Sure I can. I think that your argument on this subject is absurd. That doesn't mean that I think that you're personally an idiot, or absurdly wrong on every subject. See the difference?
Of course the South survived after the CW. But the South was reduced to abject poverty and was just barely propped up by Reconstruction and only so they would cause a minimal economic drain.
Right. By comparison, a No-War South which was flush with money from Compensated Emancipation, and with its infrastructure still intact, could certainly have better afforded to offer more jobs and higher wages to freedman blacks, than the economically-devastated Post-War South was able to offer.
For that matter, it's highly probable that the North would have been better off economically as well -- having to face only the expense of paying a portion of a $3 Billion dollar Compensated Emancipation, rather than paying nearly all of the expense of an over-$6 Billion dollar War (this figure only represents Union expenditures) and losing 350,000 dead, as well as suffering some damage to their own infrastructure (albeit less than the South).
So, even though you insult me and call my position “absurd,” and criticize my knowledge of history having no clue whatsoever how much I have and continue to study, you have only countered my argument with your own position and opinion and “history” that has been served by propagandists. You may want to read “The Real Lincoln,” “The Politically Incorrect Guide to US History,” and “A Patriot’s History of the US,” to help undo some of that government-school history you are citing.
(Shrugs). At the present time, I'm literally the only person on the thread who's offered both historical references to the actual Compensated Emancipation programs which did work just fine in the other slave-holding Western nations which attempted such a program, as well as offering professional economic monographs in support of my arguments.
Nobody else has done so.
So, I'm reasonably satisfied with my argumentation, and the evidence which I have produced in support thereof, thus far.
No I don’t see the difference. My argument is based upon years of study. It is a well-founded argument. You called it absurd. Therefore, you are calling my studies and my knowledge on the issue absurd, which is an insult. Try to weasel out of it if you want, but it was an insult.
You miss the point that it could not have worked out economically.
What would have happened with the paid-for slaves? Would they have moved to the North (very likely to get away from the ‘evil South’). This would have glutted the labor market and driven wages down even further. The North would have benefited because they would have seen massive profits with the depressed wages caused by the glut of laborers. They would also have benefited by driving their Southern competitors into insolvency. I don’t see this as much more moral than slavery itself. In fact, as I said, I see the Northern system as a form of slavery, just without the chains. Is it a freeway if you have to pay to drive on it? Were the Northern workers “free” if it was virtually impossible to make any change in their lives?
Would they have remained in the South? If so, they would have drawn much higher wages, thus bankrupting the South.
20 years ago I would have agreed with you. But since that time I have spent a lot of time undoing the brainwashing of mainstream, government-run education. And I know much more now than I did then. I even had to undergo the painful admission that what I had believed was wrong.
Ron Paul’s idea is in fact absurd. And it is absurd on many levels, some of which I have outlined. The South would never have gone for it. State sovereignty was a pivotal issue. And this idea would have led to ruin economically.