[inglor_cz]

Not an American, so I don't really want to engage in your culture wars, but still... your comment is very Chomsky-ite.

The slavery part is questionable. While slavery made money for the slave owners, the South as a whole was poor and couldn't keep up with the North when it came to actual economic activity. That is why they lost their war of survival.

Looking at other slave-owning societies of the 1800s, none can be described as particularly rich today. One of the reasons why slavery died out in the Western world was that it was becoming uneconomical in a world that was shifting from agriculture to industry. Even the Nazis often lost money on their slave-operated industries; people are just too clever not to be able to sabotage such subtle operations if they hate you enough. Slavery is really only economically efficient in sex, back-breaking work in the fields or mines, or possibly household help.

"Quasi-vassality" is a Putinesque formulation. Neither Japan nor Germany are in any sense of the word American vassal states. They are kept in the American-led coalition mostly by their self-interest, because taking part in a global trade network is, for industrial powers like those two, much preferable to not doing so. And if they find any American political or military action questionable, they stay out of it, unlike actual vassals, who were usually compelled to provide manpower for their liege's wars.

Neither Japan nor Germany engaged themselves in Vietnam or Iraq, for example.

[greenie_beans]

> While slavery made money for the slave owners, the South as a whole was poor and couldn't keep up with the North when it came to actual economic activity. That is why they lost their war of survival.

This is 100% false. The South was wealthy as fuck. The North and South had a very important trade relationship where they both benefited. The southern plantations grew the cotton that the northern industrialists profited from.

> One of the reasons why slavery died out in the Western world was that it was becoming uneconomical in a world that was shifting from agriculture to industry.

This isn't true as far as I know. The South tried to replicate slavery with Jim Crow because the free and cheap labor was immensely profitable. The South fought the Civil War because they were fighting to protect their right to slavery since it made them so rich.

[inglor_cz]

"The South was wealthy as fuck."

No, the average Southerner was fairly poor. The rich oligarchy was rich, but that is a tautology; the same situation applies in contemporary Gabon or Equatorial Guinea, two countries that are very clearly not wealthy as fuck.

"The South tried to replicate slavery with Jim Crow because the free and cheap labor was immensely profitable."

If it was immensely profitable, could you name me some big corporations that were built on the top of it? You can't. The South was the sick man of American economy. All the innovative businesses of the Gilded Age were built on free labor.

John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Henry Huttleston Rogers, J. P. Morgan, Leland Stanford, Meyer Guggenheim, Jacob Schiff, Charles Crocker, Cornelius Vanderbilt - show me a Southerner among them. The furthest one was born in Pennsylvania.

[greenie_beans]

lol didn't expect anybody to respond to this argumentatively since it's fact but then again we're on hacker news. i'm not meaning to flex, but i have a degree in southern history. not even gonna bother to argue after reading this:

> If it was immensely profitable, could you name me some big corporations that were built on the top of it? You can't.

not even gonna explain why

[api]

Wealthy in what way? I’m sure the South had massively rich plantation owners and bankers, but like most resource extraction economies I suspect monetary velocity was lower and the general public was much poorer and less educated. Extraction economies usually amass a lot of static wealth but are poor in terms of dynamic wealth.

The relationship with Northern capitalists would have been similar to what you see today with petrostates, resource extraction states, and vendors of cheap labor.

Had the South survived I would suspect it would be much poorer today than the North as its economy would probably get stuck in extraction and labor exploitation. Chattel slavery would probably have ended when fossil fuels were discovered at large scale and it might be a petrostate now.

[wheelerof4te]

"Had the South survived I would suspect it would be much poorer today than the North as its economy would probably get stuck in extraction and labor exploitation"

You do know how the US economy works today? You know why everyone accepts the US dollar, a literal piece of paper, in exchange for real, tangible goods?

Because they will be sanctioned and bombed to oblivion if they don't. Now, tell me how this is not a "wealth extraction" economy.

[inglor_cz]

Whoa. You are overestimating the American military capacity by a lot.

There are regionally used strong currencies like the Euro. Us Euros mostly do our internal trade in, well, Euros, without being bombed or even sanctioned. That is quite a lot of trade.

Aside from the Euro, there isn't much of a competition in the international arena. China wants to control the renminbi tightly, which precludes its wider adoption as a reserve currency. UK is a shadow of its former imperial self, and so is the pound. The Japanese economy is too weak for the yen to be a serious competitor.

