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Would we all be better off if we had never had slaves?

Would we as a country be better of if there had been no slavery here?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 88.9%
  • No

    Votes: 2 11.1%

  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .
I don't think so. The attempted colonization of the Americas was failing for our colonies. Now you make a good point about the spanish and french, but they didn't fair a whole lot better. But that is certainly a viable option as well.



Sticking to how it was worded in the Poll question, it was about America (us) and slavery (not just AA slavery). Which then would imply no NA slavery either. And left to their own devices, English colonists wouldn't have lasted, and we wouldn't be a country.

Good point. I should have clarified that as African slavery. We still have slavery here and many would argue that we certainly would not be better off without it. I am speaking, of course, of the Girl Scouts of American, an organization that exists solely for the distribution of cookies by an army of young female slaves. I for one would miss the thin mints.
 
Fair enough... But the Russians were coming too, The spanish were attacking the south, Britsh colonies in the east and French in the North... The battles in the south were failing, but over time the European population would have increased to the point where they could. The Natives inferior farming, building, medicine, and war tactics would have eventually fallen...

Possibly. The initial spanish, french and english settlers brought with them a lot of technology that Native Americans began incorporating. Given some time, they may have caught up. In theory they could have opened trade routes with England, Spain, and others after they had given up here, and that type of alliance may have offered them protection. It is only may have, probably more likely that someone else would have taken over the continent if England/US hadn't.
 
But those would not be same black people because their parents would not have ever met.If your parents met other people instead of each other you would not exist. There wouldn't some wierd version of you with your father's family or some other weird version of you with your mother's family. You simply would not exist anywhere. Much the same way if America never had slaves most of the black people in the US would not exist anywhere.
The above presumes that each individual human being is simply an accident resulting from the mixing of genomes, and not an immortal spirit in temporary possession of a body. That's an atheistic viewpoint. Do you consider yourself an atheist, then?
 
The above presumes that each individual human being is simply an accident resulting from the mixing of genomes, and not an immortal spirit in temporary possession of a body. That's an atheistic viewpoint. Do you consider yourself an atheist, then?
1.That is not just a atheistic view. I am not a atheist.

2.We are product of our parents.
 
I was thinking about that as I wrote it actually. All 8 of my great grand parents come from Poland (Prussian region actually), had it not been for the Holocaust they would not have come here, at least not all of them would have.

Everything results from something. Its kind of like how Buddhists believe everything results from "causes and conditions".
 
Answer: yes.

This is fun! Give me another!

OK would we have won WWII faster if Spiderman and Superman were Allied Commandos?
 
The answer is pretty obvious isn't it?

Some people would be better off, some people would be worse off. Simple.
 
Obama's ancestors weren't slaves. His black half came from Africa.

Not sure how to answer your question. My family didn't own slaves. They were poor white immigrants.

Same here. Somehow that doesn't make us any less guilty.
 
The answer is pretty obvious isn't it?

Some people would be better off, some people would be worse off. Simple.

That kind of defeats the exercise in consideration. For instance, back when I was 18 I sawed off a couple of my fingers at work with a table saw. They were put back on, but since the blade went thru a couple of joints they don't operate the same and are a little shorter. BUT, I wouldn't go back and not have that happen. At the time I was on my way to being a field service tech for Canon copiers. That means doing repairs on office equipment. I likely would have hated it in the long run. Instead they rescinded their offer and after the cast and pins were removed I fell into my current field of auto repair. So not all bad things that happen have all negative outcomes.

Let's take someone like Will Smith for instance. Young black guy does some rap, has a hit TV show, goes on to do movies and seems to be an all around good guy. What would life be like for him if there had not been slavery here? Would he have been here at all? Would he have been a sheepherder somewhere? Or would he still have been successful because of the kind of person he is?
 
OK would we have won WWII faster if Spiderman and Superman were Allied Commandos?

