Not sure if that's right. A useful group to look at for data are those who grew up owning slaves and were educated. Unless there's some reason to believe they would do better/worse than the rest of us if we were in those circumstances then it's a sample of how everyone would do in those circumstances.

Then we can look at those who could have owned slaves and chose not to. I'd expect that group to do significantly better but still nowhere as well as we would like to think.

Me too.

I wish we could get some traction on this topic. Its a real live problem yet few seem to want to go there. (not just slavery but other serious abuse)

It's strange because compared to stuff like voting, politically conscious consumer decisions have far more impact

I keep mentioning it because it's kind of new info to me (first time I thought much about it) and I've been avoiding chocolate, which is a big sacrifice for me.

While it may be the case, I have yet to see a source that 90% of American Southerners fitting your criteria owned slaves. And why should I accept your premise that the morals of wealthy white Southerners pre-1865 are representative of all humans living today?

There are many ways we can go with this. I think if every family in the West woke up tomorrow morning 100% more wealthy and owned slaves, due to the values we've grown up learning very few could stand to keep them, even if it meant giving up their newfound wealth. Yes, if those inhibitions didn't exist, you're probably right. The key point is these values we have don't dissapear or appear on their own, we as a society learn them, perfect them and pass them on to the next. I imagine we might unlearn them in a few generations if the West (using this term loosely) loses momentum, the world economy completely tanks and we are thrust into another dark age.

I really should say the breadwinners. With that adjustment I stick with 90% because you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't opt to not cut his or her income in half to avoid doing something wrong, if there are no repercussions to the status quo.

There is a big difference between turning down a doubling and avoiding a cutting in half.

The reason I didn't use that hypothetical is that as a society we would have to have already unlearned those values to get to that point. IOW, go back about 150-200 years.

I'm not saying that most present day Americans would own black slaves if it would double their income. I'm saying that they would sin to a comparative degree that educated southerners of the past felt they were doing if that sin prevented halving their income.

Don't understand what you are saying.

In any case the bottom line is that while I believe Jefferson was completely aware he was doing something wrong even with his rationalizations, he managed to persuade himself that his sin was not so great that it overcame the economic hardship he would put himself through if he didn't sin. And this is no different than the way most people who are supporting a family have thought throughout history.

The hypothetical you're using doesn't work today because in order for us to wake up tomorrow with slaves, where releasing them causes us to lose 50% of our wealth presupposes that those slaves were the cause of that 50%. That means our societal values allowed is to have them in the first place to build that wealth. But they don't now, so that doesn't work. I agree if that were the case, many of us would act like some version of southern slave owners, some small percentage of abolitionists, and others in the middle, let's call them politicians.

So your source for the 90% is that I'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't opt to not cut his or her income in half to avoid doing something wrong, if there are no repercussions to the status quo.
So when you said, "90% or so of all humans, both then and now, would own slaves," you weren't talking about "owning slaves," just "sinning?"

Basically yes. Up to, but perhaps not including the absolute worst sins. (My post didn't mention enslaving a specific race by the way.)

The idea was to make the point that while TJ knowingly seriously sinned for significant money, so would most people.

Pretty serious intellectualizing here itt. Perhaps DS isn't aware of fallacies?

Strawberry farms and orange orchards that want to get bigger will always hire illegals first, not because they want to because they have to (to compete). A law should be passed requiring all work done on a farm be done by the owner. No work should be done by the kids either. Thus there would be a lot of small independent farms.

http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp27.htm

I'm pretty sure it is mathematically impossible for 90% of people to own slaves. I ran my model 2 billion times last night and it looks like it tops out at 50%.

He's not saying 90% would actually physically own slaves (although its certainly possible once you assume that slaves could be like other property and jointly owned between people). He's saying that 90% of people if placed in his specific situation would own slaves.

There are partial interests. In fact, Chevron owns Unocal which recently used forced labor in Burma. (They settled a case brought by a human rights group. )

Own any Chevron stock?

Yes, I understand that. I'm just not terribly convinced that that argument is correct, or even makes sense. Why 90%? Is there some recessive "can't own slaves" gene that we haven't identified yet? Or is it that the life experience of those 10% is such that they are sufficiently disapproving of slavery? Because the observation that "in some imagined universe where 90% of people would be willing to own slaves, we can imagine that 90% of the people would be willing to own slaves" sounds like an absurdest tautology to me.

I searched the entire 'lower class' side of town for free-trade chocolate over the weekend. Nope. It is all commercial, Hershey, Nestlé, Girabaudli, and store brand. Got me thinking what an 'anti-slavery' retail model would look like. Next weekend, the better-off side of town.

Giving up mochas is hard and doable. but I can't figure out how to explain to a five year old why we aren't going to Dairy Queen every other Friday for chocolate sundaes.

Unless you're arguing that there is some significant genetic difference (or possibly some other difference) about those that did own slaves then they are a representative sample of what people are like.

That's why some numbers from the past would be interesting to get a handle on the ~90% but clearly people are far more like those who did own slaves than we like to think.

Well the complete census microdata is available going back to 1790. My own research suggests that whites are far more likely to own slaves than blacks. I'm not convinced that this necessarily indicates any genetic proclivity, however.

I also think the 90% is bull****.

So are guys saying that only about 10% of the people in Europe and the US were true abolitionists in the 1700-1900s, but they were able the overwhelm the 90% who you say would be okay with slavery if they had them? In other words the 10% forced the 90% to end slavery?

Trader Joe's has some - dunno if they have that where you are. I'm sure Whole Foods does, but it probably costs a fortune. Chocolate from South or Central America probably won't have any literal slavery in the supply chain. I'd like to see fair trade from Africa though because just boycotting a major industry would cause them a lot of hardship.

It's hard to say "I'm ok with a little slavery" but at least for now I'm not going to try to be 100%. If chocolate is a minor ingredient in something or if someone offers me something, I'm not necessarily going to so no. I've been a vegetarian/semi-vegetarian/vegetarian sympathizer for a long time and am used to being flexible. For a few years, I'd only eat meat on Thanksgiving. I did go about 10 years w/no meat though.

My kids are older, so I just leave stuff like that up to them. My 14yo had an English assignment yesterday to write something persuasive about a controversial/political issue and wrote it on slavery in the cocao industry.