Argue the opposite of your actual views - slavery edition

[Waterfall]

This thread was inspired by a comment from user 3D X 31.

Note to the mods (and maybe the NSA): below, I am arguing THE OPPOSITE of my actual views, as an exercise to demonstrate how well I understand the other side of the argument in order to prove the credibility of my own--even if I'm only proving it to myself. IN REAL LIFE I OPPOSE SLAVERY!! Please don't ban me.

Further note: I don't expect anyone to argue against slavery as part of this same exercise, since I assume everyone here opposes slavery in real life. If someone here actually supports slavery and argues against it below, I hope for the sake of intellectual diversity that that person will not be banned. But, if anyone in the NSA is reading this, you might want to pay attention to that person.

OK, here I go:

~~~

When figuring out what people really want, it's better to look at what they do than what they say. We of course all walk around with the notion that we are against slavery and that it's a horrible evil and all that, but there is more slavery in the world right now than at any point in history. Without consulting the internet, can anyone name an organization dedicated to eradicating slavery? A high-profile spokesperson for the anti-slavery cause? Most of you can't, because you've decided slavery's not really that big a deal. Below, I will argue why you are correct to evaluate it that way.

Considering two states--"allows slavery" versus "does not allow slavery"--the first has by far been the norm for human societies throughout our history and, as evidenced by the fact in bold above, continues to be the norm. The foundational texts of our society (the Bible, Greco-Roman thought, etc.) are either neutral or implicitly approving of slavery, suggesting that the institution is perfectly compatible with our values and our way of life. Yes, anti-slavery voices have also rung out here for a long time, but that is merely a testament to our society's ability to tolerate dissenting views, not proof that slavery is contrary to our way of living. In fact, some of the most creative and progressive points in our society's history coincided with huge expansions in slavery.

Before I continue, we need to decouple the ontological association between slavery and race. In American culture the two are closely linked, but it should be understood that in reality this linkage is fleeting and not reflective of any wider trend. Whites have been, and in many parts of the world still are, enslaved by blacks, blacks by browns, browns by blacks, blacks by whites, and so on. History and nature do not seem to have endowed one race with any greater slave-holding tendency or capability than any other.

No sane person will argue that the media are disposed to represent contentious practices in a fair and unbiased way. Yet, most people unskeptically accept the media's portrayal of slavery as brutal and inhumane. We have no good reason to believe it is this way in reality: besides the known fact that the media (including historians) cherrypick the examples that fit their agenda, slaveholders logically have an incentive to treat their slaves fairly and kindly, since a slave is much more costly to replace than an employee, who can be swapped out for another eager one at the stroke of a pen and with a few words.

People who are born into slavery and raised as slaves do not necessarily hold the notion that there is anything wrong or immoral about their condition. Slave revolts result either from abuse on the part of the slaveholders, or else from outside agitation from anti-slavery parties. History is full of examples of loyal and even loving slaves. In the American Civil War, for example, many slaves fought proudly for their masters in the Confederacy.

And while it is controversial and potentially hurtful to say so--and for that I do sincerely apologize--by some measures of well-being such as marriage and criminality (these are more concrete and quantifiable measures than "freedom") some populations have fared better under slavery than upon being freed. That is a simple fact, regardless of one's stance on slavery.

We know that slavery, as a way to organize labor, is not optimally efficient from a market perspective: the cost of housing, feeding, and providing medical care to slaves is significant, and compares poorly with the cost of paying employees. However, the slave industry is, and was, sustainable because it is vibrant in its own right as a financial market: slaves considered as assets, as wealth, and even as futures represent an important driver of economic value. There are no doubt many parts of the world where the abolition of slavery would bankrupt millions or even billions of innocent third parties due to the market shock alone.

Our little Western bubble in which slavery is illegal is in fact the outlier among human societies, as stated above. It is not our place, as history's outspoken minority, to judge everyone else. We must understand that our position is the radical one, and relative to the others is untested and unproven. We should accept this and be more humble before we instantaneously write off slavery as obviously evil and immoral.

