Comments by "Andre Falksmen" (@andrefalksmen1264) on "How History Works"
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@andyramirez9872 my PhD is an economics, and while I typically deal with much more contemporary issues, I've done enough historical research to know that your argument is insane.
First off, the British East India Company was immensely profitable as an enterprise, and end of company rule did not mean any reduction in the profitability of India as a colony, the vast sums of opium which British sold into China was grown and india, the British milked the Indian population through taxes and impost, and of decimated their domestic textile Market through forced Imports of British textiles. It is the same story over and over again with the European empires, they extracted labor and resources, often through concessions to private companies, to their colonies. At no time, aside from in the white dominions, did they ever seek to expand great amounts of money developing their colonies as self-sufficient entities. They're expressed policy was the exact opposite.
Ask for america, I don't know what part of the world you live in but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Firstly, America was not a major industrial power until the beginning of the 20th century, prior to World War 1 America's largest export was cotton. Furthermore, throughout the 19th century America's federal government was financed through a general tariff, and the primary ports that generated the revenue for the federal government, and the funds they needed to conquer more lands to the west to continue their colonial the price, was the ports of the slave holding south. Slavery did not simply benefit the slave holder, it was the foundational benefit of the entire United states. At the time, they were not shy about admitting the centrality of Slavery to the functionality of the prosperity of the United states. If you want to understand this more thoroughly, see the writings of John C Calhoun. Lastly, America was also a deterred Nation prior to World War i, and then that was primarily owed to British creditors who's wealth came from distracting resources in the British Empire.
If you want to understand the centrality of slavery, colonialism, and genocide to the American Enterprise see the book The half has never been told. If you want to understand how Americans viewed the benefits of slavery see John C Calhoun's disposition on government. As far as the European Empires go there are so many books. I doubt that you have done serious research on the matter.
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@andyramirez9872 taking just a few of your points. Your claim that slavery was almost only profitable to the slaveholder is absurd, and contradictory to the contemporary evidence and statements to the time. The entirety of American industrialization was built on slavery, not merely the revenue generated from the income of the consumption of slave holders to the sale of cotton, the financing of the growth of cotton and slaves, the insurance of cotton and slaves, the transportation of cotton by both Rail and sea, and the Milling of cotton grown by slaves, although American Mills would not be competitive with those in Britain until the 20th century. You seem, for person who says he has studied the subject, to be unfamiliar with the concept of settler colonialism. America is a settler Colonial project, like australia, canada, and new zealand. The vast sums needed to equip and finance the armies which conquered the American West came out of the coffers of the federal government filled from the prophets of slavery. In turn the US captured new resources and additional land, some of course which was worked by slave such as the Louisiana Purchase and texas, others which were given to White settlers. In any event, additional capital was procured from the British and its exploitation of its Empire.
Regarding the British empire, your claim is even more bizarre since the Americans make great effort to hide the origins of their development, the British do know such thing. The finances of the British India India company, however precarious, do not take into consideration the vast sums paid to the British Parliament in taxes or the significant dividends which were paid to its shareholders which went on to finance many industrial projects in britain. Indeed, the Mills of Great Britain were not spending English rule, they were spinning the slave grown cotton! The railroads of Great Britain carried that slave grown cotton and it's finished textiles, the shipping of Britain transported that slave grown cotton and the resulting textiles! There's been more than a few academic Works which have traced the shareholders of the British East India company, as well as many of the largest British slaveholders in the caribbean, and their investments into the industrial projects of the British empire. That is not even to get into the vast sums that the British made from the sale of opium to the Chinese, or the vast sums of money made from their rubber, tea, and palm oil plantations in the tropics. Of course, the belgians most ruthlessly exploited the Congolese and that regard, and the record of their profits from such brutality was known to their contemporaries, as well as the 10 million dead to achieve it.
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@andyramirez9872 the point of my comments is because the information presented in the video is inaccurate and misleading!
Are you 15 years old? Do not understand that the placement of industry is not relevant to its reliance on slavery? What were Northern railroads hauling, what was their primary freight? Cotton! What was the largest in industry in the North? Textiles, and what were those textile mills spinning, slave grown cotton! Same thing as Great Britain, which the textile mills of Britain worth spending long after slavery was abolished in the British Empire proper. What was the primary Freight on American ships? Cotton! What was the primary item of insurance and primary collateral of banks in America prior to the civil war? Slaves! What was the primary export of the United States up until the turn of the 20th century? Cotton! What was the primary source of federal revenue prior to the American Civil War? Tariff revenue from Southern ports, brought with money from slavery! If you would like a detailed account of this information, again see the book "The Half has Never Been Told".
