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.
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.
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.
(Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. He is currently the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics (Magna Cum Laude) from Harvard in 1958, his master’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1959, and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.)
1 comment:
The author does not realize that our President does not need experience "running anything". The President is not an Executive. The President is merely a figure-head - like in Iran.
The decisions being made now have been worked out years in advance. Both political parties are controlled by an elite group of secretive people who now "run the world". They believe they are in fact destined to rule over the rest of us. Their god has ordained that they govern us. They are members of a lineage of Ruling Class which has had its roots deep in the past of Human History. They are descendents of the Saducees who killed Jesus Christ.
The so-called elected officials in Amerika are all just figure-heads. They enjoy relative lavish lifestyles because of their obedience to the Elite Class. However they are mere human beings like the rest of us. Ocassionally the people have succeeded in "electing" a regular person to Congress. But their proper place is quickly decided by the Elite Class. These accidental Congresspeople learn very quickly what to say and do. Otherwise they are eliminated.
- from a plot for a novel about the end of the world.
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