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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

#141

Post by pizza »

thedevil wrote: post #102
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 hasn't been a factor for a century and a half. Natural resources play a meaningful role, but there's plenty of poor countries with resources. And the indigenous people before didn't have a juggernaut economy from those resources. Slavery and a stolen continent are horrible, but they don't explain what happened economically.

In a goldrush, sell the pickaxes. Black men and women picked the cotton for free in captivitiy. Cotton fueled the textile industry. The textile industry blew up because of the industrial revolution. It's just rent-seeking by threat of murder. No, it doesn't explain who had what before this happened, but this is the clearest 'difference that made a difference' to me w.r.t. why America became rich in a very noticeable way while this was occurring.

The slaveowners made profits for nearly no work, and the banks made plenty of profit by giving out loans to the slaveowners to buy more slaves, too. It's hard to look for causality, but this seems like an obvious source of far-removed consolidation of capital that would last over time.

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

#142

Post by mynameishere »

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…

The entire planet was usurped. Over and over and over again.

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

#143

Post by crpatino »

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…

Don't forget how the other nascient world power of the times, Germany, managed to self destruct while taking down most of the incumbent empires of the previous age, with Russia/USSR left as the exception the conveniently play the role of the external enemy to rally your own people against.

It was exceedingly convenient for the US economy to have all of Europe's infrastructure shred to pieces. Both the competition gone and a huge rebuilding market to dump your excess industrial output.

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

#144

Post by treehau5 »

DrScump wrote: post #127
treehau5 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I think you mean secede . It's still legal to succeed in California... for the moment, anyway.

Yes, secede, thank you, funny typo though. You are right about that.

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

#145

Post by manojlds »

meri_dian wrote: post #6
jorvi wrote: post #2

When will this myth stop? Until the UK has left, the EU is the biggest economy in the world, not the US. Edit: damn, hit a painful nerve here apparently. For the tired old '28 countries vs 1 country', America its states and the EU its countries are very comparable in economic size.

The US has the biggest national economy in the world. It has a central government than can wield that economic power for its own purposes. The EU as a singular entity can do relatively little with its members' wealth, which is why measures of that wealth aren't very meaningful. It's like saying that Asia has the biggest economy in the world. Well yeah, but large chunks of that economy are segregated from one another…

Without your last para, you make a valid point. The EU is not a nation, but we all know that it can wield united power in lots of areas and you cannot compare the EU with the continent that is Asia.

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

#146

Post by [deleted] »

freeflight wrote: post #128
thesmallestcat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#147

Post by erikpukinskis »

gerdesj wrote: post #69
alex_anglin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing the natives?

Who are the "natives"? Do you stop at "first to call the area by its modern name" or do you go back through say first hominids? Perhaps we should go back further, say "recognisable single cell organism"

Was there some point to this question?

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

#148

Post by erikpukinskis »

gerdesj wrote: post #85
ratacat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of like, I come over to your house for dinner... Murder your family members, and sell you to a slaver, then your house is mine. Pretty straight forward.

A landmass and a continent: which bit of bloody great chunks of rock, soil, stuff etc are you having problems with? You can do what you like but the continental plate it was performed on wont give a fuck. You could even destroy that continental plate or even the whole shebang but it will still not give a fuck. Landmasses and continents don't give a fuck - they really don't.

I wouldn't break it down by landmass. I would break it down by watershed. Watersheds most definitely "give a fuck".

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

#149

Post by greedy_buffer »

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…

Your second paragraph makes it seem like those weren't really humans - "cleared out", really? And having been decimated by plague diseases makes shooting the survivors equivalent to crossing a border illegally so you can work a better job? Maybe my knowledge of American history and politics is poor but those do not seem like the same thing at all.

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #37
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…

You sound bitter. Find a society without historical sin and then we can talk. You went off on some tangent about jingoism without explaining where the book supports that. Did you read the book or the review or did you just want to rant?

[deleted]
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