I don't know where you got information about the British empire, but it was established Imperial policy to operate each colony at a profit, and they did. The cost of maintaining the colonies was trivial compared to the vast sums of Revenue they raped, hence why the British allowed repeated famine in India to the point that 4 million people starved during World War II in order to maintain grain supplies to the White dominion. I don't know what Shameless apologist for Colonial Empire you have been reading, but none of your Claims can be substantiated by any serious scholar. If you wish to understand how the British administer their colony and how they were able to maintain profitability, and the scale of profitability of their empire, I recommend the book "Trouble of the World" by Zach Sell.
We can go back and forth ad nauseam, but you're not going to change my mind about a fact which has been substantiated by more than 20 years of research on my part, and I doubt I will change your mind from a Prejudice that you seem to have formed in order to justify some opinion of the world which you would like to be true.
The little taunts and barbs, that you have made here mean nothing to me. I simply invite you to read the books I've recommended, that you might have a little bit of an education so you would not fall for such absurdities as that presented in this video.
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@madmouse4400 so I don't know where you got your list, but it's wrong first off, Germany also had as colonies Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Samoa.
Secondly, Tanzania is not infertile, quite the contrary it's extremely fertile, and has the benefits of being both tropical and temperate, I should move from the coast into the Highlands European, tempered weather, crops can be grown with ease. Moreover, German Cameroon was larger than the area of the German Empire in europe.
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@stallonegodinho6296 so you have a basic understanding of economics let's take it one step further.
Do you understand what monetary regimes are? The traditional neoclassical framework of supply and demand can be applied to currencies as well.
In general, exports generate demand for your currency and imports create supply of your currency. The relative value of your currency is affected by Supply and demand, or more particularly Imports or exports. We will set aside the case of the United States as a reserve currency.
Now, if a country has more Imports than exports, barring external earnings from Capital assets, their currency will go down.
If a country has more exports than imports, sitting aside the shoe of a weak currency policy, their currency will go up.
Tying it all together, do you see how a country wishing to preserve the purchasing power of its currency would seek to minimize the need for imports, one way to get the Imports necessary is colonization!
Now you say colonization happened primarily under the gold standard, that is correct. With a gold standard, excessive Imports over exports causes a drain of liquidity and a reduced price level, while increased exports drives up liquidity and increases the price level.
Colonization serves two-fold purposes, it allows the country in question to avoid expending its foreign currency/ gold on imports from a secondary country, it also allows the colonizing country to earn wealth by exporting the resources of the colonized country. That's why a man like Leopold of Belgium who worked approximately 10 million Congolese people to death, is Remembered in Belgium as " the Builder King", because he used the vast wealthy earned from the Congo to invest in infrastructure and public works in Belgium.
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@andyramirez9872 LOL. I've given you sources, now go and study. Both the books I've cited are chock full of footnotes, why don't you actually review them before commenting. I know your pride in the line that you hold so dear hurt, but anyone with half a brain can do enough research to find that the argument that colonialism was not profitable is a fringe and baseless one. In any event, you are some random person on youtube, your insults matter less to me then cow manure, cow manure I can sell for a profit. P. S., for future reference, you might wish to Enlighten yourself, as you appear quite ignorant of many things, there is a field called developmental economics, in which historical patterns of political economy are always studied.
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@JK-gu3tl are you actually familiar with the history of Brazil? If you bother to do any research whatsoever, or read any of the books I cited, you would understand the difference between Brazil and the United states. Most notably, the service class of the United States both reinvested and obtained capital from Britain to invest into the infrastructure of the United States, further propellants development. However, as the Ardent defender of slavery, and fire either from South carolina, Senator John C Calhoun pointed out numerous times, none of it is possible without slavery, both the proceeds It produced and the income in generated. Secondly, another major note of difference is that the slave plantations of Brazil not produce cotton.
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@stallonegodinho6296 let's see come one is a scholar of that particular field of history, and the other two are right wing talking head hacks. Friedman has some followers in academia, but that is largely fallen off over the last 20 years as monetarism has not proven, particularly this current climate, to largely be in error about its arguments that inflation is a purely monetary phenomena. Thomas Sowell is a talking head apologist for white supremacy, he is not taken seriously in any academic circles, as an economist he is a standard neoclassicist. You were spouting the talking points of pop culture revisionist White conservatism. None of this past academic muster, any history of the East India Company, by an actual scholar any scholarly Research into the finances of the British empire, and scholar of the primary figures of the British Empire will all tell you the same thing, the business of empire was a wonderful business! For that matter, any scholar of British constitutional law will also tell you that the business of empire was quite profitable as the British Empire had a rule that every colony had to be self-supporting and financially contributory, which led to a number of unique constitutional arrangements to maintain this policy. One of the best examples, is the force merger of the colony of Newfoundland with Canada in order to make it a fiscally sound.
