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

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

#211

Post by ionised »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #80
nebabyte wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We hit Hitler comparisons fast on this thread, eh god forbid people bring up hitler in a thread about history/world politics In fact, let's just scrub history of any references to Germany so we can make internet threads marginally less annoying

You probably know as well as I do that Godwin's law is almost as old as the internet itself.

Godwin's law is not a law of nature, and Godwin himself stated that it is being abused to stifle debate;

From Wikipedia;

Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by the American lawyer, journalist, and author Glenn Greenwald.

In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician."

On August 13, 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.

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

#212

Post by ionised »

oh_sigh wrote: post #159
zizek23 wrote: post #34

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…

If the US was stolen, then the Native American tribes were also stealing it from previous occupants. Heck, there are tribes in the southwest which only got to the southwest by conquering other Native American tribes after Europeans were already roaming around here. So, it's hard to really feel sorry for them, especially because Europeans put the land to much more productive use per acre than Native Americans did.

So genocide is excusable provided the excuse is productivity?

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

#213

Post by agumonkey »

chrisco255 wrote: post #172
agumonkey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except maybe for Canada, these weren't invasion though. I have to admit there were lot more conflicts I knew about. We shouldn't learn history focused around our own country only .. it makes us foolish about the rest of the world.

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

#214

Post by ransom1538 »

maxerickson wrote: post #118
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…

The British stole the president's dinner and burned the White House during the war of 1812: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington#White_Ho... A storm intervened on behalf of USA.

"One force [British] burned Washington but failed to capture Baltimore, and sailed away when its commander was killed. In northern New York State, 10,000 British veterans were marching south until a decisive defeat at the Battle of Plattsburgh forced them back to Canada.[b] Nothing was known of the fate of the third large invasion force aimed at capturing New Orleans and southwest. The Prime Minister wanted the Duke of Wellington to command in Canada and take control of the Great Lakes." [i]

Sure, they burned the White House [battle won], but lost the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

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

#215

Post by freeflight »

chrisco255 wrote: post #151
freeflight wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can't seriously claim that slavery wasn't the global norm in the 17th and 18th centuries. 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 f…

"Disenfranchisement" is an understatement at best. They were being exterminated. However, I don't think the world was entirely aware of just how bad it was. Information travels much much faster nowadays. At any rate, there is no other nation or point in time prior to the 20th century that you can pretend those values even exist. Even "equality" itself is a Western value. Every nation in human history has spilt blood,…

> At any rate, there is no other nation or point in time prior to the 20th century that you can pretend those values even exist.

These "values" existed all over the world back then, driven by a scientific movement we aptly named "scientific racism" these days. You know, a whole section of science busy trying to explain why some humans are just so much "better" than other humans based on their skin color, size of the head or other arbitrary physical attributes. This followed right on the tail of an era of colonialization which was also fueled by the racial stigma of "We gotta civilize those heathen savages by enslaving them and taking their lands".

It's exactly those values being so widespread and accepted which lead to the Nazis taking the "next step", which wasn't a really big one. The difference between treating a whole group of people as "lesser humans" by law, having them act as a slave class, and "exterminating" these very same people because there are supposedly too many of them, isn't that big of a difference.

The "values" behind these two approaches are exactly the same, labeling a whole group of people as "lesser humans", the difference was only a matter of execution in how to deal with those people. The US commercialized this behavior by using the slave force, putting a price on people like they are property. Similarly, forced labor drove large parts of the Third Reich's war machine and economic progress.

This might sound cold-hearted or like I'm trying to excuse the crimes of the Third Reich, none of this is my intention, my intention merely to point out how whole nations can be hypocrites about their own moral position because they didn't kill disfranchised people on a supposedly "industrialized scale", but "only" on a commercialized one.

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

#216

Post by freeflight »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #208
ionised wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only pointing out the sins of others because some dick decided to turn a fun historical thread into smug hate the US thread. You are kind of proving his point. He made a valid criticism of the US and its people's tendency to excuse their own bad behaviour, while noting that it is likely a common thing across most nations, and you get really defensive and angry because he had the audacity to do so. That's the American…

No, I'm interpreting "criticism" as smug hate because the criticism isn't really related to the article and isn't even accurate. stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe Exaggerated bullshit. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder Where's the jingoism in that article? The thread was a good excuse to get the hate on. If the OP would like to make…

> Where's the jingoism in that article? The thread was a good excuse to get the hate on. If the OP would like to make accurate and measured claims, then we could have a discussion.

Ain't that a tad bit thin-skinned? If you consider this "hate" then boy ain't you lucky that you are no German. As a German, the only thing most people know about the country or culture pretty much boils down to "Oh Hitler and you killed millions of Jews!" maybe throw in some "beer/sausage/sauerkraut" for good measure.

