7 ms·

> the pioneer days when land was plentiful. I think you mean to say "When we could steal land from the people who were originally on that land"

echelon 2y ago
> "When we could steal land from the people who were originally on that land" That's every single society ever. This has been the civilizational algorithm. It predates our species. That same tactic is alive and well today.
- milicat 2y ago
  A gross oversimplification of anthropology.
- James_K 2y ago
  I don't think so. How many genocides can you think of on the scale of the Native American genocide? Such events seem rare to me.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Apart from the Sentinelese, I can't think of one civilization that hasn't warred and taken over land and resources from others. And we really don't have proof the Sentinelese didn't do this at some point themselves. History was full of violence.
    - James_K 2y ago
      You can think of many examples of war and conquest, but what happened in America is more than just war. Genocide is more than just war. Framing the atrocities upon which the US was founded as merely "historically normal" is a deeply revisionist view of history. Technological development at that time allowed for many great evils which were simply not possible before.
      - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        How do you know that what happened to the natives was so much worse than the hundreds if not thousands of similar fates that must have befallen other cultures over the last several tens of thousands of years?
        James_K 2y ago
        Because the things you're referring to didn't happen. That's why you say they "must have happened" instead of "actually did happen". I can think of some examples of similar treatment, for example the British in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland around that time, but even then we see that there are many living natives in those lands today. America is unique in that the overwhelming majority (97%) of the population is non-native and has no native ancestry.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Aloisius 2y ago
        > overwhelming majority (97%) of the population is non-native and has no native ancestry Em. First, numbers of "native ancestry" are almost all self-reported which has more to do with self-identified culture than genetic ancestry. Second, trying to argue through the use current numbers of native ancestry is nonsensical given the US has been an outlier in terms of immigration for a very long time making it impossible to compare against. For goodness sake, around a tenth of the population has been foreign born for the better part of two centuries which has had a dramatic effect on ancestry (both genetic and self-reported).
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Wait, you think that the “natives” of the countries of today were the original inhabitants?
  - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
    Rare in absolute numbers, but not rare on a percentage basis. That was, what, a 95% extermination? Native Americans probably committed 100% exterminations e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture
- yulker 2y ago
  European colonization of the world is a unique enough phenomenon to not hand wave it away as business as usual. Further, the industrial intensification and financialization of this colonization through the 18th-20th centuries alone is singular on its impact on human civilization with no precedent.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  > It predates our species People will really say this and then still be mad when I want to marry just a couple of my cousins
dpc050505 2y ago
Most first nations at first contact had 0 conception of ownership, rather seeing it as some sort of stewardship (or if you put it in modern terms you could use the marxist notion of personal property where it's 'use it or lose it') as well as low enough populations that they figured there was enough to go around to share the land with settlers.
- watwut 2y ago
  Except it was not shared, it was almost a genocide.
  - scarby2 2y ago
    genocide is an intentional act. Smallpox did 90% of the work and nobody lifted a finger, at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population. After smallpox when the population of the Americas had been reduced by something like 90% they most certainly didn't need all the land.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      > at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population Are you really unaware that the colonials intentionally spread smallpox to the natives? This is not some obscure detail - it's in approximately all of the history textbooks in a fair bit of detail.
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Sure, some tried, but smallpox and other diseases were doing a great job on their own. It didn't need a few blankets to make it a real pandemic.
      - Aloisius 2y ago
        The few references to potentially intentionally spreading disease, all well after they were spreading in the Americas, are unlikely to be the cause of more than a tiny sliver of deaths due to disease. The timelines simply do not match.
lurk2 2y ago
If the land had been the basis of North American prosperity there would have been civilizations there capable of resisting European colonialism.
- James_K 2y ago
  The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dddddaviddddd 2y ago
      > The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them. > Long since debunked I mean, the linked article says horses were introduced in the 1600s (brought by Europeans), and then spread throughout the Americas without requiring further European distribution.
      - TylerE 2y ago
        The article says the horses were in the Americas millions of years ago.
        rezonant 2y ago