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@stallonegodinho6296 lol. I see you're still very much in the simplistic pop culture phase of understanding economics and politics, hard facts and data are obfuscated by Propaganda and bias.
Let's start with economics, economics is a science, the understanding and the position of the economist should be the same regardless of his political worldview. They may come to different moral positions, or feelwe should take different public policy choices based on the economic data, but the reality of the data and its interpretation should not change. Case in point, every competent economist, whether he was a Neo classicist, a marxist, an austrian, or historicist would tell you that if you want to achieve economic growth then there has to be more Capital invested in society, typically that means savings. It's only in the last 40 years when you have supply-siders and monetarist, like Milton Friedman, who would tell you that you can get economic growth simply from increased demand. One might argue that what the supply-siders and monetarist are arguing is that the increased demand will spur greater investment. Well, maybe, but from where will the capital come to Spur greater investment, will you have more savings? Their answer typically would be that the central bank can provide the additional capital, that is monetary easing, but that comes with its own significant host of problems.
Ludwig von mises himself, was a classical liberal, and his economic ideas are largely sound, the Austrian theory of the business cycle most accurate at that. However, the people who represent him at the Ludwig von mises institute, alabama, are libertarian / paleo conservative nut jobs. Milton Friedman's economics were popular, but he was only a mediocre economist's, his biggest contribution being a restatement of the cause of inflation through monetary expansion. However he was an absolutist in that view, saying "inflation is always a monetary phenomena", well as we see with the sanctions on Russia, Supply shock inflation is a real thing.
Thomas Sowell, much like his mentor Milton friedman, is a so-so economist, a standard Neo classicist with nothing particular interesting about his views. He makes his reputation and money being a paid talking head for white supremacy. Real economics is not political in the same way, it is not sexy and people outside of the field rarely buy books or know who is truly Innovative in the field. If you're interested in actual groundbreaking economist see William Baumol and Robert Gordon, and for their part, I couldn't even tell you what their politics are, they stick only to the data and facts.
As for Hong kong, you do realize for the vast majority of British rule in Hong Kong it was dirt poor and filthy. Only after World War II when Britain lost his Empire and enacted the east of Suez policy, in which they no longer had a geopolitical stake in the area's east of the Suez canal, did Hong Kong emerge as a free trade and financial center, largely one trading with mainland china. The British record in the rest of its colonies, particularly the Heyday of colonization is quite abysmal. However, you forget that your example disproves your point, did not the British derive greater benefit from the development of Hong Kong as a financial center, being sovereign over one of the largest Financial Centers in the world, and having access to the monetary reserves built up by the Hong Kong people?
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@stallonegodinho6296 listen kid, this is what I'm telling you you don't understand what you're talking about. Tax cuts in and of themselves are not savings! The money from tax cuts would have to go to savings, not consumption in order to Spur economic growth. There is no way to ensure that tax cuts, in and of themselves, will go into savings. That is the difference between these recent Supply Siders and monetarist, and pretty much every other real school of economics. Not to mention, I have met Milton friedman, and his wife, I've sat down to dinner with him, I've read his work, the whole phase that you're in, been there done that. As for Thomas Sowell, never met the man, have read all of his work, again a mediocre Economist at best.
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@stallonegodinho6296 I'm going to try to stay polite. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. You are regurgitating the talking points from the think tanks that you admire and who have hired hacks to advocate for a position that they claim is objective. Let me help you understand basic economics. Economic growth depends on capital accumulation, capital accumulation is the result of investment, Real investment requires savings. You can make an argument for monetary easing, expansion of credit through the central bank and those funds used for Capital investment, but it becomes extremely nuanced as to whether the resulting inflation is defeated by the increases in productivity from the investment. Will a tax cut in and of itself spur economic growth, no! Let me repeat that for you how about you seem a little thick, no! If taxpayers take their tax cut and run with the money to a foreign jurisdiction are consume it all, it will not spur economic growth. In fact, you would get more economic growth if the taxes remained High and the government spent the money on things like infrastructure. Yes, despite the talking points from the think tanks that you love, there are cases in which government spending would be more productive than the actions of private individuals and firms! Yes, that's how that works!
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@SK-lt1so See the book "Trouble of the World" by Zach Sell, the entire "line" of colonies was profitable to the British Empire. Very often, early colonial exploitation, as in places like India, zimbabwe, zambia, or carried out by private concessionaires and only after the colony was profitable and stable would direct Administration be taken up by the crown. If in the event a colony became financially deficient, even in the case of the white dominion of newfoundland, it would be forced into absorption by a financially solvent colony. If you are looking for a long white dominion that was operated on a less exploited basis, the history of British rule in Malta is quite interesting. On the other hand, Cyprus, a white Colony that was not a dominion, the British were quite brutal.
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