- Joined
- Apr 4, 2017
- Location
- Denver, CO
They were great.
But what did they miss.
Cotton was a good thing, but it was only valuable when it made it to New York, Liverpool, or a French port.
That meant that the Confederacy was going to be dependent on someone else's merchant fleet and navy.
Although they thought they would be like France, and have an aristocratic ruler with a few democratic forms, they weren't much like France, at all.
They did not have a Paris within the Confederacy. That meant they did not have an advanced financial system or an advanced scientific community. Nor did they have a homogeneous population highly committed to becoming western as did the Japanese.
They were already dependent on outside capital, and the railroad and iron industries were already competitive in the capital markets. Coal, oil refining, electricity were going to dominate future capital investing, In other words, the steam engine already pointed the way. The industrial revolution was going to depend on energy systems and their applications. That meant the Confederate agriculture was going to have compete with the second part of the industrial revolution in terms of rate of return and growth potential. Could a system based on coerced labor meet that competition? Or would capital investors conclude that the docility of the slave population was based on illiteracy, poor health and short life expectancy?
So instead of being like France, perhaps the Confederates would have been more like the Austrians and Hungarians. They would have a lot of proud culture, but a stagnant hinterland, which required constant attention. Instead of being an industrial power themselves, they would have been next to one.
Its not a terrible future. But it is a future in which manufactured items are pricey, freight rates charged on shipping cotton gradually increase the price of cotton, and the capital markets begin to pull away from the Confederacy because enforcement of security interests is subject to opaque local rules.
I suspect that people who had wanted an education and a good job would be gradually drawn away from the Confederacy and the Confederate leadership has to deal with difficult issues of financial dependency.
National governments are expensive. Thomas Jefferson was shocked to discover this. The Constitution was an attempt to create a system in which each state fulfilled its obligations.
A continuing Confederacy would have discovered that debt service is expensive and importing all manufactured items is not profitable. Eventually they would have been faced with the same problems as Japan, without Japan's geographic and ethnic advantages, perhaps.
But what did they miss.
Cotton was a good thing, but it was only valuable when it made it to New York, Liverpool, or a French port.
That meant that the Confederacy was going to be dependent on someone else's merchant fleet and navy.
Although they thought they would be like France, and have an aristocratic ruler with a few democratic forms, they weren't much like France, at all.
They did not have a Paris within the Confederacy. That meant they did not have an advanced financial system or an advanced scientific community. Nor did they have a homogeneous population highly committed to becoming western as did the Japanese.
They were already dependent on outside capital, and the railroad and iron industries were already competitive in the capital markets. Coal, oil refining, electricity were going to dominate future capital investing, In other words, the steam engine already pointed the way. The industrial revolution was going to depend on energy systems and their applications. That meant the Confederate agriculture was going to have compete with the second part of the industrial revolution in terms of rate of return and growth potential. Could a system based on coerced labor meet that competition? Or would capital investors conclude that the docility of the slave population was based on illiteracy, poor health and short life expectancy?
So instead of being like France, perhaps the Confederates would have been more like the Austrians and Hungarians. They would have a lot of proud culture, but a stagnant hinterland, which required constant attention. Instead of being an industrial power themselves, they would have been next to one.
Its not a terrible future. But it is a future in which manufactured items are pricey, freight rates charged on shipping cotton gradually increase the price of cotton, and the capital markets begin to pull away from the Confederacy because enforcement of security interests is subject to opaque local rules.
I suspect that people who had wanted an education and a good job would be gradually drawn away from the Confederacy and the Confederate leadership has to deal with difficult issues of financial dependency.
National governments are expensive. Thomas Jefferson was shocked to discover this. The Constitution was an attempt to create a system in which each state fulfilled its obligations.
A continuing Confederacy would have discovered that debt service is expensive and importing all manufactured items is not profitable. Eventually they would have been faced with the same problems as Japan, without Japan's geographic and ethnic advantages, perhaps.