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Comment by diogocp | Hacker News Reader

Your best example of a "historically efficient way to solve political problems" is a 4 year civil war that killed more than half a million people and, after all that, still left African Americans as second-class citizens for a century after?

I wonder what an inefficient way would look like.

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The amount of violence to keep the slavery running was huge. You cant pretend that all that violence does not count. That being said, war was more about south wanting war/leave the union, because the north did not wanted to expand the slavery to new territories. That threated the south.

It is not like north would march in there to stop the slavery. There was an anti slavery army - John Brown with his, like, 20 or so people attacking south.

African Americans as second class citizens were in fact much better off then them being slaves.

We can theorize about the non-violent path to emancipation, and the speedy path to legal equality.

But it's counterfactual. It took severe violence plus 100 years to get there. Plus another 60 (yikes) to get to where we are today.

That's horrible! But nothing about that reality suggests to me that there was a less-violent or speedier way to get there. Governments are made of people.

Getting there was a worthwhile goal. I don't think there's a "but at what cost?" debate here.

So it sure doesn't feel "efficient", but it might be the "most efficient possible" in the human world.

Sometimes, progress is measured by funerals.

Go learn how weekends were created

Neville Chamberlain is a perfect example.

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