6 ms·

You realize that the European powers of 17th and 18th centuries "exploited" the Americas to include the U.S and yet here stands the U.S head and shoulders above

by whb07 7y ago

You realize that the European powers of 17th and 18th centuries "exploited" the Americas to include the U.S and yet here stands the U.S head and shoulders above these "exploiters".

greeble 7y ago
Good going USA. It's too bad Africa as a whole didn't manage the same. But you know, the people in the now USA who did the overthrowing were themselves Europeans. After all, the native Americans are not running things today are they?
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  It's harder to exploit people who have the institutional/cultural knowledge to fight back. And still, lots of natives in colonies managed to overthrow their exploiters, usually with higher technology or more ressources than their original hunter-gatherer culture had. Native Americans were outmatched by the population pressure from Europe. They didn't get the time to develop agriculture and everything to the point that they could compete in population density. And on top of that, a lot of violence, accidental harm and wrongful deeds have been done to them.
soperj 7y ago
Do you actually believe that the US is head and shoulders above the Western European countries?
- whb07 7y ago
  if we're talking geopolitically yes of course, if we're talking culturally yes of course. The other leaders at some point like Portugal, Netherlands, UK, Spain, all had their time in the sun. Now it is the U.S's, I'm not making the claim this will remain in perpetuity.
  - soperj 7y ago
    >geopolitically yes of course Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. >culturally yes of course Gonna agree to disagree on this one.
    - adventured 7y ago
      > Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. That's an empty, meaningless claim. Even if it were true (it's not), it simply does not matter very much. When Obama was in office, it was celebrations, so to speak. When Trump is gone in N years, normalcy will return, even if it requires some relationship repair. A few years does not matter in any grand scheme when it comes to relationships between the US and eg France or Britain. One President is not going to wreck relationships that are hundreds of years old. Trump is not worse than what Bush put us through with Iraq 15 years ago when it comes to international relations, not even remotely close. > You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. That's a bogus premise. The US didn't go into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban. The US achieved its primary objective in Afghanistan a very long time ago - neutralizing Al Qaeda as a globally threatening, effective, large terrorist organization. Removing the Taliban and establishing a stable democratic Afghanistan, is the stretch goal that was always going to be very difficult to accomplish. It's questionable that such a thing could be accomplished short of fully occupying every inch of the country and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into it annually. Is the US going to fail to achieve an impossible goal of nation building a democratic Afghanistan in under 20 years? Yeah. > Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. That one is partially correct. It's the dictatorships of the Middle East (nearly all nations in the Middle East are without functioning democracy and most are very illiberal; the US has introduced two of the few examples of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan), their systems of government, and Islamic extremism, that perpetually destabilizes the region. Some of that mess is entirely localized, some of it has been introduced by foreign powers over centuries. You already know that of course, the Taliban (the theocratic group you mentioned the US is failing to remove) are a prime example of it. There is no such thing as a stable dictatorship or stable theocracy (they require constant threats or applications of violence to hold their positions). Nearly all dictatorships in modern history have resulted in disaster and chaos in their wake. Whenever Saddam's regime fell (however long that would have taken without the US involvement), it was always going to result in the sort of chaos that we've seen in Iraq, as the country is a forced-together bifurcated society of conflicting factions. The US should have never gone into Iraq, however it's also false to pretend that Iraq was stable or functioning well before that (What does a wildly violent, murderous stable dictatorship mean exactly? That's a contradiction in terms. Stable in what regard, the lack of all basic human rights and democratic institutions? Stable in the application of consistent terror to oppress the people?).
zapita 7y ago
That's because the U.S. was never decolonized. It just became an independent colonial state, where European settlers and their descendants continued to steal land, kill natives, and import slaves for another hundred years. That's how the U.S. came to stand "head and shoulders" above European nations: unlimited land and free labor, which yielded almost unlimited wealth, which was all acquired by Europeans. Today slavery is abolished, and Native American nations are recognized as sovereign entities; but descendants of slaves and Native Americans continue to live in a country where colonial descendants of European settlers hold all the wealth and power, and the history of expropriation and massacre of their ancestors has been whitewashed as quaint folklore. So if you look at it from the perspective of the colonized people and their descendants, North America has had it even worse than almost anyone.
- whb07 7y ago
  What. A simple counter point that breaks down everything you said would be the measurement of butter production in the northern states pre bellum (civil war) versus that of the southern states. So no, nothing to do with "unlimited land and free labor".
  - zapita 7y ago
    You're going to have to elaborate, I didn't understand your point at all. I look forward to watching you attempt to demonstrate that appropriation of native land, and free labor from slavery, aren't the pillars on which most wealth in the US was built. I'm sure it will be entertaining.
    - whb07 7y ago
      Sure, butter production in the southern states where there was "unlimited free labor" was roughly 20% of the national output, even though they had 40% of the total dairy cows. So there is your counter point to the argument that with "free labor" things got massively built. Quite the opposite. Its hard to get high productivity from slave labor (go figure). Anyhow, one has to observe to be first aware of such things like the butter production in the south as compared to the north to realize that the basic argument of "free labor and unlimited lands" doesn't hold up very well. I'd also like to point that during the peak of the British Empire in the late 19th century up to the early 20th century, the British had by that point outlawed slavery. Lastly, it is amazing to me that you keep bringing up certain groups of peoples. My sister recently took a genetics test and confirming what I already knew I'm roughly 25% "native" like you keep referencing to. Is this my mic drop moment?
thinkpad20 7y ago
America’s success was the direct result of ethnic cleansing of millions of Native Americans and the backbreaking labor of millions of slaves. The comparison is ridiculous. We were the exploiters.
- nmeofthestate 7y ago
  I don't think slavery is instrumental in the economic success of the USA - it probably hindered development, while no doubt enriching some individuals. If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened.
  - Majromax 7y ago
    > If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened. Something like that did in fact happen -- the post-civil war period coincided with the Long Depression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression), which some economic historians would date between 1873 and 1896. However, the Long Depression was at least in part a global phenomenon, and with any economic story there are many confounding factors. (And on top of all of this, nations did not keep rigorous economic statistics at the time anyway.)
- simonsarris 7y ago
  No it wasn't. It doesn't even pass the sniff test. Why do you think the slave-free north was much richer than the south, before the civil war? If slavery makes a country rich, why isn't Africa rich? Why wasn't Brazil, which imported ~4 million slaves (compare to ~200k for USA) significantly richer than the USA? Native Americans had slaves: > "An exhaustive search of some 725 late 18th/early 19th century ethnohistoric sources and 20th century ethnographic works indicates that predatory warfare, or preying on other groups for plunder and captives, was engaged in by virtually all Northwest Coast societies." > "Source after source notes, either through specific instances or in general terms, and with almost monotonous iteration, that within this large area a prime motive for raiding was to gain captives for enslavement." (From: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...) Why weren't those people rich? If you think slavery was instrumental to any rich nation getting rich, I suggest you read a lot more history, and look at who had the most slaves in history, and who has the most slaves today.