Spiderman could really only take on about thirty or forty people, which is fine if you need someone to have your back in a pinch, but he's hardly a threat to the 3rd Reich. Basically, if both Spiderman and Superman both invaded the beaches of Normandy at the same time, Superman would have punched out Hitler (not kill, Superman doesn't kill) while Spiderman was still marching a mile out from the coast. So in fact, WWII would have been won pretty much from the moment Superman decided to enter the conflict.

My position on history being objectively better had we never had slavery comes from the fact that I see many more cons than pros. Besides the moral stain on the country and the racial divide, we also have a cultural divide between a region of the country that permanently identifies itself in terms of the civil war, and the rest of the country. While the Cold War presented us a platform to be a serious world leader, without the Cold War the paralysis and division in the United States has turned on itself and we see the rest of the world slowly moving on without us. And yes, I blame slavery for this.

Without slavery, though, our music would have sucked a lot more. Black influence in music is definitely a check in the positive column.

My take on atrocities in history is not a kneejerk one, however. If we had no war or atrocities from the beginning of human civilization, I don't think there would be a single recognizable aspect of human civilization now, and that is simply too far outside my scope to guess whether that would be better or worse. As a counter to the "slavery was bad" position, I would present an atrocity that was, in the long term, positive: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons were always inevitable. One way or another, humans were going to get them, and the first time we used them in an attack on people was when only one country possessed the weapons, and they were just "wimpy" atom bombs instead of the 500kt-1mt monsters we have today. Even still, the world was so abjectly horrified by their use that no one has used them since, in spite of the fact that today pretty much everybody and their dog has at least a few. Be sure to knock on wood.

My position on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being even remotely a positive thing even in the very long term is not one I air IRL, to be honest. It's more than a little cheeky for me to say that it's okay for them to be bombed so we could be spared from nuclear annihilation ourselves.
 
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That kind of defeats the exercise in consideration. For instance, back when I was 18 I sawed off a couple of my fingers at work with a table saw. They were put back on, but since the blade went thru a couple of joints they don't operate the same and are a little shorter. BUT, I wouldn't go back and not have that happen. At the time I was on my way to being a field service tech for Canon copiers. That means doing repairs on office equipment. I likely would have hated it in the long run. Instead they rescinded their offer and after the cast and pins were removed I fell into my current field of auto repair. So not all bad things that happen have all negative outcomes.

Let's take someone like Will Smith for instance. Young black guy does some rap, has a hit TV show, goes on to do movies and seems to be an all around good guy. What would life be like for him if there had not been slavery here? Would he have been here at all? Would he have been a sheepherder somewhere? Or would he still have been successful because of the kind of person he is?

If we did not have slavery in this country then Will Smith would have never been born anywhere. His parents and everyone dating back to the first of his family who were the children of the first people brought here on slave ships would have never been born. I do not think anyone voting YES realizes that every single individual whose ancestors were slaves in this country would have never been born anywhere in this world due to the fact it was because of slavery that their ancestors met in the first place.
 
That kind of defeats the exercise in consideration. For instance, back when I was 18 I sawed off a couple of my fingers at work with a table saw. They were put back on, but since the blade went thru a couple of joints they don't operate the same and are a little shorter. BUT, I wouldn't go back and not have that happen. At the time I was on my way to being a field service tech for Canon copiers. That means doing repairs on office equipment. I likely would have hated it in the long run. Instead they rescinded their offer and after the cast and pins were removed I fell into my current field of auto repair. So not all bad things that happen have all negative outcomes.

Let's take someone like Will Smith for instance. Young black guy does some rap, has a hit TV show, goes on to do movies and seems to be an all around good guy. What would life be like for him if there had not been slavery here? Would he have been here at all? Would he have been a sheepherder somewhere? Or would he still have been successful because of the kind of person he is?

And questions on such hypotheticals are an exercise in futility. If, somewhere in history, a different sperm won the race then maybe we'd have hoverboards or a cure for cancer. Maybe polio would never have been eradicated. Or maybe Star Wars would never have existed. History is chaos theory. A long sequence of butterfly effects with nigh unpredictable outcomes. Even the smallest variance could have made life better or worse for all of us, nevermind something as huge as slavery not existing.

