10 ms·

they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed we

• davidw 10y ago
  The gains weren't just from those things - there was a lot of hard work involved. However, your point that it wasn't "from scratch" is a valid one and that jumped out at me too.
  • hn_throwaway_99 10y ago
    I am going to give Buffett the benefit of the doubt in terms of what he meant. Not that it was a completely clean slate and no one was here beforehand, but that the economic productive output that existed here before (beyond bare resource value) was not assimilated and did not contribute much to present day economic output. For all intents and purposes, it was "starting from scratch". Contrast this with, say, the Roman conquest of the Greeks, which was almost a kind of cultural conquest of the losers over the winners. This is not to minimize the genocide of the Native Americans that occurred, or the horrors of slavery. But in an economic report looking at compounded returns over the history of the US, starting from scratch is a fairly reasonable assessment.
• oh_sigh 10y ago
  The areas that used slaves the most are now some of the poorest areas of the USA. Maybe slavery didn't have that big of an impact?
  • amalag 10y ago
    Yes I believe in Ken Burn's documentary he mentioned that even at the time the North's economy far dwarfed the South's. Especially in terms of technological advancement.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • chiaro 10y ago
    Actually the opposite. Social and political institutions of the slave owning South had developed an entrenched extractive hierarchy not unlike the aristocracies of Eastern Europe at the time. The legacy of these oppressive institutions has lead enterprising Americans to seek their fortunes elsewhere throughout history.
  • padobson 10y ago
    While it's true that there is a bit of incumbent/disruption element involved - the American south was probably the most advanced agricultural civilization ever, while the north invested heavily in the very disruptive industrial revolution - I'd say having broad swaths of their entire society burnt to the ground and then effectively confiscated by Northerners has much more to do with any present-day economic troubles. Not to say they didn't deserve it, but the entire American south basically had to reboot. Some states figured it out (Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia), and others haven't done as well (Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee).
    • quizotic 10y ago
      > the [antebellum] American south was probably the most advanced agriculture civilization ever I don't follow. Certainly the current farming system in the American mid-west is orders of magnitude more productive. But even if we're focussed on pre-industrial history, are you sure that the ancient South American agri-economies weren't better? And for productive land use, what about Japan and south-east Asia, where every square inch ran like clockwork.
    • Spooky23 10y ago
      I'd like to see a citation for that. Everything that I've read up to an undergraduate level implied that their farming methods were less than ideal, even by the standards of the day, and that in many ways prime land had been exhausted.
    • devonkim 10y ago
      Tennessee originally wanted to fight for the North and much of Western North Carolina didn't want to join the confederacy because most of the people in these regions owned no slaves and were rather poor Irish, Scottish, etc. immigrants rather than aristocracies and industrial tycoons like a lot of the Deep South and didn't see any benefit to supporting slavery. However, they did always wonder what'd happen if they didn't join the rich Southerners and the union lost. There's a lot more factors obviously but lumping in Appalachia with the south is an oversight that is pretty misplaced. Tennessee and much of Appalachia has been historically on the side against slavery and corporate interests until somewhere around 60 years ago. I don't know how it happened besides hand-waving "Southern Strategy."
  • mcguire 10y ago
    Without slavery, much of the colonization of the US would have been economically pointless. Without slavery, much of the non-slaveholding US (and England) would have had little incentive to industrialize.
• nickbauman 10y ago
  Slavery was less efficient than a market economy and a free labor pool. Consider the Irish who built the Erie Canal. They were paid mostly in rum and they died off so quickly the bosses didn't care because a fresh crop of Irish workers walked off the boat the following week. Slaves had to be fed and housed and nominally cared for. After all, they cost money and you didn't want to throw away your investment. The slavery economy, which is what the South fought to preserve in the American Civil War (let's face it: those who like to hide behind "states rights", it all comes back to "states rights to buy and have slaves"), was a last gasp to try to preserve what was left of feudalism. It was doomed before it began. Please don't misconstrue this as being "pro slavery". Treating humans as property is an abomination. Even the Romans believed this and enshrined it into their legal codes even though they kept slaves.
  • hueving 10y ago
    >let's face it: those who like to hide behind "states rights", it all comes back to "states rights to buy and have slaves" This is an idiotic strawman. That's the equivalent of saying that people who think countries in the European Union should be mostly free to implement their own laws are pro slavery. Smaller localized government control vs one rule for everyone has little to do with slavery. There is no reason that slavery couldn't exist in a strong central federal government system either.
    • hn_throwaway_99 10y ago
      I think you are misunderstanding the context of the parent's argument. I'm assuming he's not talking about all states' rights arguments, only those applied to the US Civil War. If you look at historical documents, protecting the institution of slavery was clearly the main driver for the Southern states to secede. It relatively recent years, Southern apologists have tried to rewrite this as "No, they were just for States' Rights", because this is currently less offensive than saying they just wanted to own slaves.
    • nickbauman 10y ago
      Yes you're misunderstanding the point. It refers to southern US states who claimed states rights when seceding from the Union in the American Civil War.