by whb07 7y ago

You realize that the European powers of 17th and 18th centuries "exploited" the Americas to include the U.S and yet here stands the U.S head and shoulders above these "exploiters".

greeble 7y ago

Good going USA. It's too bad Africa as a whole didn't manage the same. But you know, the people in the now USA who did the overthrowing were themselves Europeans. After all, the native Americans are not running things today are they?

bayesian_horse 7y ago
It's harder to exploit people who have the institutional/cultural knowledge to fight back. And still, lots of natives in colonies managed to overthrow their exploiters, usually with higher technology or more ressources than their original hunter-gatherer culture had. Native Americans were outmatched by the population pressure from Europe. They didn't get the time to develop agriculture and everything to the point that they could compete in population density. And on top of that, a lot of violence, accidental harm and wrongful deeds have been done to them.

soperj 7y ago

Do you actually believe that the US is head and shoulders above the Western European countries?

whb07 7y ago
if we're talking geopolitically yes of course, if we're talking culturally yes of course. The other leaders at some point like Portugal, Netherlands, UK, Spain, all had their time in the sun. Now it is the U.S's, I'm not making the claim this will remain in perpetuity.
- soperj 7y ago
  >geopolitically yes of course Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. >culturally yes of course Gonna agree to disagree on this one.
  - adventured 7y ago
    > Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. That's an empty, meaningless claim. Even if it were true (it's not), it simply does not matter very much. When Obama was in office, it was celebrations, so to speak. When Trump is gone in N years, normalcy will return, even if it requires some relationship repair. A few years does not matter in any grand scheme when it comes to relationships between the US and eg France or Britain. One President is not going to wreck relationships that are hundreds of years old. Trump is not worse than what Bush put us through with Iraq 15 years ago when it comes to international relations, not even remotely close. > You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. That's a bogus premise. The US didn't go into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban. The US achieved its primary objective in Afghanistan a very long time ago - neutralizing Al Qaeda as a globally threatening, effective, large terrorist organization. Removing the Taliban and establishing a stable democratic Afghanistan, is the stretch goal that was always going to be very difficult to accomplish. It's questionable that such a thing could be accomplished short of fully occupying every inch of the country and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into it annually. Is the US going to fail to achieve an impossible goal of nation building a democratic Afghanistan in under 20 years? Yeah. > Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. That one is partially correct. It's the dictatorships of the Middle East (nearly all nations in the Middle East are without functioning democracy and most are very illiberal; the US has introduced two of the few examples of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan), their systems of government, and Islamic extremism, that perpetually destabilizes the region. Some of that mess is entirely localized, some of it has been introduced by foreign powers over centuries. You already know that of course, the Taliban (the theocratic group you mentioned the US is failing to remove) are a prime example of it. There is no such thing as a stable dictatorship or stable theocracy (they require constant threats or applications of violence to hold their positions). Nearly all dictatorships in modern history have resulted in disaster and chaos in their wake. Whenever Saddam's regime fell (however long that would have taken without the US involvement), it was always going to result in the sort of chaos that we've seen in Iraq, as the country is a forced-together bifurcated society of conflicting factions. The US should have never gone into Iraq, however it's also false to pretend that Iraq was stable or functioning well before that (What does a wildly violent, murderous stable dictatorship mean exactly? That's a contradiction in terms. Stable in what regard, the lack of all basic human rights and democratic institutions? Stable in the application of consistent terror to oppress the people?).

