[Comrade Ogilvy]

Rubbish!

Is it?

That's like me feeling guilty about Canada's past crimes against natives. I didn't put anybody on reserves.

Well your forebears did.

[Xopolis]

Well your forebears did.

If one of my distant family members committed a crime I may condemn them, but I certainly wouldn't feel responsible.

[Sans Salvador]

How kind of you! You compensate them for the fact that a) they bought people and b) they forced these people to work for them through torture?

The people who advocated "compensated emancipation" generally did so not out of sympathy for slave owners, but rather because they thought it was the only way they could get slaves emancipated.

Now, I know that there has not been a single political post of Cinnamon's that has demonstrated a grasp or knowledge of anything, it is worth pointing out once and for all that libertarians don't support slavery.

Libertarianism's and property rights in general philosophical basis is John Locke's bullshit argument that since people owned themselves and when they originally acquired property they mixed part of themselves (their labor) with the earth, they got to own the produce.

the idea that libertarians support chattel slavery (I consider capitlaism to be, to some extent, wage slavery) or that that is the logical conclusion of libertarianism is slavery is just the laughable ranting of a leftist who wants to demonize their opponents.

Nicky - Rothbard was a more important libertarian theoretician than Nozick and he argued you could not sell yourself into slavery. This has become the dominant view of libertarians, although Walter Block refuted Rothbard's argument in a recent article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.

[Saf]

Todd, if you accept the premise that black people are not really people, shouldn't a libertarian support those property rights? Not that I believe that or anything, just saying. Back in the day and all.

[Todd D.]

First of all, I have NEVER, EVER supported the idea that blacks are not people.

Saf, if you look at my original post, I said that the absolute closest that a Libertarian could come to supporting slavery would the idea of compensating slaveholders for their lost property. The only reason that I condone that option is because a)the economic repricussions of those lost wages would be the 1860 equivilant of demanding huge reparations from Germany, it just wouldn't have been good, and b)It cost infinitely less than the alternative, the Civil War, the most expensive War in American History.

[Jazmoz]

blacks are not people.

Oh...

1. Howabout African American's from here on?
2. Am I racist?
3. I think not.
4. Then what are we?
5. What cave have you been in?

[Todd D.]

What the shit are you talking about? Try restating your post in the form of a sentence and we'll go from there.

[Steven_K]

Todd, your argument doesn't have very much basis in universal morality. Is saving money a justification for doing something undeniably wrong (compensating slave owners)?

[Todd D.]

Two arguments
First: See my horse example above. Judging yesterday's citizens by today's morality is highly innapropriate. If we decideed that horses deserved to be set free, would it be moral to compensate someone that just invested a significant portion of their income into purchasing a horse? At the time slavery was not viewed as it is today, and people who were otherwise morally upstanding participated in it because it was part of the culture.

Second: At the time there were two options: gradual emancipation with compensation or Civil War. You asked if saving money was a good reason, the answer is no, at least not by itsself, but is saving life? Yes. Gradual emancipation would have cost something like 25-30 percent of GDP, the Civil War cost many many times that, not taking into account the immense loss of human life. Given those two option, the first is clearly superior.

[Steven_K]

I can see the validity of your second argument, but with regards to the first argument: is that a denial of universal morality?