        And then died out, before Cortes brought them back to the continent in 1519. Native Americans then discovered the horses before they ran into the Europeans and began spreading them across the country. > Horses evolved in the Americas around four million years ago, but by about 10,000 years ago, they had mostly disappeared from the fossil record, per the Conversation. Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519, when Hernán Cortés arrived on the continent in Mexico. Per the new paper, Indigenous peoples then transported horses north along trade networks. Don't forget to read the whole article!
casey2 2y ago
The truth has always been and will always be that the people who are most technologically advanced will end up with the land, weather by force or purchase. Simply due to the fact that it's more valuable in their hands. Driving out some campers to build a town is the rule, not an exception.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  More valuable? More valuable… to whom? In human affairs there is no such thing as absolute value. The reason is simply that it is inevitable as much as gravity is inevitable. Making a moral law against gravity isn’t going to get you very far.
giantg2 2y ago
Define "orginally". You might be interested to research how the Native Americans interacted, especially the Lakota. Rights by conquest was not a new idea.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Well the obvious response is then "can I conquer your land by force too?". No. Because there is a construction of "lawful property rights" that starts with the appropriation of land by force but protects the new owner from the same.
  - pcthrowaway 2y ago
    Well technically the land can still be appropriated by force, only you have to apply it against the entire system which enforces "lawful property rights"
    - whamlastxmas 2y ago
      The most human thing ASI could do would be to have its own Manifest Destiny
    - flutas 2y ago
      or just use the system which enforces "lawful property rights" see: Adverse Possession
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I mean murder's not a new idea either but it's broadly condemned in most moral vibes "Right by conquest" is sort of a cope, like "You might have a green light and the right of way, but Isaac Newton always favors the semi truck"
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
asdf6969 2y ago
There were a few hundred thousand of them across the entire continent. In the best case scenario, most of them still would have died to disease. Unless you believe a few hundred thousand people own should own an entire continent as their blood and soil birthright the land was always going to end up like this There’s still a lot of land out there. The only problem today is nobody wants to start over with no plumbing, electricity, or other modern conveniences.
- codingdave 2y ago
  The numbers you mention don't match what I see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...
  - asdf6969 2y ago
    You’re right, I mistook the Canadian numbers for all of North America. I know south and Central America had a much higher population but that’s not what this thread is about. It looks like a more accurate number is in the low millions so my point still stands.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I'm gonna go conquer Georgia, then. Genocide some country folks, burn every Confederate flag I see, end some bloodlines forever. There's not many people living there, right by conquest, etc., plus Reconstruction wasn't finished properly anyway.
  - asdf6969 2y ago
    Hell yea brother. Blood and soil. Georgia is for the Georgians and nobody else should be allowed to settle there
IncreasePosts 2y ago
If you steal something from someone who stole something, I'm not going to cry for the original thief.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Most of us were born into land that was colonized in written memory. I would definitely cry for the death of the innocent grandchildren of thieves.
araes 2y ago
We can still steal land from people who were originally on that land, happens all the time in America. - Land Appropriation for "Public Need" with Direct Transfer to Wealthy: https://fastercapital.com/content/Land-appropriation--The-Intricacies-of-Expropriation.html https://fastercapital.com/content/Land-appropriation--The-In... - Heirs property, property tax sales, and Torrens Acts (article focuses on black people, yet works equally well on all skin colors): https://inequality.org/article/black-land-theft-racial-wealth-divide/ https://inequality.org/article/black-land-theft-racial-wealt... - Wealth City / Suburb secession to leave poor areas to pay bills, and then buy them in destitution: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-11/atlanta-s-wealthy-white-suburbs-want-their-own-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-11/atlanta-s... - Rezone areas to make new cities, take all the businesses and good land, and leave the remaining "city" with the bills (another Atlanta idea): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Union+City,+GA/@33.6158433,-84.5757345,15.34z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x88f4e37dff6defcd:0xae053f860c90cf7d!8m2!3d33.5870558!4d-84.5424299!16zL20vMHJ3bjQ?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIyNi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Union+City,+GA/@33.6158433... - Sell vacant land out from under land owners with false listings: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newark/news/fraudsters-are-stealing-land-out-from-under-owners https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newark/news/fra... - Purposely Induced Foreclosure, Bankruptcy or surprise tax assessments to cause a forced sale: https://www.businessethicsnetwork.org/forced-sale-implications-and-processes/ https://www.businessethicsnetwork.org/forced-sale-implicatio...
michaelcampbell 2y ago
That's what YOU mean to say.

