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.
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?
Indeed this is something that even George Washington famously wrote about. His conclusion was that slave labor is an economic disaster and that he would be far better off financially not being responsible for carrying all the costs of the labor. And that's before the US developed a far superior economic model to what existed in Washington's time, in regards to productivity (ie even in a backward, low productivity agrarian context, it was obvious slave labor was extremely inefficient, it did not work well at all).
This is something that has been proven repeatedly by studies that have looked into slave labor in the colonies and elsewhere. When people on the Internet say otherwise, my experience has been that they never support their claims, they're always empty statements held up as fact.
The US would have developed faster if the slaves had been free. Along with being obviously morally evil, slavery inherently must involve a great misallocation of human resources. It's an extreme example of command economics. The Soviets, Chinese and others more recently have demonstrated how poorly slave-based economics works in practice. We're not lacking for proof; there isn't a single example from modern history of it working well versus free labor.
The greatest example of this in action in recorded history, is modern China. They only developed at all after they began to shift away from a de facto slave-based labor system, to something closer to free labor. Simply put, they unleashed their human capital and it has done the rest, going to work building out modern China (in spite of the restraining, backwards, command economics system that remains, rather than because of it; something Internet pundits frequently get wrong about China).
First, I'll note that you haven't addressed the "unlimited land" part at all. Shall I conclude that you agree with me, at least, that appropriation of native land was one of the pillars of US wealth creation?
> 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 from this one example, you're extrapolating that slavery did not play a major role in the creation of overall US wealth? That is a... bold claim, to put it lightly. It is not supported by contemporary historians, and your other comments don't exactly inspire confidence as to your mastery if History, so forgive me for being skeptical.
How about you start by telling me, of the 13 original colonies, how many had slaves? And, perhaps, how much wealth had been accumulated in the original colonies before they abolished slavery?
From there, perhaps move on to researching how slavery enriched the North, even after abolition.
> 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.
I fail to see how that is relevant to the US.
Before you take your British Empire comparison too far, you might want to research the origin of the empire's wealth during the 19th and 20th century...
> I'm roughly 25% "native" like you keep referencing to.
Oh you're Native American, that's great! What tribe?
Not only does your genetics test not matter, by claiming native heritage in this way you are participating in something which actual Native Americans find problematic.
Native American Cultures are extremely dynamic. It's hard to define objectively who is native American and who is not. As in similar matters, it may be the best thing to let people call themselves what they want.
You can define Native American ancestry in some way or other, but that would say nothing about an individuals connection to that culture which may be high or may be zero.
> Native American Cultures are extremely dynamic. It's hard to define objectively who is native American and who is not.
Sure. To quote the interview linked in my previous comment:
"We have debates amongst ourselves about whether being Native American is about being a citizen of your tribe – a political designation – or about culture and traditional practice. I tend to come down on the side of political citizenship. It’s true that it’s about much more than blood – culture matters. But our political autonomy matters too, and that helps produce a space in which our cultural traditions can thrive."
So it's true that there isn't one unique, immutable rule for determining Native identity.
But there is also a very real pattern of white people claiming Native identity in a way that 1) all tribes disagree with, and 2) erases the voice of actual Native Americans, and sometimes even actively hurts them.
> it may be the best thing to let people call themselves what they want.
They can call themselves whatever they want. But if they're going to use some bullshit blood test as a "get out of jail free card" to make a white supremacist argument, furthering a well-documented pattern of disrespectful behavior to Native Americans, then I'm going to call them out on it.
Just imagine someone saying "Hey, I'm sick of you always bringing up specific people when you mention the Holocaust. A got a blood test and I'm 25% Jewish. Is this my mic drop moment?" . In this context would you also say "Meh, let people call themselves what they want". Context matters.
If he can't use his 25% native part as an argument for wealth partially accruing to original inhabitants of the continent, you can't use his other 75% as an argument for wealth accruing to European settlers (assuming his other 75% is European).
The shortest and simplest argument is that the South barely had the funds to prosecute the war while the North not only could fully fund their war efforts, they had access to extensive lines of credit from other nations. The South had to rely upon the largesse of European countries using it as a pawn.
The North lost roughly one soldier for every African slave brought to the South and the least we could do is not imply they were some impoverished slavers who couldn't plant a crop, open a factory, or build rail lines without some help from the South.
> The shortest and simplest argument is that the South barely had the funds to prosecute the war while the North not only could fully fund their war efforts, they had access to extensive lines of credit from other nations. The South had to rely upon the largesse of European countries using it as a pawn.
Interesting argument. And what was the wealth of the North built on?
Well we know it wasn't slavery. In the South the rich invested in slaves, and the rich controlled most of the economy. In the North the economy was dominated by agriculture, and was well along into the industrial revolution.
To put the economies in the starkest of differences, 90% of all the capital in the United States, prior to the Civil War, was located in the North. The North employed 1000% more factory workers, in factories that were magnitudes more profitable. Steel production, railroads, engines, chemicals, all this was produced in the North in almost their entirety.
The South produced only three things of note: cotton, slavery, and traitors.
Interesting. Would you say the South was an important market for the industrialized North?
Would you like to guess whether businessmen in the North invested in the slave trade and grew rich thanks to it?
And what do you make of the fact that the North abolished slavery only after decades of using slaves, making it plausible that they never could have succeeded as colonies without slaves in the first place?
You can't say the northern states were not benefiting from exploitative conditions or even slavery in the south. And all of white America continued to profit from denying non-whites equal rights in one way or another.
The Confederates had probably hoped the North would not want to go to war over the Union thing.
And also: Even though slavery is not an effective means of production (though it probably was, at some points for some people), it's still wrong.
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.