Posted on 04/19/2010 7:11:49 PM PDT by jazusamo
When I first began to study the history of slavery around the world, many years ago, one of the oddities that puzzled me was the practice of paying certain slaves, which existed in ancient Rome and in America's antebellum South, among other places.
In both places, slave owners or their overseers whipped slaves to force them to work, and in neither place was whipping a slave literally to death likely to bring any serious consequences.
There could hardly be a greater power of one human being over another than the arbitrary power of life and death. Why then was it necessary to pay certain slaves? At the very least, it suggested that there were limits to what could be accomplished by power.
Most slaves performing most tasks were of course not paid, but were simply forced to work by the threat of punishment. That was sufficient for galley slaves or plantation slaves. But there were various kinds of work where that was not sufficient.
Tasks involving judgment or talents were different because no one can know how much judgment or talent someone else has. In short, knowledge is an inherent constraint on power. Payment can bring forth the knowledge or talent by giving those who have it an incentive to reveal it and to develop it.
Payment can vary in amount and in kind. Some slaves, especially eunuchs in the days of the Ottoman Empire, could amass both wealth and power. One reason they could be trusted in positions of power was that they had no incentive to betray the existing rulers and try to establish their own dynasties, which would obviously have been physically impossible for them.
At more mundane levels, such tasks as diving operations in the Carolina swamps required a level of discretion and skill far in excess of that required to pick cotton in the South or cut sugar cane in the tropics. Slaves doing this kind of work had financial incentives and were treated far better. So were slaves working in Virginia's tobacco factories.
The point of all this is that when even slaves had to be paid to get certain kinds of work done, this shows the limits of what can be accomplished by power alone. Yet so much of what is said and done by those who rely on the power of government to direct ever more sweeping areas of our life seem to have no sense of the limits of what can be accomplished that way.
Even the totalitarian governments of the 20th century eventually learned the hard way the limits of what could be accomplished by power alone. China still has a totalitarian government today but, after the death of Mao, the Chinese government began to loosen its controls on some parts of the economy, in order to reap the economic benefits of freer markets.
As those benefits became clear in higher rates of economic growth and rising standards of living, more government controls were loosened. But, just as market principles were applied to only certain kinds of slavery, so freedom in China has been allowed in economic activities to a far greater extent than in other realms of the country's life, where tight control from the top down remains the norm.
Ironically, the United States is moving in the direction of the kind of economy that China has been forced to move away from. China once had complete government control of medical care, but eventually gave it up as the disaster that it was.
The current leadership in Washington operates as if they can just set arbitrary goals, whether "affordable housing" or "universal health care" or anything else -- and not concern themselves with the repercussions -- since they have the power to simply force individuals, businesses, doctors or anyone else to knuckle under and follow their dictates.
Friedrich Hayek called this mindset "the road to serfdom." But, even under serfdom and slavery, experience forced those with power to recognize the limits of their power. What this administration -- and especially the President -- does not have is experience.
Barack Obama had no experience running even the most modest business, and personally paying the consequences of his mistakes, before becoming President of the United States. He can believe that his heady new power is the answer to all things.
Sometimes a carrot, sometimes a stick.
I've been mocked and called a ChiCom traitor here at FR for saying the exact same thing. China's moving to where were in the 60s, and we're moving to where they were in the 60s. In fact, in a purely objective view, the US is more communist than China.
An objective view would realize that China is no longer worthy of the title ChiComs; it should the ChiCaps (Chinese Capitalists) and we should be the AmeriComs (American Communists).
I'm sure this will get me labeled a ChiCom troll once again. At least I'm in good company with Dr. Sowell, however!
The majority of the warnings about Obama are coming to fruition...but America wasn't willing to listen...their ears are opening up now.
Wait a minute! Has anyone ever seen Barrack Obama and Cindy Sheehan together? Look at the facial expression!
If only he would.
The question is, how many of them are really trying to achieve that, and how many are just saying it to bait the greedy fools who'd vote for them. After all, the immediate "repercussion" there is power; a seat in the legislature, and all its benefits. For some politicians, jobs and housing and health care are just promises you make to get elected; ideology is just cover.
Thanks for posting.
excellent post — thank you
Thanks, Mr. Lowell. But I get really tired of the tertiary criticism of Barack Obama being “inexperienced.”
That is so, so not the point, about Barack Obama.
A wise man, in a time and era, that really needs one...
Ever been to China? just wondering.
If he does, does he even remotely get it??
Actually, yes; I live over there 6 months of the year (one month in the US, one month in China - have a nice apartment in Shanghai, not far from Qibao City and Xinzhuang terminal). Been doing so for the last few years, and have many expat and Chinese national friends.
China’s getting more and more open, and the US is getting more and more closed.
I have work friends in Beijing. I don’t get much chance to talk to them about life outside the box....
Ahhh... It’s really not as controlled and restricted as people tend to believe. In fact, the income tax even is pretty much truly voluntary because China has no way of really enforcing compliance, or auditing.
No socialized medicine, no social security, no unemployment, no free/subsidized housing, no free/subsidized food, and on and on. In many aspects, China is a lot more libertarian/capitalist than the US, and that is a sad thing.
Do much Bible distribution over there?
You can buy Bibles in most of the larger bookstores; there are dozens of Christian books - Bibles, concordances, writings of famous Christians - available for sale in the larger, better equipped Chinese bookstores. In fact you can even get Bible stories for children at the better bookstores in China; I know, I bought that very book for my GM's niece, at the Shanghai Book Mall (something like 6-7 floors of books - a HUGE bookstore).
Possessing or distributing Bibles won't get you into trouble; it's doing so with Bibles not taxed/declared. Of course, that's true for just about any item as well.
For that matter, I've even bought domestically printed Mandarin translations of Milton Friedman's classic Capitalism and Freedom - something you'd think would be even more forbidden in China!
I’m glad to hear that of my friends’ living conditions. They are very good examples of Dr. Sowell’s thesis of this article. As scientists, I doubt their services can be had by force.
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