echelon 2y ago

> "When we could steal land from the people who were originally on that land" That's every single society ever. This has been the civilizational algorithm. It predates our species. That same tactic is alive and well today.

milicat 2y ago
A gross oversimplification of anthropology.
James_K 2y ago
I don't think so. How many genocides can you think of on the scale of the Native American genocide? Such events seem rare to me.
- echelon 2y ago
  Apart from the Sentinelese, I can't think of one civilization that hasn't warred and taken over land and resources from others. And we really don't have proof the Sentinelese didn't do this at some point themselves. History was full of violence.
  - James_K 2y ago
    You can think of many examples of war and conquest, but what happened in America is more than just war. Genocide is more than just war. Framing the atrocities upon which the US was founded as merely "historically normal" is a deeply revisionist view of history. Technological development at that time allowed for many great evils which were simply not possible before.
    - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
      How do you know that what happened to the natives was so much worse than the hundreds if not thousands of similar fates that must have befallen other cultures over the last several tens of thousands of years?
      - James_K 2y ago
        Because the things you're referring to didn't happen. That's why you say they "must have happened" instead of "actually did happen". I can think of some examples of similar treatment, for example the British in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland around that time, but even then we see that there are many living natives in those lands today. America is unique in that the overwhelming majority (97%) of the population is non-native and has no native ancestry.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Aloisius 2y ago
        > overwhelming majority (97%) of the population is non-native and has no native ancestry Em. First, numbers of "native ancestry" are almost all self-reported which has more to do with self-identified culture than genetic ancestry. Second, trying to argue through the use current numbers of native ancestry is nonsensical given the US has been an outlier in terms of immigration for a very long time making it impossible to compare against. For goodness sake, around a tenth of the population has been foreign born for the better part of two centuries which has had a dramatic effect on ancestry (both genetic and self-reported).
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Wait, you think that the “natives” of the countries of today were the original inhabitants?
- WorkerBee28474 2y ago
  Rare in absolute numbers, but not rare on a percentage basis. That was, what, a 95% extermination? Native Americans probably committed 100% exterminations e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture
yulker 2y ago
European colonization of the world is a unique enough phenomenon to not hand wave it away as business as usual. Further, the industrial intensification and financialization of this colonization through the 18th-20th centuries alone is singular on its impact on human civilization with no precedent.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
> It predates our species People will really say this and then still be mad when I want to marry just a couple of my cousins

dpc050505 2y ago

Most first nations at first contact had 0 conception of ownership, rather seeing it as some sort of stewardship (or if you put it in modern terms you could use the marxist notion of personal property where it's 'use it or lose it') as well as low enough populations that they figured there was enough to go around to share the land with settlers.

watwut 2y ago
Except it was not shared, it was almost a genocide.
- scarby2 2y ago
  genocide is an intentional act. Smallpox did 90% of the work and nobody lifted a finger, at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population. After smallpox when the population of the Americas had been reduced by something like 90% they most certainly didn't need all the land.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    > at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population Are you really unaware that the colonials intentionally spread smallpox to the natives? This is not some obscure detail - it's in approximately all of the history textbooks in a fair bit of detail.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Sure, some tried, but smallpox and other diseases were doing a great job on their own. It didn't need a few blankets to make it a real pandemic.
    - Aloisius 2y ago
      The few references to potentially intentionally spreading disease, all well after they were spreading in the Americas, are unlikely to be the cause of more than a tiny sliver of deaths due to disease. The timelines simply do not match.

lurk2 2y ago

If the land had been the basis of North American prosperity there would have been civilizations there capable of resisting European colonialism.

