course, apart from the inhuman issues. The plantation owners got brute labor only, no thinking. There was the upkeep of the workers that fell on the plantation owners.

It would have been replaced by automation anyway, as automated equipment is cheaper than the maintenance of slaves. Just as machines are cheaper than horses.

Well, he DID take advantage of slavery by NOT freeing his slaves when he COULD have. He chose to keep his plantation going on slave labor. Those are facts, no some conclusion reached by "rationalism" (whatever that is) .

It was a long time ago, but the point is that our "founding fathers" were not the great people that we are taught they were. They were good thinkers and talkers, but when it came to acting as they preached, things were different.

The history of the USA is like that too. Its not the pristine country that we were taught. There was the routing of the Indians, the civil war itself, the pursuing of the mormons, and a LOT of more modern travesties both domestic and international.

That's fine, ewv. I thought it was funny, and I love a smile and a laugh!

Esceptico has a record of personally smearing Ayn Rand and others here with the most strained rationalizations and outrageous misrepresentations. He appeals to nihilist rationalistic polemics like Michael Shermer's and the Branden's feuding, invents motives for people he knows nothing about, attacks people with sweeping nastiness and personal insults, and misrepresents Ayn Rand and her ideas. When called on it he tries to peddle it all as "objective", along with disconnected pretentious lectures on "logic" from which he claims to arrive, with dramatic pronouncements at the end of the rationalism, at such venomous nonsense as "I categorize your words in the 'crudest form' designation." When rejected for the nonsense this is, he accuses others of "ad hominem arguments". He has a record. It's a pattern of rationalistic nastiness and dramatic pronouncements posturing as objectivity.

They aren't inventing excuses. They mean it. All of it.

Private credit has nothing to do with slavery. The necessity of paying your debts is not and does not "feel like" slavery.

Even taxation does not reach the level of actual slavery. It depends on how it is imposed to what extent for what purpose. The premise is bad enough without equating it with the all encompassing slavery of the old feudalist south and elsewhere around the world.

We know what he said about slavery and tried to do about it. Only Rationalism leads to a "conclusion" that he "needed and therefore took advantage of slavery".

It never "worked" and was not "best suited" for anything. Stealing and oppression are not "building wealth". Technology is not a substitute for slavery.

Slavery always required "heavy violence". The German moral atrocity was much worse than Pragmatic assessments of not "working well" and "meager results".

The nonsense here about slavery and 'robots' is no joke. Lame attempts at "jokes" that make no sense even in the context do not help.

Punishment for crime is not slavery.

The racists you grew up with had nothing to do with Jefferson. Stealing his name for the prestige did not change what they were and their clash with Jefferson His ideas and actions were not "moral cover to generations of slave holders".

Piu! (pee-yew) :)

Hello ewv,
Indeed.
Respectfully,
O.A.

Hello CBJ,
I believe I am speaking of degrees and temporal conditions. It is clear from my above statement that I, as you, have not condoned such treatment and that is from our modern perspective. So in that sense we are both judging. If they were to live today practicing the same way, our condemnation would be joined by most. It would be almost unanimous. It is not that I approve, it is that in his time it was commonplace and it is clear that he desired to have it not so if his time would have allowed it. See ewv's comment below.
Respectfully,
O.A.

If one exposes there is arsenic in Kool Aid, it does not mean the person is against Kool Aid. The same is true with regard to any other subject, including Rand and Objectivism.

