And not a single mention of centuries of colonialism, as just mayhap a contributing factor to European economic growth
(a) compare colonies to non colonies and what is the difference in present condition?
(b) there is a difference between perfect and best. Neither the indo european, the greek, roman, germanic, or atlantic expansion was perfect – they were still the best – and there is no comparison other than the agrarian expansion.
(c) colonialism was a demonstrated economic failure. As Napoleon, the Romans, Mongols, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians and all otehrs discovered: pilfering is profitable, but colonization is a money losing proposition.
(d) extermination is the only truly profitable adventure and genocides are a norm in history for this reason.
(e) the lesson is that colonization that creates sufficient rule of law to produce trade is the only return on investment, and even then only investment.
(f) so europeans converetd to economic domestication by the production of ‘free’ trade routes even for the smallest and poorest countries. That’s been the postwar strategy and it’s raised mankind out of poverty.
(g) if the USA/UK end policing of the world system of finance, transport, and trade, then the world will return to a conflict of civilizations over monopolization of trade routes, in order to NOT develop into modern world trade countries under rule of law. If this occurs then almost every under developed country will experience mass starvation and the developed world other than the USA/Canada which are economically autarkic, will lose no less than 40% of their standard of living.
So if you want to whine about doing the job of raising you out of your superstition, ignorance, poverty, disease, child mortality, early death, then that’s ok. But criticize how we do it now that we’ve learned, rather than how we did it AS we learned.
We’re quite happy to ‘let you be’ and you will experience the ‘absence’ of European colonization of the world with that ‘ideology’ we call reason, empiricism, science, technology, medicine, economics, rule of law, and politics.
Frankly we’re tired of burning out working and middle classes to domesticate you, while you’re thankless for our cost in blood, treasure, and quality of life.