• purple-again 10y ago
  You just described the history of China, South and Central America, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, our friendly Nordic pillagers. Am I missing any? Oh that's right all those empires that crumbled to dust to form our current nations, them too. You just described the history of Humanity.
  • kakarot 10y ago
    Yeah, it isn't that America doesn't deserve its riches, it's that just about every current national government doesn't deserve its riches. The working class is as globally exploited as its ever been. edit: Yo guys I'm not saying we need to give it all back. History is stained in blood.
    • hueving 10y ago
      Im not sure America gained from slavery in the long run. The economic cost of the civil war, the destruction of the South, and the countless dead were probably a net negative over what was gain from slavery. America achieved massive wealth in spite of a violent history, not because of it.
    • malandrew 10y ago
      The working class is living better than at any other time in history. Without progress they'd all be working fields, with little to no leisure time, with little in the way of education, entertainment and the arts. They'd be worried about famines and diseases that have long been brought under control. Life back then was short, nasty and brutish. If the population continued to grow with corresponding progress, we'd be fighting even more over the limited resources available.
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > The working class is living better than at any other time in history On the larger scale of history, yes. I don't think working class people are necessarily doing better than a few decades ago, when they had stronger unions and more power, and before wages stopped rising (which seems likely related to the loss of power). But an important note, and I don't mean to pick on the parent. In these discussions, the working class is almost always described as "they" and not "we". What do we really know? Input from people with real experience is necessary.
• angry-hacker 10y ago
  To be honest, so is every successful country. That is why they are successful, because they once had or still have power over others. I'm not an American, but if you feel quilty because of the past, I'm more than welcome to get a little financial contribution to my life. I'm from small and poor country, no great history or privilege.
  • lberk 10y ago
    > To be honest, so is every successful country. That is why they are successful, because they once had or still have power over others. I'm curious, do you include Hong Kong in that classification? How about Estonia? I'm curious what 'power' you consider those countries have, or exert, over others.
    • angry-hacker 10y ago
      Hong Kong is tricky one, but I wouldn't classify Estonia as such. While Estonia is successful considering its past, they are nowhere on the level of other developed Western countries. (yet)
      • lberk 10y ago
        > Hong Kong is tricky one Please elaborate, I'm genuinely interested in why you consider them an, exception(?), or example, to your blanket rule that successful countries have power over others. > While Estonia is successful considering its past , they are nowhere on the level of other developed Western countries. So Estonia hasn't met your criteria for a 'successful' country (what is your criteria btw?). Is their relative success compared to neighbouring baltic states a result of them exerting force or power over their neighbours or others? Or something else? > (yet) Is the only thing stopping them from becoming successful, exerting force or demonstrating power over others, or are they currently suffering from an oppressive regime doing likewise to them (which is holding them back)?
• OzzyB 10y ago
  You forgot the most important data point of all, the theft of IP from the British. Funny how that's not accounted for much these days, but America's historic success as a direct result of African slavery and Native Indian genocide, is.
• thedevil 10y ago
  While I think it's important to remember these atrocities, I think that for economic understanding it's important to note that these were not the major drivers of growth. Remember that atrocities like that happened in many places that did not grow into giant economies. Stealing land and enslaving people may have given a head start, but clearly something else delivered the big gains. If you look at the history and the economic charts, the big boost was started by the industrial revolution.
  • wz1000 10y ago
    > the big boost was started by the industrial revolution Exactly. Now, lets look at some of the causes of the first Industrial Revolution First, large tracts of lands in Britain, largely held in the commons, were stolen from the peasantry and given to private individuals and landlords, as part of the Enclosure movement. This forced the peasants to look for work in cities en masse, providing cheap labor for the capitalists. Second, Britain's African Slave trade constituted a big part of the early accumulation of capital that made the revolution possible. Cheap cotton from the colonization of India as well that produced by the slave labor in North America fueled the textile industry, which was at the heart of the industrial revolution. India's share of the world economy fell from 20% to less than 5%, chiefly because the capital required for industrialization was siphoned off to England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
    • oli5679 10y ago
      Your first point is interesting. People gloss over how disruptive the industrial Revolution was, and the downward pressure it put on the wages of farm workers. I'm not convinced by your second one. Why didn't states like Portugal industrialise equally quickly? Or within America, why didn't states with more slaves grow faster? Germany has no history of slavery, and the same is true for modern industrialisation transitions like South Korea and China. The topic has been studied in great detail in economic history. The consensus seems to be that however horrible slavery was, it wasn't fundamental to industrialisation.
      • 10y ago
• Spooky23 10y ago
  Slavery was a boat anchor on America, not a source of strength. Most of the dynamism and power that was built in the US took off not coincidentally after the wane of slavery. And until very recently the former slave owning states were and in some ways remain sleepy backwaters dependent on the largess of the military and welfare to remain viable.
• quizotic 10y ago
  Yes, we took land from indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans. And yes we did awful things. But isn't it obvious that neither of these things created the wealth we have today? To my thinking, our current wealth derives from technological innovation, process engineering, psychological insight, most of which would not have been possible without welcoming people from other lands, and being willing to work with those who are different than we are.
