No I don’t see the difference. My argument is based upon years of study. It is a well-founded argument. You called it absurd. Therefore, you are calling my studies and my knowledge on the issue absurd, which is an insult. Try to weasel out of it if you want, but it was an insult.
You miss the point that it could not have worked out economically.
What would have happened with the paid-for slaves? Would they have moved to the North (very likely to get away from the ‘evil South’). This would have glutted the labor market and driven wages down even further. The North would have benefited because they would have seen massive profits with the depressed wages caused by the glut of laborers. They would also have benefited by driving their Southern competitors into insolvency. I don’t see this as much more moral than slavery itself. In fact, as I said, I see the Northern system as a form of slavery, just without the chains. Is it a freeway if you have to pay to drive on it? Were the Northern workers “free” if it was virtually impossible to make any change in their lives?
Would they have remained in the South? If so, they would have drawn much higher wages, thus bankrupting the South.
20 years ago I would have agreed with you. But since that time I have spent a lot of time undoing the brainwashing of mainstream, government-run education. And I know much more now than I did then. I even had to undergo the painful admission that what I had believed was wrong.
Ron Paul’s idea is in fact absurd. And it is absurd on many levels, some of which I have outlined. The South would never have gone for it. State sovereignty was a pivotal issue. And this idea would have led to ruin economically.
Most likely. That's where the greatest need for Labor would have existed; and, following Compensated Emancipation, the greatest amount of free cash seeking labor.
If so, they would have drawn much higher wages, thus bankrupting the South.
Sorry, but that's not an economically-sensible claim.
Where labor costs are freely-negotiated and dynamic (i.e., not stratified by Union-backed wage laws, etc.), labor supply and demand will meet at the equilibrium, market-clearing price. This price will be lower than a price which would cause any sort of general bankruptcy; because if labor costs are high enough to cause a business to go into bankruptcy, the workers will lose their jobs and have to look for employment in businesses which do NOT pay bankruptcy-inducing high wages (since those will be the businesses still in operation and able to offer employment). If bankruptcy destroys jobs, that puts extra labor on the market, resulting in a drop in labor prices to a level which can be profitably sustained.
Since I don't think that you're an idiot, then you already know that this is basic free-market-capitalist labor economics. And it works.