The “wealth” of empire is in petrol-dollars, saudi tyrants, environmental destruction, international exploitation, endless violence, etc.
The “wealth” of empire is in petrol-dollars, saudi tyrants, environmental destruction, international exploitation, endless violence, etc.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 days ago
Yeah, true that. There’s a whole history of theft and oppression that I’m glossing over there. I do think that about 50% of it was legitimate hard work.
I also think it is fascinating that, after 50 years of the working class going to open war with capitalism to fight for a decent way to live and a decent system (1880-1930), the US spent the next 50 years becoming the most powerful country on earth. I think those two are highly related and the connection is almost never talked about. We spent a lot of the years before 1880 stealing and oppressing just as hard, and it didn’t really do shit for us in terms of building a modern-US-style type of wealth and privilege.
The implications under that theory for what’s about to happen, based on what the current system is for how long, are pretty unsettling to me.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It was also kind of sort of every other first world economy getting bombed into the ground twice in a row which left the US as the only major manufacturing centre for a long time and able to reap massive benefits from that position.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 days ago
Yeah, but there are always big world events that someone could have capitalized on. China could be the dominant power today, or South America. The US just hit on a successful formula for it in a way that a whole lot of other governments and groupings of people did not, and I’m saying that having a massive population base that genuinely believed in the program that the government was selling was a big part of why that happened.
It didn’t happen on its own, the people had to fight for it against active deadly government resistance. But once it happened, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to either the people or the government. And then, not knowing what they had, the government and the people let it fall to ruin, and now we’re fucked.