If we did not have slavery in this country then Will Smith would have never been born anywhere. His parents and everyone dating back to the first of his family who were the children of the first people brought here on slave ships would have never been born. I do not think anyone voting YES realizes that every single individual whose ancestors were slaves in this country would have never been born anywhere in this world due to the fact it was because of slavery that their ancestors met in the first place.

And who's to say you'd have necessarily been born? Without slavery your family might have died out.
 
Obama's ancestors weren't slaves. His black half came from Africa.

While that is true it is still most likely that he would have never been born. A large segment of Africans were removed from various countries and tribes throughout Africa thus making it possible for Barrack Obama Sr's ancestors to meet.
 
And who's to say you'd have necessarily been born? Without slavery your family might have died out.

That is most likely true.This country would be radically different today if you took out slavery and the things that resulted from slavery. Which means many people would not exist today.
 
Interesting thought. Consider that slaves had never been brought here. Considering that they were captured and sold by other tribal Africans, they likely would have been sold to somebody else, or just killed.
Bit presumptive, that.

For one thing the kidnaping of Africans to sell into slavery would not have reached the heights it did, without white demand (not just N.America). Where enslavement was not uncommon amongst African tribes and nations, it usually entailed enslaving the POWs, a far lower number in the local fracas. Barely ever was war initiated to raid for slavery until the traders came.
But either way if they had not been brought here, there would be no descendants of slaves here either, probably no Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, maybe not even a Barack Obama. So would we have been better off?
Yes.

Not for lack of the people mentioned or anybody less prominent, but for the simple reason that the blemish on US history and culture would not have appeared.
 
I don't believe racism, or this "stigma against blacks", is here in America because of slavery. Some people just treat people different than them differently.
Where that is undoubtedly true, racism against blacks in the US has its roots in that very same slavery.
 
The existence of slavery in the United States was immoral, and the country would be better off if slavery had not been practiced here just because of that. Slavery brought with it many societal ills however, such as the racism that continued to exist after abolition. The Civil War would probably not have happened, and the North-South cultural divide probably would be far less emphasized.
 
The existence of slavery in the United States was immoral, and the country would be better off if slavery had not been practiced here just because of that. Slavery brought with it many societal ills however, such as the racism that continued to exist after abolition. The Civil War would probably not have happened, and the North-South cultural divide probably would be far less emphasized.

So you are saying that we would be better off if most of the Americans of African decent never existed?
 
We'd also be better off without poverty and crime but that is a pipe dream.
 
Impossible to know and irrelevant to worry about, imo.

What matters is that it was a horrible thing to do to other human beings...end of story.
 
Impossible to know and irrelevant to worry about, imo.

What matters is that it was a horrible thing to do to other human beings...end of story.

Well, no, unfortunately it's not the end of the story at all. That's part of why slavery was so horrible: its repercussions are felt to this day.
 
Interesting thought. Consider that slaves had never been brought here. Considering that they were captured and sold by other tribal Africans, they likely would have been sold to somebody else, or just killed. But either way if they had not been brought here, there would be no descendants of slaves here either, probably no Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, maybe not even a Barack Obama. So would we have been better off?
Two things, first there's really no way to answer that question, because . . . secondly "we" still have slaves and essentially always have had... Right now all of "our" slaves are in Asian countries or US jails but for all practical purposes, they are slaves, and they produce what "we" want whether they want to or not, and at wages so low that they are in fact slaves wages.
 
I doubt the Native Americans would have repopulated and fought back... it would have taken more time, but the European take over of the Americas was inevitable... it happened in every single part of the Americas. If the east coast wasn't strong enough than the Spanish in mexico would have been or the french in the north... or the russians in the west
There also would have been more enslaving of Native americans... they were ditched in favor of Africans because they were "weaker" and less hearty.

lol. No, they were not weaker or less hearty. They could not and would not be controlled.
 
lol. No, they were not weaker or less hearty. They could not and would not be controlled.

That's what they said at the time :shrug:
 
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