No nation is perfect, pretty much every nation has some "ugly spots" in their past, the difference being in how nations treat these ugly spots. Imho that is where the US, as a nation, has been failing and keeps on failing because it considers itself so "exceptional" that even morals don't apply and as such it supposedly did never do anything wrong at all. A very one-sided narrative, a view of human history like it's all just a comic book story about the "good guys fighting the bad guys" where the good guys could never do wrong because for them the ends of "beating evil" always justify the means, it's like a "Hollywood reality".

This isn't meant as an attack on the country or the people, but merely as an outside observation: The US pretending to be "the good guys", regardless of what kind of methods they use or motivations they have, is one of the reasons why so many people around the world consider the US a nation of hypocrites and the biggest and most dangerous "rogue nation" on this planet.

Yes, this also exists in other countries, but no other country has such a global cultural/military reach and influence as the US does, so it sticks out the most and ends up influencing world affairs the most.

Again: This is not "hate", it's an observation from an outside-the-US PoV that's merely meant to inform.

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

#217

Post by aaron-lebo »

freeflight wrote: post #216
aaron-lebo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm interpreting "criticism" as smug hate because the criticism isn't really related to the article and isn't even accurate. stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe Exaggerated bullshit. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder Where's the jingoism in that article? The thread was a good excuse to get the hate on. If the OP would like to make…

> Where's the jingoism in that article? The thread was a good excuse to get the hate on. If the OP would like to make accurate and measured claims, then we could have a discussion. Ain't that a tad bit thin-skinned? If you consider this "hate" then boy ain't you lucky that you are no German. As a German, the only thing most people know about the country or culture pretty much boils down to "Oh Hitler and you killed m…

I just don't believe that US as a whole is really so unaware of its past. I grew up in Texas public schools and we learned about the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow, etc. We're very aware of a very dark history.

If the US was really such an intolerant and unrepentant place, you wouldn't even have a debate about race. By and large we are a society that acknowledges wrongs and tries to fix them, even if it take decades to do so. I believe that's because the US is really not a singular culture but a mix of many, which ends up being a great advantage.

If it appears from the outside that the US sees itself in Hollywood good vs evil terms, everyone does. I guarantee you Merkel believes she is on the right side of history and a lot of Germans that they are culturally superior to others (you can observe it in this thread; maybe they have good reason). Yeah, US media promulgates a biased message, but that's Hollywood, US media at the same time is very ready to criticize such absurdities (see World Police, or modern political humor which is huge worldwide - Stewart, Colbert, Oliver).

It's just annoying to hear people from outside cultures try and shrink down a nation of 50 mini-nations and 300 million people into some kind of comprehensive worldview. It's not reality.

I assume other countries aren't perfect places, but I'm not on French and German message boards telling Germans how they're just thieves and murderers and that's why they have been successful. If you'll reread some of the comments in this thread, that sentiment is barely hidden.

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

#218

Post by notfromhere »

jogjayr wrote: post #191
jalayir wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is hardly resource rich. Especially not per-capita.

And, all things considered, India's hardly done "terribly". It's a remarkable achievement to maintain a united, democratic, mostly peaceful nation for 70 years straight (and counting). Most former colonies collapsed into destructive civil war, then military rule, within decades of independence. India has so far avoided that fate. Heck, most developed European countries have barely managed to avoid it in the past cent…

The colonies that fell apart we're ones where there wasn't much organization and what organization existed was for resource extraction.

The Dominions were built for settlement, so they were sustainable states. India and other Asian colonies already had their own very established cultures and civilizations, and hence fared much better.

Pretty remarkable India hasn't exploded into separatism due to resource pressure, but I don't know how sustainable that is given that the population is still increasing

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

#219

Post by notfromhere »

kryptiskt wrote: post #49
zizek23 wrote: post #34

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?

Niall Ferguson had an interesting thesis on property rights and the style of colonial gov't is what made all the difference.

Argentina had a good run, but internal politics have shit the bed in that country for a good century

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

#220

Post by notfromhere »

Apocryphon wrote: post #100
thesmallestcat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina is a great place for ranching and certain crops, but it has very little mineral wealth. I would hazard that the two most likely reasons for South America's slow progress are that its colonies were attached to ailing empires, and that a rugged and challenging geography made unification difficult to unimaginable. American history has no analog to the horrific War of Triple Alliance, a historical microcosm of…

Not to mention that Argentina was doing quite well for itself at the onset of the 20th century- unfortunately political instability and other challenges hamstrung it since then. If some rolls of the dice had gone differently, it would be solidly in first place status by now, same as Chile.

Argentina's economic miracle fell apart due to constant shift in power between the agrarian landowners and the urban workers.
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