[hospadar]

Weren't they? Europeans certainly placed a high value on the land and resources controlled by native americans and went to extreme lengths (i.e. genocide and mass displacement) to get their hands on it.

If that's not plunder I don't know what is.

[WalterBright]

Why didn't the other American nations get wealthy? Central America, South America, the Caribbean, etc.?

[MeImCounting]

Do you actually not know/want to discuss why that is or are you just pushing your narrative which is that "the particular special brand of White People™ who happened to become dominant in the US were very good and very smart and so invented factories and made the US rich and therefor the riches of the US have nothing to do with plunder but with the virtue of these very good very smart very special White People™"?

Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US.

https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-...

https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph...

https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...

[WalterBright]

My narrative, which nobody seems to notice, is that free markets are the key to prosperity.

> these very good very smart very special White People™

There are many very poor countries run by white people. Any people can decide to become rich by deciding to become free market - like the Japanese after WW2, and Chinese in Hong Kong.

Japan and Hong Kong became very rich from free markets, and no natural resources. Mexico, S America, Africa, etc, are loaded with natural resources yet remain poor.

> terrible governance

Ding ding! A winner!

P.S. Spain never got rich by plundering S. America. That's because they conflated gold and silver with wealth. Real wealth is productive, skilled people using their talents to create things. All Spain got was inflation.

[MeImCounting]

Oh I do agree that often free markets are excellent at producing wealth. This is generally true but not absolutely. Liberal democracies are the most successful and richest countries partially because regulated free markets are the most efficient resource distribution system. Key word regulated free markets. Because unregulated free markets result in the stereotypical oligarchs and corruption, no social services, unemployment and all those type of bad things. Think post-soviet Russia, Chile under Pinochet and others

None of this changes the fact that much of the historical US national wealth can be see as plunder.

[WalterBright]

Russia, etc., were only marginally free markets.

[ffgjgf1]

> Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever

Not it’s not at all clear. They stopped shipping that plunder about at the same time as US became independent (+ 10-20 years). So both were on a comparable even footing in the early 1800s.

Also there was hardly any comparable “plunder” available to be shipped anywhere Boston or London. How many silver mines where there in NA prior to the 1800s?

The main advantages US/preceding colonies had over Latin America was a much nicer climate in the Northeast i(malaria and other diseases were a huge issue) and better geographic location which made trade with Europe easier.

There was no real plunder to speak of besides land. Which was of course a big deal because it mean that an average American was much more productive per capita even before industrialization began.

[WalterBright]

The land was plundered in S America and Mexico, too. Why didn't they become rich, industrialized countries?

[ffgjgf1]

Because of course there were also other factors.

Productivity generally remained relatively low (most land was still farmed by the subjugated native populations), trade and commerce extremely restricted by the policies of the Spanish government and most of the surplus was shipped back to Europe.

In contrast in British North America the colonists got to keep pretty much all the wealth they generated.