  • oneplane 10y ago
    But aren't you still doing that today? I believe that somewhere in your country, someone wants a big pipe on some land, but the people living there don't want it, yet they force it anyway.
    • wtf_is_up 10y ago
      That "someone" is really every American who enjoys cheap energy and, by extension, cheap food, transportation, etc. whether they know it or not.
      • r00fus 10y ago
        Don't generalize. I'd much rather gas prices stay high and the environment not get spoiled so alternative energy sources can compete fairly. Besides there cost / benefit of the pipeline only really makes sense to those who profit from it directly.
    • MomentarySanity 10y ago
      Well, we do have, as most modern countries do, a system for the taking of private property for public use. But that's not even what's happening here, as no property is being taken.
    • Gargoyle 10y ago
      It's not actually going on land they own, but near it. The argument is that it's an environmental risk to their land, not that in infringes their property rights.
• ansy 10y ago
  I'm not an economist, but as a student of history it seems America's dominance stems from being an arms dealer to Europe during both world wars, not getting its infrastructure razed to the ground in the process, and being both the bank and the builder for the resulting recovery. It also doesn't hurt that the allies gave the US its best technological secrets during the war and the best minds from both sides emigrated to the US during and after the war.
• hueving 10y ago
  >I'm not sure if you can describe the kidnapping, murder, rape and ultimately genocide of multiple people groups as miraculous Right, which is also the same thing many native americans tried to do to the immigrant settlers in the West as well.
• RodericDay 10y ago
  It's incredible to me that so many Americans below have reconfigured their relationship to slavery with a narrative such that they have even more pride in their country since it succeeded in spite of slavery, not because of it. It's incredible. As a foreigner, I feel like I'm witnessing the payoff some absolutely top-notch patriotic propaganda.
  • wtf_is_up 10y ago
    I'm 7 or 8 generations removed from American slavery. I don't have a relationship to it.
    • hisham_hm 10y ago
      Then you clearly don't look much at the world around you, or you would see the obvious link between this past from generations ago and the way current society is shaped. If this particular shape of society that resulted from the many years of slavery doesn't seem to affect you personally, then it means it affects you positively, because it certainly affects others negatively.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• cik2e 10y ago
  You're right in that those things happened, and I even agree with the sentiment of labeling the treatment of the natives as genocide. But saying that these things are responsible for America's economic dominance shows a fundemental lack of understanding of history. In fact it could be easily argued that slavery was a significant setback after we progressed beyond the very early days of the colonies, when there was simply not enough labor of any kind.
• thomasthomas 10y ago
  Guns, Germs, and Steel
• austenallred 10y ago
  While I think it's important to not neglect the horrors of slavery and the theft of lands from indigenous peoples, it's disingenuous to imply that the sole (or a major) cause of America's current and continuous booming economy was either of these. The easiest way to dispel this notion is to show that the vast, vast majority of American wealth (>99%) came about long after slavery had ended. Indeed, if we could return to the economy at the time slavery was in full swing (even disregarding morals), not one rational person would choose to do so. Another way is to compare the US economy to those that didn't discontinue those practices. Or to show that even in current circumstances the US economy continues to grow rapidly, after hundreds of years of doing so. So, please don't forget the atrocities caused by the United States. But also don't attribute everything that ever happened in the United States to those atrocities. It may be a cheap way to brush aside the success of the United States, but it isn't an honest argument. Clearly there's something else going on that has made the United States the most wealthy country in the world (per capita).
  • throwaway2048 10y ago
    Microsoft might have billions of lines of code today, but they would be precisely nowhere without the few K-lines of code that composed microsoft basic for the altair. Its misleading to say that 99%+ of american wealth occured long after slavery etc ended, because it still started there.
    • austenallred 10y ago
      True, but I don't know if it's accurate that the United States wouldn't exist without slavery. I wish we could accurately run simulations; a lot of variables.
      • mattmanser 10y ago
        Try running it without the centuries of british and european progress and see what you end up with.
        • 10y ago
• friedman23 10y ago
  > This was a gain that was achieved not by starting from scratch but by stealing lands from indigenous people Seeing as how you are saying that the growth of America was dependent on 'stealing' land you must be implying that the success is dependent on the stealing of resources. Which is trivially proven false by simply looking at South America. > forcing Africans to work that land Forcing Africans to work the land stunted American growth. It's not a coincidence that the richest parts of the countries are the ones that industrialized.
  • baursak 10y ago
    Industrialization of the North started with textiles. Which were due to cotton. Which was due to slave labor. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro...
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• nikdaheratik 10y ago
  There is alot of terrible history that isn't covered in a simple investors letter. I think the larger point he was trying to make in the letter was that the American economy works better because it has created a place where talent from anywhere in the world can succeed. One of the hard lessons our society has learned is that putting so much energy into holding a group of people back hurts both those people and society as a whole. Of course, lately I'm wondering whether we need to relearn that lesson.