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In South Carolina, the governor has called for the Confederate flag to stop flying over the capitol. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina quickly declared that they would remove the flag from state license plates. Meanwhile, several of the country's top retailers -- including eBay and Amazon -- announced in quick succession that they would stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. Now MJ Lee reports at CNN that the debate over the Confederate flag is the most recent and vivid illustration of how changes in the business community can influence and pressure politics. "What you are seeing is a broad, acknowledgment across both the consumer, the political and the business community that that particular emblem is no longer part of something that should be a state-issued emblem," says GOP strategist Scott Jennings.
Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Sears announced within the span of one day that they would ban the sale of Confederate flag merchandise from their stores, saying they had no intention of offending customers. As Walmart CEO Doug McMillon put it, the decision was straightforward: "We want everybody to feel comfortable shopping at Walmart." Corporate and business leaders say that the abandoning the flag is a step towards inclusiveness for a region that has long struggled to shed negative images. "The business community -- they have a lot of say and power all over the country, whether it's on religion or ethnicity or LGBT issues," says Ralph Northam. "When you're running a business, you have to have the doors open and welcome diversity."
takyon: Alabama Governor Orders Removal Of Confederate Flags From Capitol
'Dukes of Hazzard' toy car General Lee loses its Confederate flag
Note: These moves are in response to the events in Charleston.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:57AM
Not quite that easy but probably not much more complicated either.
Just passing a law saying nobody is born a slave would have a huge unintended consequence that everybody at the time would have seen and it would have scuttled the idea. Slaves were both an asset and a responsibility, owners had obligations both legal and practical. They couldn't just kill them or otherwise obviously mistreat them; if the law didn't catch you the slaves would still know and good luck getting productivity out of the truly hopeless. The obligation of interest here is care in old age, you couldn't just shoot em when they got too old to work you know. An owner was obligated to care for them until they died, which usually wasn't a problem since at any time you would always have a few elderly, some children, etc. who weren't currently productive but it all evened out and seeing that the old were being cared for now meant a young working age slave would have reason to believe he would receive similar treatment. Cut off the supply in a single stroke and every idiot would know what would be happening a few decades out. They would all be manumitted when they grew old and left to fend for themselves with zero resources because the plantations would have no other viable option.
Btw, this is a very similar problem to trying to unwind any other pension system like the Social Security Ponzi scheme. Also note that Lincoln's Final Solution to the question of slavery likewise had the exact same problem, but this detail was of course totally ignored among the horrific pain and misery generally afflicting the conquered lands of the South. In the end, exactly like SJWs of today, they were lying; they cared not for the plight of the slaves but for the feelz of superiority they got from their political posturing. And the rush of -POWER-.