zapita 7y ago

That's because the U.S. was never decolonized. It just became an independent colonial state, where European settlers and their descendants continued to steal land, kill natives, and import slaves for another hundred years. That's how the U.S. came to stand "head and shoulders" above European nations: unlimited land and free labor, which yielded almost unlimited wealth, which was all acquired by Europeans. Today slavery is abolished, and Native American nations are recognized as sovereign entities; but descendants of slaves and Native Americans continue to live in a country where colonial descendants of European settlers hold all the wealth and power, and the history of expropriation and massacre of their ancestors has been whitewashed as quaint folklore. So if you look at it from the perspective of the colonized people and their descendants, North America has had it even worse than almost anyone.

whb07 7y ago
What. A simple counter point that breaks down everything you said would be the measurement of butter production in the northern states pre bellum (civil war) versus that of the southern states. So no, nothing to do with "unlimited land and free labor".
- zapita 7y ago
  You're going to have to elaborate, I didn't understand your point at all. I look forward to watching you attempt to demonstrate that appropriation of native land, and free labor from slavery, aren't the pillars on which most wealth in the US was built. I'm sure it will be entertaining.
  - whb07 7y ago
    Sure, butter production in the southern states where there was "unlimited free labor" was roughly 20% of the national output, even though they had 40% of the total dairy cows. So there is your counter point to the argument that with "free labor" things got massively built. Quite the opposite. Its hard to get high productivity from slave labor (go figure). Anyhow, one has to observe to be first aware of such things like the butter production in the south as compared to the north to realize that the basic argument of "free labor and unlimited lands" doesn't hold up very well. I'd also like to point that during the peak of the British Empire in the late 19th century up to the early 20th century, the British had by that point outlawed slavery. Lastly, it is amazing to me that you keep bringing up certain groups of peoples. My sister recently took a genetics test and confirming what I already knew I'm roughly 25% "native" like you keep referencing to. Is this my mic drop moment?

thinkpad20 7y ago

America’s success was the direct result of ethnic cleansing of millions of Native Americans and the backbreaking labor of millions of slaves. The comparison is ridiculous. We were the exploiters.

nmeofthestate 7y ago
I don't think slavery is instrumental in the economic success of the USA - it probably hindered development, while no doubt enriching some individuals. If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened.
- Majromax 7y ago
  > If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened. Something like that did in fact happen -- the post-civil war period coincided with the Long Depression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression), which some economic historians would date between 1873 and 1896. However, the Long Depression was at least in part a global phenomenon, and with any economic story there are many confounding factors. (And on top of all of this, nations did not keep rigorous economic statistics at the time anyway.)
simonsarris 7y ago
No it wasn't. It doesn't even pass the sniff test. Why do you think the slave-free north was much richer than the south, before the civil war? If slavery makes a country rich, why isn't Africa rich? Why wasn't Brazil, which imported ~4 million slaves (compare to ~200k for USA) significantly richer than the USA? Native Americans had slaves: > "An exhaustive search of some 725 late 18th/early 19th century ethnohistoric sources and 20th century ethnographic works indicates that predatory warfare, or preying on other groups for plunder and captives, was engaged in by virtually all Northwest Coast societies." > "Source after source notes, either through specific instances or in general terms, and with almost monotonous iteration, that within this large area a prime motive for raiding was to gain captives for enslavement." (From: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...) Why weren't those people rich? If you think slavery was instrumental to any rich nation getting rich, I suggest you read a lot more history, and look at who had the most slaves in history, and who has the most slaves today.