And with currencies like the rupee, you will find that few people outside India are willing to trust them. Russians now sell a lot of oil to India for rupees (and note that there does not seem to be any initiative to bomb India for engaging in this trade), but then are basically forced to use those same rupees to buy stuff from India again, and Indian exports aren't a great match for Russian economic needs.

[inglor_cz]

"That is how the world economy used to work, before the petrodollar."

The petrodollar is about 50 years old, and international trade grew IDK, fivefold? in that period. No surprise that the previous patterns don't hold any more. There is a difference between a market of three villages and a market of fifteen villages. If the # of connections between corporations and nations grows quadratically, it becomes infeasible to juggle around dozens of different currencies. The market will trend towards dominance of one.

"Euro is irrelevant outside of Europe."

But Europe is fairly relevant in the world. About 20 per cent of forex reserves worldwide are kept in Euro, it is the only serious, though not peer, competitor to the USD in this regard.

[wheelerof4te]

"Russians now sell a lot of oil to India for rupees (and note that there does not seem to be any initiative to bomb India for engaging in this trade), but then are basically forced to use those same rupees to buy stuff from India again".

That is how the world economy used to work, before the petrodollar.

Now, Saudis or Qatar or pick your favorite Middle eastern monarch sell oil to US and everyone else in exchange for $USD. Since oil is used in nearly every other product line, either for transport or actual product, now world trade depends on how much $USD you have to buy said oil.

Euro is irrelevant outside of Europe.

[nec4b]

>>Because they will be sanctioned and bombed to oblivion if they don't. Now, tell me how this is not a "wealth extraction" economy.

TIL, people buy iphones and use facebook, because they are afraid to be bombed otherwise. You know there is a good reason why even rich and powerfull people from Russia or China don't want to keep their wealth in their home currencies. And it's not because they are afraid to be bombed by Americans.

[wheelerof4te]

"Neither Japan nor Germany are in any sense of the word American vassal states."

Both states harbor huge US military bases. Bases that were established after literal military occupation and not by choice.

It's safe to say that they can't truly be free and choose their own policies. By definition, they are both occupied states.

[nec4b]

Which they want to have out of their self interest and not because they are forced too. And no, they are not occupied by any definition. Ukraine is an example of a country which is partially occupied by a foreign force.

[inglor_cz]

There is something like 40 thousand American soldiers in Germany. Way, way too little to influence actual policy of a rich country with > 80 million people.

I speak German and I can guarantee you that American military presence has approximately zero influence on German politics.

This is not how an "occupied" country works. You know how an occupied country looks like? Like Czechoslovakia after 1968. The Soviet troops were permanently stationed there to cow our own Communists into submission to the Moscow line. Once it became clear that Gorbachev was no longer willing to actually use them for this purpose, the regime disintegrated within a few years.

[wheelerof4te]

"I speak German and I can guarantee you that American military presence has approximately zero influence on German politics."

Then why the fuck did they put sanctions on Russia? Why the fuck did they agree to buy a much more expensive liquid gas from the US when they had a cheaper alternative that allowed them to have such a great economy? And why did they not react when Nord Stream pipelines, the source of that cheap gas, got blown up?

What, they just sucked it up and said "hell, it's worth it, at least Russia is bad!"?

They tanked their own economy because Uncle Sam told them to do so, and not a single rational decision has ever been made by the German government since February 2022.

[inglor_cz]

Spoiler alert: not everyone elevates money and economy über alles. What you call "rational" I would call "endlessly cynical".

Russian invasion of Ukraine destabilized security relationships in half of Europe and quite a lot of Germans are sensitive about it. Your view that German economy matters the most and the Russian imperial project is morally irrelevant is mostly carried by AfD, which attracts about a quarter of the total vote. I would say that another quarter of the German population genuinely doesn't care that way or the other, but that still leaves about a half which considers Putin an evil guy and does not want to maintain tight contact with him, much like you don't just invite gangsters into your business for some money.

Granted, the balance of views in Germany is nowhere near as one-sided as in Poland where 90 per cent of people hate and loathe and fear Putin as a mortal enemy, but still. German nation as a whole isn't in mood to make happy deals with Putin and the actions of the politicians reflect that mood.

[uxp8u61q]

Try to argue your point without calling me names (in one case a dictator, in another case a professor who got prizes for his peace efforts) and maybe I'll read what you have to say.

[inglor_cz]

If you made it all the way down to Putinesque, you have already read it.