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> The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior. Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on. The wealth of the West is b

> The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior. Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on. The wealth of the West is build on colonialism. Culture just reflects the underlying material conditions that people live in. There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. Wealth is cumulative and first mover advantages are strong. And if anyone threatens the current hegemony, there is always the use of force. But yes, you are right there has been a stagnation since the 80s and things are slowly changing ins favor of countries like China and India.

synecdoche 2y ago
There is no basis for the claim that different things of some category would progress exactly the same given the same set of circumstances. Those different things, like culture, have significant impact on everything, including economic growth. I'm sure you can think of a culture or policy, which you consider backwards, and counterproductive. Well, there you go.
FredPret 2y ago
So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, and next thing you know the US is a global superpower, and that’s all there is to it? Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?
- throwaway0123_5 2y ago
  Colonial-esque behavior by the US was (is?) hardly limited to plantation slavery in the US south. For much of the late 1800s and most of the 1900s the US government was more than happy to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries to protect corporate profits. One particularly egregious example is the CIA-aided overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50s, largely to protect the profits of US fruit companies, but you don't have to look far to find more. From General Smedley Butler, most decorated marine at the time of his death and the only marine with two medals of honor: > I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    As the saying goes, there's a special place in Hell for the Dulles brothers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
  - FredPret 2y ago
    That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any historical empire you could mention). I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy: Every country out there has always defended its interests in more or less muscular ways. Exactly the way you describe for the US, and much worse as well. Where are they now?
    - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
      > That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. It certainly seems to me like its also a strong argument that much of the US's wealth is based on colonialism or colonialism-adjacent policies, no? > I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy I didn't argue that. If US culture is/was in favor of colonialist antics and colonialism produces wealth for the US, that would actually be an argument in favor of US culture being better at producing a great economy. I would argue that the ends don't justify the means when the means are abusing far poorer neighboring countries. I also wouldn't argue that colonialism is the only reason the US is wealthy. There are clearly aspects of US culture that are conducive to productivity and innovation that are more or less independent of colonialism.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Fair. My frustration arises from people who say that the US turned Guatemala or wherever into a banana republic, and therefore the West has zero moral worth and capitalism must be overthrown.
- com2kid 2y ago
  > So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, Slaves built the irrigation systems that made rice farming possible in the south. (People forget that the other huge slavery cash crop was rice). Without the engineering and agricultural knowledge of slaves, many of the farms would have failed (and many did fail early on until the knowledge was spread around to plantation owners). The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago. > Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that? The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    > The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago. This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of their levels of development starting in 1500 until the 19th century. You aren't implying that before the Atlantic slave trade, Africa was a monolithic culture, would you? No, that would be absurdly ignorant > US's short history is absurdly violent, Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history? Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.
    - com2kid 2y ago
      > Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem. You'd be wrong. What I have done is read my history books, and visited historical sites all around the US and abroad. Saying "shit was violent" isn't saying I hate this country. Saying "we fucked up and we shouldn't do that crap again" is how we improve as a people. > This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. Go visit some southern plantations. Learn how the plantations were built. Farming isn't just physical labor. There is engineering involved. Designing flood levees to water crops was a technology that the US plantation owners acquired from slaves who in many cases designed and built the levees used on plantations. > Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history? Those countries do not have a short history. The US has a very short history and it has involved a lot of violence in rapid succession. Trying to say that our success as a nation is purely because of Hard Work, Brains, and Grit, is a false narrative that will lead to our downfall if we do not actually understand why we succeeded. Our economic success from the transcontinental railroad is because we imported near slave labor to built it, at a high cost of human lives, and then we attempted to kick many of the surviving immigrants out. That is the simple truth about the largest successful rail project in US history, and understanding how labor costs impact nationwide infrastructure build-outs is, IMHO, rather important. The success of Hollywood is because patent laws were widely ignored on the west coast, which allowed technology to progress faster. Our failure to understand how too strict of IP enforcement stifles growth is why a lot of iterative improvements come out of China now, they can iterate faster w/o waiting for patents to expire. Our success in science and technology is because we have been willing to allow the best minds in from all around the world by ensuring a higher quality of life in the US compared to other places. But we've taken that for granted for too long, and allowed that qualify of life to slip while other countries have caught up. Jumping up and down shouting "we're the best!" is inane, especially while the rest of the world isn't just standing still.
- kiba 2y ago
  The North crushed the South, which clung to its slavery system which was unable to economically compete with the northern states' industrial power. If anything, slavery was probably was a weight around the US's neck, the legacy of which we're still dealing with today.
aliasxneo 2y ago
> There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this outright, but after having just spent a summer reading through the history of the collectivist cultures in Russia/China during the last century, all I could think of is how lucky I was not to be born into that. So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly comparatively superior, in my opinion.
- myworkinisgood 2y ago
  Russia did have some problems, but China suffered badly due to colonialism.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Well that begs the question of why was China so weak that they could be easily colonized and exploited by the UK, Japan, and other foreign powers? At the time they didn't lack for population, natural resources, technology, ports, etc. Was their weakness caused by culture or something else? In other words, why were they the colonized instead of the colonizers? I'm not trying to make excuses for the crimes against humanity committed in China by the colonial powers. But we need to look deeper into the root causes of historical events.
    - hmm37 2y ago
      To say they didn't lack in technology is just crazy. By the late 18th century early 19th century around the time of the first opium war, the technological differences was quite sound, such that militarily there was no way China cannons e.g. matched anything the West had, allowing UK's navy to bombard China from practically anywhere without any consequences. In fact even into the early 20th century, during the siege of Xi'an during the 1930s, they were still using ladders, etc. to try the breach the walls like they were doing a millennium ago.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        I think nradov's question stands. Why was this the case?
blackhawkC17 2y ago
> The wealth of the West is build on colonialism. It's built on rule of law, stability, low corruption, and good governance. Most countries lack these factors, making them stay poor. Signed: Someone from a poor, developing country (Nigeria).
Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago
Now everyone but the west is practicing slavery, yet the supposed economic benefits of slavery seem to elude them. Why might that be?