To attack me and Shermer as you do here, is to commit most of the fallacies David Kelley lists in his book “Art of Reasoning.” As Kelley explains: “An ad hominem argument rejects or dismisses another person’s statement by attacking the person rather than the statement itself. As we will see, there are many different forms of this fallacy, but all of them involve some attempt to avoid dealing with a statement logically, and in each case the method is to attempt to discredit the speaker by citing some negative trait. An ad hominem argument has the form:

(X says p) + (X has some negative trait)
Therefore
p is false

“This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the statement itself, or the strength of an argument for it, has nothing to do with the character, motives, or any other trait of the person who makes the statement or argument.
This principle is true even when we are concerned with testimonial evidence, but we have to keep a certain distinction in mind. If someone defends a position by citing an authority, as we have seen, then it is legitimate to consider evidence regarding the authority's competence and objectivity. In a trial where the jury is asked to accept the testimony of a witness, it is certainly legitimate for the opposing side to introduce evidence that the witness is dishonest or biased. But discrediting witnesses or authorities does not provide evidence that what they say is actually false; it merely eliminates any reason for thinking that, what they say is true. So we go back to square one: we are left with no evidence one way or the other. In other contexts, where there is no issue of relying on authorities, the use of discrediting evidence about the person is always fallacious. If someone offers an argument for his position, then it doesn't matter how rotten or stupid lie is. We have to evaluate the argument on its merits.

“In its crudest form, the ad hominem fallacy involves nothing more than insults calling one's opponent an idiot, slob, lowlife, airhead, fascist, pinko, nerd, fairy, bleeding heart, wimp, Neanderthal, and so on through the rich vocabulary of abuse our language offers. Unlike the other fallacies, moreover, this one is committed fairly often in its crude form. In personal disputes, disagreement often breeds anger, and angry people hit below the belt. In politics, ad hominem arguments are a common technique of propaganda and a common device of politicians who try to enlist support by attacking their enemies. But the fallacy can also take more sophisticated forms. Let's look at a few.”

I categorize your words in the “crudest form” designation.

I am talking about 21st century slavery, and the tools and methods being used by statists to enslave. Do you think that the attack on hydrocarbon energy via alledged man-made global warming is not such a method? Do you disagree that a return to a world without the energy supplied by hydrocarbons with today's technology will cause a new slavery?

Slavery is ok and legal If the government does it. The draft. Taxation. Even community service. Try freeing yourself from taxation and you will be enslaved in prison. Try freeing yourself from public school. I think you go to juvenile version of jail. It's ok so long as the government does it

Certainly a possibility. But if they could think like humans they wouldn't want to do the work we didn't like either!! Wasn't that dilemma in IROBOT?

It was pretty gruesome , required violence to manage, would only work when everyone did it, and really best suited only to agriculture in sparsely populated areas. It did help build the wealth of the south

By the time hitler used it with the Jews it wasn't working so well. Required heavy violence, concentration camps, and produced meager results

Today , technology has made slavery obsolete in advanced countries. The menial work which one could get from slavery is available cheaper and without violence from automation. Slavery doesn't produce innovation and thinking

I visited Monticello and it really brings out another side of Jefferson. I think he got political blowback from his opposition to slavery. He sure enjoyed the financial benefits of it though, while other Virginia plantations were freeing their slaves. I am saying he was saying one thing but doing another and most probably because his plantation and home required the cheap labor and he didn't want to give that up

Private credit is not strictly slavery. True. But I would call it self imposed slavery. It sure feels like slavery!!

As to taxation of income by the government, that is the new slavery

We will never really know. But after a trip to Monticello it was pretty evident 1) he had hundreds of slaves freed only upon his death 2) other plantation owners were known to voluntarily free their slaves but Jefferson didn't 3) Jefferson was land rich but otherwise relatively poor 4) his whole plantation life was heavily dependent on manual labor to raise the food and run the plantation. Those factors lead me to the conclusion that he needed and therefore took advantage of slavery

Come on. It was a joke!

Sure it does. The "except" clause proves it.

I grew up in the 1950s South, where most members of the political elite identified themselves as "Jeffersonian Democrats" and used their power and the doctrine of "states' rights" to marginalize African-Americans and deny them basic rights to the extent that the federal government would allow. They were the physical and spiritual descendants of slaveholders, many of whom also self-identified as "Jeffersonian Democrats" and likewise used "states' rights" to justify slavery and later secession. Riding on Jefferson's coattails gave their arguments a veneer of moral respectability that they never would have achieved otherwise.