~~~end.

After writing this, I've decided that when I get a chance I will also follow up with a post in which I refute each point above using my actual views. I would not want to accidentally convince anyone that slavery should be legal or considered OK!

[Waterfall]

Responding now to myself using my actual views, just so I don't accidentally persuade anyone to approve of slavery.

When figuring out what people really want, it's better to look at what they do than what they say. We of course all walk around with the notion that we are against slavery and that it's a horrible evil and all that, but there is more slavery in the world right now than at any point in history. Without consulting the internet, can anyone name an organization dedicated to eradicating slavery? A high-profile spokesperson for the anti-slavery cause? Most of you can't, because you've decided slavery's not really that big a deal. Below, I will argue why you are correct to evaluate it that way.

There are lots of terrible, atrocious, or scary things we don't think about or aren't focused on; it doesn't mean we approve of them or even that we don't think they're important.

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Our foundational texts provide broad sets of values, attitudes, and a basic but incomplete picture of our identity. They do not prescribe in detail how we are to live and who exactly we are to become. The Bible is on the whole uncritical of slavery, but it does not explicitly condone it either, and parts of the Bible specifically describe the rights of slaves which suggests that much of the behavior we associate with slaveholding is indeed immoral and should not be tolerated.

Anti-slavery voices among us have not merely been tolerated, but have managed to overturn slavery as an acceptable institution. This is extremely important; nowhere else has an anti-slavery movement had this kind of success. The fact that it happened for us is no less an important indicator of our values and way of life!

Some great advances within our society did happen to coincide with expansions in slavery, but many others did not. See for example all the advances of the 20th century.

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This paragraph is basically true, but it does not support the argument that slavery is OK.

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Just because the media are generally untrustworthy does not mean they are wrong 100% of the time. We know the horrors of slavery, and they flow logically from slavery's inherent power imbalances and from what we know about how humans respond to power. On paper it is theoretically possible that slaveholders don't necessarily have an incentive to mistreat their slaves, and there are no doubt examples of a few who didn't, but any sane reading of both history and world events quickly rebuts that pattern. Slaves are readily bought and sold, and are regularly abused. We have both historical slave narratives and contemporary testimony to support that.

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Yes, human psychology can produce strange results. It does not mean those results are moral.

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Those measures may be quantifiable but they are not meaningful to an understanding of slavery's morality. Whatever positive conditions could be pointed to among enslaved populations, better conditions existed for them after they were freed, given their participation in functional free culture. The American black legitimacy rate, for example, was higher than that of whites up through the early 20th century, while their rate of criminality stayed roughly equal to that of whites for a long time after slavery as well. It was other factors--not being given freedom!--that contributed to what we now would call the "decline" of black America.

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This is downright foolishness. We must not sacrifice our moral standing for the Good Of The Economy, even if the financial logic above was sound. Which it isn't: if a stock market can't be based around slaves, people will find other commodities to speculate on. If people can't borrow against their slaves, they will find some other measurable assets against which to seek credit. Note that the United States continued to be the major world financial power long after it abolished slavery, and that even before it abolished slavery it was the slavery-free north that actually fared better economically.

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Moral relativism is stupid, and only results in the tolerance of immorality which is tantamount to immorality itself. Yes, it's good to be epistemologically humble (thus this whole series of threads!) but that should be used to strengthen rather than paralyze one's basic sense of right and wrong.

[°Leprechaun]

Although it is always challenging to play the devil's advocate, this one is especially difficult, given the fact that most people find both racism and slavery so repugnant, so your willingness to take on this task is comendable.

The following is my actual view, and not the opposite, although it is in a sense, contrary to the point of this thread, since I am not arguing the opposite:

While there are no former slaves (American ones from the 19th century) still living, obviously racism didn't end and still remains a serious problem, so I can see that this is a highly sensitive topic.

[mencken]

Giving former slaves ("sharecroppers") a vested interest in their output was likely good for morale and hence good for production.