Re: Re: Re: RE: Query on slavery

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:30 PM 10/19/2000 +0000, you wrote:
> Michael wrote,
>
> > ... claims that the large slave operations were efficient ...
> >
> > Field, Elizabeth B. 1988. "The Relative Efficiency of Slavery
> >    Revisited: A Translog Production Function Approach."...
> > Hoffer, R.A. and S.T. Folland. 1991. "The Relative Efficiency of
> >    Slave Agriculture: .....
>
> I look at this stuff many years ago. These claims are wrong. I recollect that
> the basic problem is measuring the amount of "labor input" in a slave system.
> It can't be properly measured and, so, very poor proxy measures have to be
> used. Any econometric study of efficiency in slavery is an example of garbage
> in, garbage out.

there's also the problem (which Fogel and Engerman fell for) of comparing
output/worker for different sectors. Unfortunately, you can't compare
cotton/worker with corn/worker, just as you can't compare apples and
oranges. You can aggregate such things, using prices, but if relative
prices change (as they always do), it affects productivity measures.

> The basic ideological issue behind this efficiency is the neoclassical
> assumption that what exists is efficient. Slavery existed and, so, it must
> have
> been efficient (so say the neoclassicals). The concern of neoclassicals
> is, if
> slavery existed and was not efficient, when then what does this say about
> production within capitalism--it is not necessarily efficient?

I think that this is unfair to the NCs, since there is a big part of their
economics which concerns the way in which market failures -- which are
inefficient -- persist over time and thus need government fixing. Of
course, the problem is that they assume the government is neutral, or for
James Buchanan, that it always f*cks things up.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine