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If capitalism is the nail, private property is the hammer. Quite a lot of development that the United States wanted to see happen in the west (which enriched it
by bscphil 5y ago
If capitalism is the nail, private property is the hammer. Quite a lot of development that the United States wanted to see happen in the west (which enriched it immensely) was done because it was willing to make grants of private property to the companies (largely railroads) doing the development.
You can debate whether capitalism is (or should have been) the only method for getting things done, but the use of private property as a viable incentive for driving innovation within that system is not really debatable.
- makotech221 5y agoThis is pretty much the take you get right outta american high school: full of propaganda. This is extremely simplified, ignores mass amounts of genocide and slavery, and ignores historical events to compare it to. The development of america as a nation is built on the corpses of hundreds of millions of africans, chinese and native americans which notably were stripped of their 'right' to private property so that someone else's 'right' to private property could exist. You do not in any way need to enslave people in order to develop land; only to develop land AND enrich a bourgeois class of people.
- bscphil 5y agoI never said any of that. I think you need to take a step back and re-read my comment. I'm not endorsing capitalism, I'm merely saying that so long as capitalism is the one way you can think of to get things done, giving people property is exchange for development is almost always the way that development happens.
- imtringued 5y agoThis somehow didn't work for ISPs at all.