James_K 2y ago
The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them.
- TylerE 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dddddaviddddd 2y ago
    > The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them. > Long since debunked I mean, the linked article says horses were introduced in the 1600s (brought by Europeans), and then spread throughout the Americas without requiring further European distribution.
    - TylerE 2y ago
      The article says the horses were in the Americas millions of years ago.
      - rezonant 2y ago
        And then died out, before Cortes brought them back to the continent in 1519. Native Americans then discovered the horses before they ran into the Europeans and began spreading them across the country. > Horses evolved in the Americas around four million years ago, but by about 10,000 years ago, they had mostly disappeared from the fossil record, per the Conversation. Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519, when Hernán Cortés arrived on the continent in Mexico. Per the new paper, Indigenous peoples then transported horses north along trade networks. Don't forget to read the whole article!

casey2 2y ago

The truth has always been and will always be that the people who are most technologically advanced will end up with the land, weather by force or purchase. Simply due to the fact that it's more valuable in their hands. Driving out some campers to build a town is the rule, not an exception.

pfannkuchen 2y ago
More valuable? More valuable… to whom? In human affairs there is no such thing as absolute value. The reason is simply that it is inevitable as much as gravity is inevitable. Making a moral law against gravity isn’t going to get you very far.

giantg2 2y ago

Define "orginally". You might be interested to research how the Native Americans interacted, especially the Lakota. Rights by conquest was not a new idea.

andrepd 2y ago
Well the obvious response is then "can I conquer your land by force too?". No. Because there is a construction of "lawful property rights" that starts with the appropriation of land by force but protects the new owner from the same.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  Well technically the land can still be appropriated by force, only you have to apply it against the entire system which enforces "lawful property rights"
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    The most human thing ASI could do would be to have its own Manifest Destiny
  - flutas 2y ago
    or just use the system which enforces "lawful property rights" see: Adverse Possession
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I mean murder's not a new idea either but it's broadly condemned in most moral vibes "Right by conquest" is sort of a cope, like "You might have a green light and the right of way, but Isaac Newton always favors the semi truck"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

asdf6969 2y ago

There were a few hundred thousand of them across the entire continent. In the best case scenario, most of them still would have died to disease. Unless you believe a few hundred thousand people own should own an entire continent as their blood and soil birthright the land was always going to end up like this There’s still a lot of land out there. The only problem today is nobody wants to start over with no plumbing, electricity, or other modern conveniences.

codingdave 2y ago
The numbers you mention don't match what I see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...
- asdf6969 2y ago
  You’re right, I mistook the Canadian numbers for all of North America. I know south and Central America had a much higher population but that’s not what this thread is about. It looks like a more accurate number is in the low millions so my point still stands.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I'm gonna go conquer Georgia, then. Genocide some country folks, burn every Confederate flag I see, end some bloodlines forever. There's not many people living there, right by conquest, etc., plus Reconstruction wasn't finished properly anyway.
- asdf6969 2y ago
  Hell yea brother. Blood and soil. Georgia is for the Georgians and nobody else should be allowed to settle there

IncreasePosts 2y ago

If you steal something from someone who stole something, I'm not going to cry for the original thief.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Most of us were born into land that was colonized in written memory. I would definitely cry for the death of the innocent grandchildren of thieves.

araes 2y ago

We can still steal land from people who were originally on that land, happens all the time in America. - Land Appropriation for "Public Need" with Direct Transfer to Wealthy: https://fastercapital.com/content/Land-appropriation--The-Intricacies-of-Expropriation.html https://fastercapital.com/content/Land-appropriation--The-In... - Heirs property, property tax sales, and Torrens Acts (article focuses on black people, yet works equally well on all skin colors): https://inequality.org/article/black-land-theft-racial-wealth-divide/ https://inequality.org/article/black-land-theft-racial-wealt... - Wealth City / Suburb secession to leave poor areas to pay bills, and then buy them in destitution: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-11/atlanta-s-wealthy-white-suburbs-want-their-own-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-11/atlanta-s... - Rezone areas to make new cities, take all the businesses and good land, and leave the remaining "city" with the bills (another Atlanta idea): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Union+City,+GA/@33.6158433,-84.5757345,15.34z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x88f4e37dff6defcd:0xae053f860c90cf7d!8m2!3d33.5870558!4d-84.5424299!16zL20vMHJ3bjQ?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIyNi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Union+City,+GA/@33.6158433... - Sell vacant land out from under land owners with false listings: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newark/news/fraudsters-are-stealing-land-out-from-under-owners https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newark/news/fra... - Purposely Induced Foreclosure, Bankruptcy or surprise tax assessments to cause a forced sale: https://www.businessethicsnetwork.org/forced-sale-implications-and-processes/ https://www.businessethicsnetwork.org/forced-sale-implicatio...

michaelcampbell 2y ago

That's what YOU mean to say.