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A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

economist.com

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Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#171

Post by aaron-lebo »

Mithaldu wrote: post #98
newsmania wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery actually held the USA back. It kept the south rural, whereas the north was far wealthier without slaves because it industrialized. Furthermore, the civil war was incredibly destructive and without slavery would not have occurred. Lastly the USA was not the biggest economy in 1850. As for a “usurped continent”, the land was very sparsely populated by the natives compared to the people who came in, and disease…

> According to your logic, undocumented immigrants are “usurping” America According to your logic integrating successfully into a different society and culture, is the same as arriving with superior weaponry and slaughtering the natives over 149 years. (1775-1924) Your attempt at comparison and equivalence is pitiful and cruel.

The immigrants over the course of 149 years weren't offloading from the boats with rifles in their hands The vast majority of them faced major discrimination themselves. That's why their descendants (who often are also the descendants of natives) object to such biased portrayals.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#172

Post by chrisco255 »

agumonkey wrote: post #57
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you just describing world history, where tribes/peoples have replaced other ones many many times over?

tbh, and not trying to dismiss USA in anyway. I find their situation in time and space pretty exceptional. They had no aggressive neighbors and half a continent. At a time where new knowledge was popping out, having such a playground was very timely.

U.S. had wars with Mexico, Canada, itself, Spain, plenty of war happened in the 19th century.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#173

Post by chrisco255 »

jcranmer wrote: post #163
ransom1538 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. The big advantage the US had was OCEANS on both sides and only stone age peoples to the south. Attacking the US on it's own soil has been a suicide mission for hundreds of years. Counties in order to attack the US would need to pile men on ships travel for a month(s) then attempt to skirmish on the beaches. On the other hand attacking Poland /Korea/China/Spain/Italy/Egypt is a matter of walking. Once ships w…

> Sort of. The big advantage the US had was OCEANS on both sides and only stone age peoples to the south. By the time the US became a country, the indigenous peoples had access to firearms, certainly every one the US Army would have been fighting. It's also worth pointing out that the US bordered an English colony to the north and a mestizo former Spanish colony to the south.

And the French controlled half the continent too before they gave it up for peanuts.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#174

Post by eighthnate »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #169
eighthnate wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's a terrible habit we have as a nation. We are happy to forgive or excuse our sins but hold others to theirs.

How exactly do you determine the habit of 300 million people? How do you differentiate that habit from the Japanese who refuse to officially recognize war crimes in China or the Belgians and Germans whose grandparents wre killing Congolese and Jews respectively? If people in this thread were being honest they'd be well aware that this particularly American flaw isn't so specific to the US.

> If people in this thread were being honest they'd be well aware that this particularly American flaw isn't so specific to the US.

Sure. It's probably a human trait. But I'm not japanese or belgian or german so I wouldn't know.

But I'm responding to a comment which "excused" our sins and I'm an american so that's why I made the comment.

If it is a human trait, so be it. But the fact that you are pointing to the sins of others kinda proves my point doesn't it?

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#175

Post by aaron-lebo »

vacri wrote: post #153
DrScump wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mention of an incredibly wealthy continent, both in mineral and agricultural terms How is North America unusually "wealthy" in minerals? Per unit land area, probably only Australia is less gifted in initial (total value of deposits before human extraction) mineral wealth, even if you count commodities that are not presently allowed to be extracted. I would guess that South America or Africa is greatest.

You're hand-waving away both ease of extraction and also the minerals that were worthwhile in the industrial and pre-industrial ages. North America had plenty of iron and coal, and it was easy to get them around, and also easy to extract and use them for most of the year (the temperate climate). Minerals you can't reach or can't use are not useful - there was not a lot of call for Tantalum in the 1800s. Compare to Br…

The dominance of the Spanish was based off of extracting natural wealth from SA, it's just they squandered that wealth instead of building up industry. From 1500-1800ish there was far more easily taken natural wealth in SA, only a myopic view of history isn't aware of that.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#176

Post by aaron-lebo »

eighthnate wrote: post #174
aaron-lebo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do you determine the habit of 300 million people? How do you differentiate that habit from the Japanese who refuse to officially recognize war crimes in China or the Belgians and Germans whose grandparents wre killing Congolese and Jews respectively? If people in this thread were being honest they'd be well aware that this particularly American flaw isn't so specific to the US.

