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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

#221

Post by cryptonector »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #197
cryptonector wrote: post #101

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…

>Some of the wealthiest countries are deprived of natural resources (Israel, Singapore, Monaco, and others) Not exactly great examples. All three contain excellent natural resources, ports on major trading routes, that drive or drove their economy.

That's not oil, land, water, etc. By your definition almost every country has tons of natural resources, and yet results are so disparate.

Lots of other countries have strategic trading locations: Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Argentina (well, not since the Panama canal, I guess), Egypt, Saudi, Iran, and so on.

Maybe, just maybe, ideas matter?

"People, ideas, materiel. In that order!" - John Boyd, COL, USAF.

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

#222

Post by googletazer »

America became the biggest economy because of brains and innovation driving it, its as true a hundred years ago as it is today. The opportunity to make money for yourself - thats what drove the American economy and still drives it today. A lot of people are commenting that American wealth came from slavery, but that is simply not so - nearly every country on Earth had some degrees of slavery, but how many had succeeded? Slaves didn't smelt steel, nor designed and built battleships to be sold to the Russian Empire in 1900s.

Today though, you can see countries like Germany take the lead with their better protections for inventors and better incentives and protections for the employees.

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

#223

Post by cryptonector »

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…

India has done very well in one sense: it's still a democracy!

And it's growing quite fast nowadays.

But in the time since independence it's hardly done very well at all -- certainly not in relation to its full potential!

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

#224

Post by notfromhere »

vacri wrote: post #189
aaron-lebo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apart from gold, which was only really useful in the advanced economy of Europe (a hammer made of gold isn't very good), what was the mineral wealth extracted from South America in this period? What minerals could be easily used to supplement agriculture and build industry in the local area? What mineral industries do you see as being far easier in SA than NA in your period? What are the mineral industries that you s…

Silver, copper, etc.

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

#225

Post by cryptonector »

manojlds wrote: post #125
jalayir wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And in context of parent comment, India was plundered by the British.

Plunder is a silly excuse. Whatever plunder, it's been over for a long time. A lot of countries have managed to grow very fast from abject poverty to first-world status. Japan. South Korea. Argentina (then reverted -- what foreign power plundered them from the 50s onward, eh?!). The U.S., naturally. And others.

China is the latest: from the depths of the Great Leap Forward (backward) to now. And that's even though China too was plundered. That's a huge "so what" to the plunder thing.

Stop making excuses.

Incidentally, Argentina is a hugely important case-study. It was never really plundered. Its history has tremendous parallels to the United States', oddly enough. It had a tremendous growth between the 1880s and the Great Depression, and grew to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the time of WWII. Yet somehow it has missed out on decades of growth potential, and is now full of shanty towns, with a huge proportion of the population in true poverty (not what we call poverty in the U.S.). HOW IN THE WORLD DID THAT HAPPEN?! There were no significant wars in Argentina since its peak. There has been no foreign power plunder in Argentina in that time. The make-up of the population didn't change much. So what happened?? Well, it's easy to see what happened there: bad ideas.

"People, ideas, materiel. In that order!" - John Boyd, COL, USAF.

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

#226

Post by cryptonector »

HumbleGamer wrote: post #132
cryptonector wrote: post #101

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…

Well, should we consider some of the underlying factors for why African nations in particular are doing terribly? Seems the 1885 Berlin treaty set that continent back for at least a few centuries, the effects of which are still causing havok to this day.

See my replies below. There are certainly countries that did well in spite of plunder. And countries that reverted from wealthy to poverty with no plunder in sight.

Ideas matter.

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

#227

Post by erikpukinskis »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #198
enraged_camel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What I object to is someone who's bitter because he's not American launching into an irrelevant tirade and acting like they are somehow better when 60 years ago Europeans were exterminating each other. 75 years ago Europeans were exterminating each other. Today, they are united and peaceful for the most part, and their union is one of the largest and most successful economies in the world. 75 years ago America ente…

If we want to talk about perspective, it's ironic that "zizek" is very possibly Russian or Eastern European, and if so lives in a country that has a far bigger issue with Neo-Nazis than the US, they just don't have the same media exposure. I think it's delusional to believe that the prejudices that led to literal genocide in Europe within living memory (more recent than that even, see the Balkans) have faded more tha…

You're shadow boxing. I didn't say those things.

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

#228

Post by cclements »

freeflight wrote: post #134
erikpukinskis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life will be fine. Rats, pigeons, raccoons, flies, jellyfish, quite a few plants, fungi, etc, will all be fine. 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…

> 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. Extinction scale events have been "a thing" in Earth's history for as long as Earth's been around [0], as you note we are very likely in the middle of another one right now [1] The big difference this time being: Previous ones most certainly had not been man-made, this one has a ve…

You're probably thinking of the "Great Filter"

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

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

#229

Post by boomboomsubban »

cryptonector wrote: post #221
boomboomsubban wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some of the wealthiest countries are deprived of natural resources (Israel, Singapore, Monaco, and others) Not exactly great examples. All three contain excellent natural resources, ports on major trading routes, that drive or drove their economy.

That's not oil, land, water, etc. By your definition almost every country has tons of natural resources, and yet results are so disparate. Lots of other countries have strategic trading locations: Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Argentina (well, not since the Panama canal, I guess), Egypt, Saudi, Iran, and so on. Maybe, just maybe , ideas matter? "People, ideas, materiel. In that order!" - John Boyd, COL, U…

>By your definition alm every country has tons of natural resources, and yet results are so disparate.

Not really, being the easternmost port on the Mediterranean and southernmost point of Asia are fairly special things. Add in the almost city-state nature of those examples, and they do noting to prove your point.

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

#230

Post by taway_1212 »

newsmania wrote: post #73
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…

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…

> It’s just not right to say that so few people should get to control the entire continent just because they were there first.

That logic could still be applied today. Asia and Arica combined are over 5.5 billion people. I bet a lot of those people would be more than happy to emigrate to the US. Why should so few (merely 300-400 million Americans and Canadians) control entire continent just because they got there earlier?

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