[metalens]

I'd like to add that those moves we (assuming you're referring to the US) made 100 years earlier were not made with liberty intact. A lot of our progress was built on the back of slavery and racial discrimination at scale in housing, education, transportation, jobs, etc.

[mc32]

Slavery isn’t in dispute, nor segregation, however I’d posit that those elements dragged down society and the economy rather than strengthened it (it was detrimental to progress). Same as serf slavery in Czarist Russia before liberalization, it dragged down their economy immensely.