> If people in this thread were being honest they'd be well aware that this particularly American flaw isn't so specific to the US. Sure. It's probably a human trait. But I'm not japanese or belgian or german so I wouldn't know. But I'm responding to a comment which "excused" our sins and I'm an american so that's why I made the comment. If it is a human trait, so be it. But the fact that you are pointing to the sins…

I see no "excuse" of American sins, only a response to a tirade which makes very targeted and laughable statements like "unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe". Who established the Atlantic slave trade if not Europeans?

Only pointing out the sins of others because some dick decided to turn a fun historical thread into smug hate the US thread. Any educated American is aware of this stuff. The most voted response is unrelated to the story and only getting upvoted because a lot of people in other countries are disappointed the book isn't about them and their formerely rapacious culture.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#177

Post by jcranmer »

Razengan wrote: post #12

Honest question: How much of it is thanks to the US being far away and largely untouched by all the wars in Europe, especially WW2, while still ostensibly profiting from them? And then being the ones to end it with the strongest display of force?

The US became a country in 1783 (conclusion of the Treaty of Paris). In 1789, France had a revolution which kicked off the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which lasted until 1814. The US was indirectly involved in this war because of dueling embargoes by Britain and France and counter-embargoes by the US (which eventually escalates into the War of 1812). After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there are essentially no major European wars until 1914. The US became the largest economy somewhere around 1880-1890, and it only started industrialization around the 1830s, well behind Britain and France.

Basically, to summarize, in the time period between US independence and before the US became the dominant country in terms of economic power, there really weren't any major European wars for the US to be untouched by.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#178

Post by pizza »

syrrim wrote: post #160
pizza wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of the idea that the tragedy of the unintended epidemic resulted, fairly, in property rights for the invaders. It means that either: - "collective pre-existing rights became held in abeyance because so many rightsholders died" -- This assumes the living natives were not the owners of what was still there, either because they were propertyless, or the dead rightsholders didn't have a way to transfer prop…

It means merely that there were very few people laying claim to a very large piece of land. That they were killed by disease means that they weren't killed intentionally in order to take the land. Property rights don't actually exist. The idea of property rights is a way nations like to explain the division of property they allocate to their citizens. In reality, there is very little earth that needs to be divided am…

Yes, I agree property rights are not physical law. That said, who determines what is fairly or unfairly allocated is never who is most sanctimonious but who is holding the gun.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#179

Post by oh_sigh »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #131
maxxxxx wrote: post #44

It will be interesting to see how the next 400 years will go. For a long time the US could just keep growing into new territories and absorb a lot of ambitious immigrants that way. It seems this phase is over. The US is now a grown up country where everything is owned already so it will be much harder to grow. The Trump success seems a symptom of this. Instead of just growing as the US had always done Trump's message…

Detroit is, for most intents and purposes, "not owned". We're in a brief moment where the internet exists, but has not yet disintermediated population centers. Within 10 years there will be a new city born every week in the US with great jobs, great coffee, and "market housing" i.e. construction cost plus 50%. The property markets will collapse. Along with this there will be a massive readjustment of wages in favor o…

> there will be a new city born every week in the US with great jobs

Okay but who is going to pave it? Are self driving asphalt machines a thing yet?

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#180

Post by enraged_camel »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #95
nebabyte wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackneyed phrases are as old as time, kid; doesn't mean you have a point.

It means there are people out there who believe they can win arguments by creating false analogies to Hitler, who is basically indefensible. Godwin's law then makes it really easy to identify trolls, and you can avoid feeding them by not taking the bait.

Hitler wiped out a huge number of people. That's the topic of this comment thread. Therefore, bringing up Hitler is totally fine because it is directly relevant.
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