this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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I think this is an issue with people being offended by definitions. Slavery did “help” the economy. Was it right? No, but it did. Mexico’s drug problem helps that economy. Adolf Hitler was “effective” as a leader. He created a cultural identity for people that had none and mobilized them to a war. Ethical? Absolutely not. What he did was horrendous and the bit should include a caveat, but we need to be a little more understanding that it’s a computer; it will use the dictionary of the English language.
Slavery is not good for the economy... Think about it, you have a good part of your population that are providing free labour, sure, but they aren't consumers. Consumption is between 50 and 80% of GDP for developed countries, so if you have half your population as slave you loose between 20% and 35% of your GDP (they still have to eat so you don't loose a 100% of their consumption).
That also means less revenue in taxes, more unemployed for non slaves because they have to compete with free labour.
Slaves don't order on Amazon, go on vacation, go to the movies, go to restaurant etc etc That's really bad for the economy.
That really bad for a modern consumer economy yes. But those werent a thing before the industrial revolution. Before that the large majority of people were subsitance/tennant farmer or serfs who consumed basically nothing other than food and fuel in winter. Thats what a slave based economy was an alternantive to. Its also why slvery died out in the 19th century, it no longer fit the times.
And isn't the economy much better now than before the industrial revolution?
Look at the Saudi, China or the UAE, it's still a pretty efficient way to boost your economy. People don't need to be consumer if this isn't what your country needs.
True consumers are only 1 pillar of gdp.
Those are very specifics examples, with two of the biggest oil producers, and the factory of the world. Thus their whole economies is based on export, so internal consumption isn't important.
Moreover what proof do you have their economies wouldn't be in a better shape if they didn't exploit some population but made them citizen with purchasing power?
2/3 of the people living in the Saudi Emirate are immigrants whose passports have been confiscated, they work in factory, construction sites, oil pit, and all other kind of manual jobs. Meanwhile the Saudi citizens occupy all the well paid job that require education, immigrants can't apply to those. If they didn't use forced labor, there simply wouldn't be enough people in the country to occupy all the jobs. Their economy could not be as good as it is right now.
Because their GDP comes from exporting a very rare and valuable natural resource. This is a rare case in the world, and not the one I was talking about.
Plus who's to say they wouldn't have a better economy if those exploited people could consume more?
I think the problem is more that given the short attention span of the general public (myself included), these "definitions" (I don't believe that slavery can be "defined" as good, but okay) are what's going to stick in the shifting sea of discourse, and are going to be picked out of that sea by people with vile intentions and want to justify them.
It's also an issue that LLMs are a lot more convincing than they should be, and the same people with short attention spans who don't have time to understand how they work are going to believe that an Artificial Intelligence with access to all the internet's information has concluded that slavery had benefits.
Hitler didn't create a cultural identity for Germans, that already happened in the 1800s.
Yes agreed. There is nuance and details and context always left out or ignored
Your and @WoodenBleachers's idea of "effective" is very subjective though.
For example Germany was far worse off during the last few weeks of Hitler's term than it was before him. He left it in partial ruins - and under the control of multiple other powers.
To me, that's not effective leadership, it's a complete car crash.
So, you're basically saying an effective leader is someone who can convince people to go along with them for a sustained period. Jim Jones was an effective leader by that metric. Which I would dispute. So was the guy who led the Donner Party to their deaths.
This is why I see a problem with this. You and I are able to discuss this and work out what each other means.
But in a world where people are time-poor and critical thinking takes time, errors based on fundamental misunderstandings of consensual meanings can flourish.
And the speed and sheer amount of global digital communication means that they can be multiplied and compounded in ways that individual fact checkers will not be able to challenge sucessfully.
I mean Jim Jones was pretty damn effective at convincing a large group of people to commit mass suicide. If he'd been ineffective, he'd have been one of the thousands of failed cult leaders you and I have never heard of. Similarly, if Hitler had been ineffective, it wouldn't have takes the combined forces of half the world to fight him.
Huh? Yikes this feels like being back on reddit.
No I am not trying to "fight" you or "straw man" you at all!!!
I thought we were having a pleasant and civilized conversation about the merits and pitfalls of AI , using our different ideas about the word "effective" as an example.
Unfortunately I didn't see that you're handing me downvotes until just now, so I didn't pick up on your vibe.
Your anger has decorated my poop break with laughter random internet person.
What the hell are you on dude? Someone literally is just trying to have a discussion with you on a public forum you posted in, how are they trying to drag you ham fisted in to a debate by simply replying to your comment? Someone's gwumpy..
Never would I've thought that I would see México and Hitler used in a paragraph