121–130 of 252 posts
Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…
So why didn't it happen in South America?
Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…
Other resource-rich countries haven't fared as well. Indeed, it is a truism that the more natural resources, the worse a country performs economically. Some of the wealthiest countries are deprived of natural resources (Israel, Singapore, Monaco, and others) while a bunch of resource-rich countries have done poorly or terribly (Brazil, Argentina, all of Africa, India, Russia, and others). It's what you do with the st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why didn't it happen in South America?
The settlers who went to South America with the dreams of plucking gold bars out of the fruit trees and using an enslaved population to make hard farm work a breeze met a harsher reality. I don't know for certain, but I assume that the land was harder to make arable, the weather was less forgiving, the rainforests brought additional problems (like persistence of mosquitos and ticks). Plus South America didn't unify l…
rich soils in river valleys
Given that 400+ years of growth has got us into a position where the likelihood is that the planet will be unable to sustain human life within a few hundred years, I'd be curious to find out what future historians will make of the West's supposedly proud story of progress. In the end, would we all have been better sticking with the Native American way of life? Benjamin Franklin: “When white persons of either sex have…
The Cretaceous was a thing. The atmosphere had about as much CO2 as it could hold. There were lots of animals. We're headed back to it.
Will there be Eastern Brown Pecker Grouse habitat? No. Will there be coral reefs? Lol no. Will most of the pages of National Geographic be unrecognizable by the naturalists of the future? Yup.
But life will continue. All we're doing is robbing future generations of the myriad beautiful and delicate old growth ecologies that we were taught about in school. We can go snorkeling in them, or hiking in them. They'll just watch 1080p videos of them on their AR glasses.
We're headed back to the Cretaceous. We're going to take the biodiversity of the planet down two orders of magnitude. Maybe four.
That's all.
If we coders get our act together we'll get a decentralized anarchist bioremediation movement going which will rehome millions of acres of biome to Cretaceous-friendly locations, we'll limit the biodiversity loss to that 100x range. 10x if I'm feeling optimistic and smoking really good weed.
I think we can do it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other resource-rich countries haven't fared as well. Indeed, it is a truism that the more natural resources, the worse a country performs economically. Some of the wealthiest countries are deprived of natural resources (Israel, Singapore, Monaco, and others) while a bunch of resource-rich countries have done poorly or terribly (Brazil, Argentina, all of Africa, India, Russia, and others). It's what you do with the st…
India is hardly resource rich. Especially not per-capita.
No mention of an incredibly wealthy continent, both in mineral and agricultural terms (and a temperate climate), that was largely seized by killing the people who owned it and taking their stuff. No mention of the Louisiana Purchase. without which 'Manifest Destiny' would never have occurred, nor the Mexican-American war which added Texas and California, two of the engine-rooms of American wealth today. No mention of…
No mention of an incredibly wealthy continent, both in mineral and agricultural terms
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The EU in many ways acts like one big economy due to its customs union, freedom of movement of workers, capital, goods and services, extensive harmonised regulations, partially harmonised taxation, wealth transfers between members, a common currency to a substantial part of it, etc. It is a lot more tightly integrated than some mere 28 member free trade area would be, although still not as tightly integrated as say t…
And still the obvious fact remains: 1 country versus 28 separate countries. The UK voted to break off. France came dangerously close to heading down that path with Le Pen. Greece's government might not want to, but the people would be on board for the same. Potentially Germany when they get tired of carrying the rest of the EU (especially after UK) on it's back can all leave whenever they want -- they just need to vo…
If California, for example, tries to succeed, it would be illegal
Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…
The sweet smell of presentism. You can perhaps fault the US for the interlude between British outlawing of slavery and the civil war/abolition, which covers a few decades. But you can't seriously claim that slavery wasn't the global norm in the 17th and 18th centuries. It certainly wasn't "unlimited." Onto the next bit, "stolen...IP from Europe" is a modern characterization of what was in fact a healthy exchange of r…
That's an odd standard to set. Racial discrimination, based on ethnicity, also used to be a global norm, yet that didn't and doesn't excuse the crimes of the Third Reich.
While African-American GI's fought against the disfranchisement of European Jews, their own home country still had racial segregation laws in place for decades after WWII.
One could easily fathom an alternate reality where the Third Reich didn't happen/didn't turn out as extreme and as a result, racial segregation and bigotry would still be a "global standard" because humanity didn't see the worst and most extreme outcomes of it.
Who knows, a couple of decades from now the US might serve as yet another negative example for one of humanities many follies.
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States can't leave the USA countries can leave the EU, which is a massive difference. NAFTA and EU are not countries they are an agreement between countries.
States can leave the US with the consent of Congress. Congress has never given its consent, and it is hard to predict how it would behave if such a request was seriously made today. Congress did reject the demand of the Confederate states to secede, but there was a strong moral argument against allowing their secession–their primary reason for secession were to continue to evil practice of slavery. If a state wanted…
States can leave the US with the consent of Congress.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession...
Given that 400+ years of growth has got us into a position where the likelihood is that the planet will be unable to sustain human life within a few hundred years, I'd be curious to find out what future historians will make of the West's supposedly proud story of progress. In the end, would we all have been better sticking with the Native American way of life? Benjamin Franklin: “When white persons of either sex have…
I write about a possible future where communities of people purchase robots that do most of the work they need for survival, and they otherwise live a simpler non-consumerist life. I’d like to make this a reality. http://tlalexander.com/sanctuary/