synecdoche 2y ago

There is no basis for the claim that different things of some category would progress exactly the same given the same set of circumstances. Those different things, like culture, have significant impact on everything, including economic growth. I'm sure you can think of a culture or policy, which you consider backwards, and counterproductive. Well, there you go.

FredPret 2y ago

So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, and next thing you know the US is a global superpower, and that’s all there is to it? Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?

throwaway0123_5 2y ago
Colonial-esque behavior by the US was (is?) hardly limited to plantation slavery in the US south. For much of the late 1800s and most of the 1900s the US government was more than happy to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries to protect corporate profits. One particularly egregious example is the CIA-aided overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50s, largely to protect the profits of US fruit companies, but you don't have to look far to find more. From General Smedley Butler, most decorated marine at the time of his death and the only marine with two medals of honor: > I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  As the saying goes, there's a special place in Hell for the Dulles brothers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
- FredPret 2y ago
  That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any historical empire you could mention). I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy: Every country out there has always defended its interests in more or less muscular ways. Exactly the way you describe for the US, and much worse as well. Where are they now?
  - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
    > That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. It certainly seems to me like its also a strong argument that much of the US's wealth is based on colonialism or colonialism-adjacent policies, no? > I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy I didn't argue that. If US culture is/was in favor of colonialist antics and colonialism produces wealth for the US, that would actually be an argument in favor of US culture being better at producing a great economy. I would argue that the ends don't justify the means when the means are abusing far poorer neighboring countries. I also wouldn't argue that colonialism is the only reason the US is wealthy. There are clearly aspects of US culture that are conducive to productivity and innovation that are more or less independent of colonialism.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Fair. My frustration arises from people who say that the US turned Guatemala or wherever into a banana republic, and therefore the West has zero moral worth and capitalism must be overthrown.
com2kid 2y ago
> So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, Slaves built the irrigation systems that made rice farming possible in the south. (People forget that the other huge slavery cash crop was rice). Without the engineering and agricultural knowledge of slaves, many of the farms would have failed (and many did fail early on until the knowledge was spread around to plantation owners). The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago. > Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that? The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  > The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago. This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of their levels of development starting in 1500 until the 19th century. You aren't implying that before the Atlantic slave trade, Africa was a monolithic culture, would you? No, that would be absurdly ignorant > US's short history is absurdly violent, Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history? Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    > Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem. You'd be wrong. What I have done is read my history books, and visited historical sites all around the US and abroad. Saying "shit was violent" isn't saying I hate this country. Saying "we fucked up and we shouldn't do that crap again" is how we improve as a people. > This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. Go visit some southern plantations. Learn how the plantations were built. Farming isn't just physical labor. There is engineering involved. Designing flood levees to water crops was a technology that the US plantation owners acquired from slaves who in many cases designed and built the levees used on plantations. > Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history? Those countries do not have a short history. The US has a very short history and it has involved a lot of violence in rapid succession. Trying to say that our success as a nation is purely because of Hard Work, Brains, and Grit, is a false narrative that will lead to our downfall if we do not actually understand why we succeeded. Our economic success from the transcontinental railroad is because we imported near slave labor to built it, at a high cost of human lives, and then we attempted to kick many of the surviving immigrants out. That is the simple truth about the largest successful rail project in US history, and understanding how labor costs impact nationwide infrastructure build-outs is, IMHO, rather important. The success of Hollywood is because patent laws were widely ignored on the west coast, which allowed technology to progress faster. Our failure to understand how too strict of IP enforcement stifles growth is why a lot of iterative improvements come out of China now, they can iterate faster w/o waiting for patents to expire. Our success in science and technology is because we have been willing to allow the best minds in from all around the world by ensuring a higher quality of life in the US compared to other places. But we've taken that for granted for too long, and allowed that qualify of life to slip while other countries have caught up. Jumping up and down shouting "we're the best!" is inane, especially while the rest of the world isn't just standing still.
kiba 2y ago
The North crushed the South, which clung to its slavery system which was unable to economically compete with the northern states' industrial power. If anything, slavery was probably was a weight around the US's neck, the legacy of which we're still dealing with today.

aliasxneo 2y ago

> There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this outright, but after having just spent a summer reading through the history of the collectivist cultures in Russia/China during the last century, all I could think of is how lucky I was not to be born into that. So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly comparatively superior, in my opinion.

myworkinisgood 2y ago
Russia did have some problems, but China suffered badly due to colonialism.
- nradov 2y ago
  Well that begs the question of why was China so weak that they could be easily colonized and exploited by the UK, Japan, and other foreign powers? At the time they didn't lack for population, natural resources, technology, ports, etc. Was their weakness caused by culture or something else? In other words, why were they the colonized instead of the colonizers? I'm not trying to make excuses for the crimes against humanity committed in China by the colonial powers. But we need to look deeper into the root causes of historical events.
  - hmm37 2y ago
    To say they didn't lack in technology is just crazy. By the late 18th century early 19th century around the time of the first opium war, the technological differences was quite sound, such that militarily there was no way China cannons e.g. matched anything the West had, allowing UK's navy to bombard China from practically anywhere without any consequences. In fact even into the early 20th century, during the siege of Xi'an during the 1930s, they were still using ladders, etc. to try the breach the walls like they were doing a millennium ago.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      I think nradov's question stands. Why was this the case?

blackhawkC17 2y ago

> The wealth of the West is build on colonialism. It's built on rule of law, stability, low corruption, and good governance. Most countries lack these factors, making them stay poor. Signed: Someone from a poor, developing country (Nigeria).

Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago

Now everyone but the west is practicing slavery, yet the supposed economic benefits of slavery seem to elude them. Why might that be?