[FredPret]

Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?

To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.

> The US's short history is absurdly violent,

Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?

> but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.

They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.

[com2kid]

> Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?

This isn't some topic of debate. There is well documented historical proof of slaves designing and then building the rice field levees!

> To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.

The early economic success of the country was built off of slavery. That isn't something that seemingly needs discussion. The southern part of the US was a large economic power, even by European standards of the time.

> Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?

I have, and in general other countries had a lot longer to perfect being assholes. The British empire did many horrible, horrible, things, but they took awhile to work up to it, it wasn't part of their initial founding.

Leopold II was in charge of an existing kingdom when he went on a quest to be one of the biggest assholes in history.

France is complicated, because their revolutions were so frequent for awhile, and a lot of the blood shed was French.

Meanwhile in America we got:

1. Mass murder of the natives 2. Inventing an entire new, more horrific type of slavery 3. Manifest destiny, with more genocide 4. Building the Transcontinental Railroad, with Not-Technically-Slavery 5. Massive racism against the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad

> They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.

Correct, the late 1800s and then the 20th century were a major turning point. Loosely enforced IP laws allowed Hollywood to thrive (super interesting history!), and poor environmental laws and a well educated workforce allowed the initial version of silicon valley to come about (look up why it is called silicon valley, and why it is also a superfund cleanup site!).

The US being slightly-less-racist against some people helped, and the less racist we were, and the more people we invited in from around the world, the better things got.

IMHO the best move the US Government could make for the economy is to offer the top 1% of graduates from the top universities in each major country an automatic VISA and a guaranteed path to citizenship.

The 2nd best thing the US Government could do for the economy is enforce Japanese style zoning laws on all major cities so people can actually afford to live in major metros again.

[FredPret]

I actually agree with many of the points you made here, especially your two policy proposals.

But I don't think you can mention the US in the same breath as imperial Belgium. Leopold was surely one of the low points of our species. But the Brits, for all the bad things they did - including in my native country - were the least bad empire up to that point, and forcibly ended slavery.

My broader point is that certain cultural values lend themselves massively to economic and technological development. European nations got these values by random chance, and then used this economic edge to then colonize the world. How else could tiny Belgium utterly subjugate the Congo?