The US inherited an existing slave regime from the Caribbean. It entailed exactly the same cognitive dissonance required of soldiers in the British Empire as de

The US inherited an existing slave regime from the Caribbean. It entailed exactly the same cognitive dissonance required of soldiers in the British Empire as described by Orwell in "Burmese Days". So it looks Mercantilist to me. I don't hold that debt is inherent to what we consider capitalism. I run the risk of a "no true Scotsman" fallacy with this, but debt is something we have because of path dependence, not because it's shown to be inevitable or optimal. The fact that debt cannot be easily retired indicates that we haven't finished this as an institution. At the level of a debt holder, of course you can't do this. At the level of a general person living in society, the un-retire-ability of debt creates a common, sort-of pubic goods problem because it slows growth. Classical and pre-Classical societies held debt jubilees. Could we? I don't know.