Originally Posted by
JuniperWoolf
That's not mathematically correct. To discuss the minute points of ecological chaos theory would take a really long *** time but I'll give you one obvious example of a very large, observable change. What we're talking about happened a long time ago, when the world's population was quite low. If we were to go into the world's genetic tree, those people who's offspring would have been changed because of African slavery would be the starting branches for billions of people, and those are people, variables abound. People cause things, great social changes. Imagine if Hitler had never been born, or if Gandhi had never been born, or ANY huge social changer (Bush, Kim Jong-Il, Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Stalin, the list goes on forever). How could you be sure that there wouldn't have been another huge social changer in that massive group of billions of people who would have existed in the hypothetical scenario in which black slavery in America never happened? It's a solid bet that there would have been at least a couple and that's all you need to change the world, one Shakespeare or one Alexander of Macedonia. Not to mention the fact that a few of the big names in our reality would never have been born, Martin Luthor King for example. How would the world change then? Hell, the reproduction of the slave owners would have been altered as well, not as much time for ****ing if you have to pick your own damn cotton. Some white Americans who you might not even think connected to anything at all might never have been born, and other people would have taken their place, people who would have been raised under different conditions and who would make completely different decisions. And then remember the medium and the multitudes of small effects as well, they really add up. I'm telling you, society and the world would be completely different in ways nobody can possibly predict.
That's why Bewlay's suggestion that people are "better off" because of black slavery doesn't hold water. There is no way in hell that you can predict a thing like that.