Where this is going is to say that everybody in politics is only in it for the money. That's dubious to begin with, but how one gets back from such cynicism to any kind of morality is hard to say. I suspect your answer is that you are moral about everything - the world's moral yardstick, the one exception to all the world's materialism and opportunism. Like here:
I think you might very well be surprised. I don't like to talk about anything in my own personal life because information can provide your enemies with an advantage, but I grew up being taught that all this "stuff" is transitory, and in the larger scheme of things, meaningless.
I don't value "rich" things. I can afford "nice" stuff, I just don't care about it. If I had their wealth, I would probably try to wreck the existing media system, because I see it as the most dangerous force facing us.
Yeah. Everybody else is mercenary and materialistic, and you are the only exception. Yet another contradiction in your posts and world view. If it's all about money or power or position with other people, it's likely that the same is true with you.
Harbor cities don't get rich by growing corn. They get rich by facilitating trade. Other industries follow, but it is the trade activity that gains them their initial capital.
First, is that wrong? Is taking advantage of a good harbor immoral? Is New Orleans benefiting from being on the continent's biggest river system an unfair advantage? And really, what would early America's tobacco and cotton production have been with climate and the advantages of the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River?
Second, contrary to what people now think, New York was long a major industrial center -- right up until the time the country as a whole started deindustrialization. Plenty of people in 19th and early 20th century Brooklyn worked in factories, workshops, machine shops, and shipyards. And New York City financed factories upstate and in the neighboring states.
So by the mid-19th century it wasn't all about trade and finance or all about cotton. A large population meant that New York was incredibly productive economically. New York's experience with shipping and commerce attracted industries and dealing with factories, workshops, and retailers improved the financial acumen of the city's bankers and merchants.
So far as i'm concerned, it is a pointless effort to dramatize the entire focus so that someone can once more beat the drum of virtue signaling; So that someone can once more regurgitate the propagandized position that has been taught to all of us as we were growing up;
So that they can once more focus the spotlight on something they regard as emotionally satisfying, but which does not actually fit the facts, though people are intent on ignoring that bit of inconvenience.
"Virtue signalling" is this year's buzz word, I guess. You can throw it about so liberally, that you don't notice the "virtue signalling," the pompous and phony moralizing, in your own posts and in every rant about the evil Republicans and big city people. What is a lot of the neo-confederate stuff but virtue signalling writ large?
Morality has got nothing to do with it. It is an objective fact that the prime purpose of a harbor is to trade. New York is wealthy because it had a harbor that facilitated trade with Europe. It has now diversified, but the source of it's original wealth is that harbor.
Second, contrary to what people now think, New York was long a major industrial center -- right up until the time the country as a whole started deindustrialization.
So which came first? The Industry, or the Harbor? My understanding is that the one was the inevitable consequence of the other.
A large population meant that New York was incredibly productive economically.
I have a concept I would like to convey to you, but i'm not sure I can. I guess the closest approximation is this word "synergy", but that doesn't quite get the point across. Let me try a different way.
Suppose you have an engine. The engine has friction and it has load. The energy put into the engine must exceed the amount necessary to overcome the Friction and whatever load you wish to place on it.
What happens to an engine that is running under a load if you cut the fuel supply to it by some amount? It stalls and loses speed, if it does not falter and stop.
That is what was going to happen to New York in 1861 without a war. Think of it as a money engine that derives a significant portion of it's fuel from trade.
You can throw it about so liberally, that you don't notice the "virtue signalling," the pompous and phony moralizing, in your own posts and in every rant about the evil Republicans and big city people.
You are right. I don't notice any "virtue signaling" in my posts. I can't actually see an angle to how someone could be "virtue signalling" by defending the rights of slave owning states to leave the union. You will have to explain your angle on this to me.
Mostly I get opprobrium instead of admiration, so there isn't much "reward" to be had for this sort of virtue signalling, which defeats the entire purpose of virtue signaling (to be thought better of by everyone else) as I understand the term. :)
I think the South was violating the rights of man by forcing people to work against their will, and I think the North violated the rights of man by subjugating an unwilling populace. The South's motives were plainly greed, but the North's motives have been deliberately disguised as some false moral crusade. The North's crusade spilled a very great amount of blood. The South's practice created human misery, and no doubt spilled some blood, but not on the same scale as did the North.
Slavery was eventually going to die of natural causes, but the remnants of the North's war on the South, and the precedents it established, have lingered much longer than slavery ever would have.