alt Hacker NewsI guess it's time for some jingoistic rewriting of history. If you want to sum up America's rise to power it's the slave trade, war and a healthy dose of luck (eg the Louisiana Purchase).
There is a concerted attempt to rewrite history on slavery. You will hear things like "slavery was an economic drain" or "slavery was inefficient" or even "it was technology like the cotton gin that created wealth, not slavery". All of it's nonsense [1].
It's true that industrialization (particularly the railroad ans mass production of steel) was a huge driver in the mid-19th century but what really kicked the US into high gear was war [2].
It's true that material conditions and real wages started stagnating in the 1970s but this piece writes that off as Wall Street shenanigans. This was a political goal to break organized labor. We had McKinsey producing reports to argue that executives were "underpaid" [3]. The post-war era went from a marginal tax rate of 91% and the CEO to median worker ratio went from 21:1 in 1965 to 351:1 in the 2020s [4]. But also the post-war economy shifted from housing being a utility to being a speculative asset. The median house price went from $18,000 to $26,000 between 1953 and 1973 (in nominal terms) [5] and decreased in real terms. And, well, we know what's happened since.
But what's less well-known is the link between money going into housing and decline in manufacturing. That's not an accident. Why invest money and run a factory when sitting on a house produces a 7%+ real returns that are government-protected?
As for the whole "right to repair" bit for tractors and the like, yeah, companies engage in rent-seeking behavior in a capitalist mode of production. Film at 11.
[1]: https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-shows-slaverys-cent...
[2]: https://laraballard.substack.com/p/how-the-us-became-the-wor...
[3]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...
This fantasy that the US was atrociously and morally behind the curve on slavery seems to get repeated by Marxist types that love to promote slavery as a unique blemish on the US.
The US as a whole abolished slavery in 1865 (though some states abolished it decades earlier) and it isn't surprising that it might take a little longer in a country structured like the US as you either need to reach or force some kind of consensus which is easier to do in some countries than others.
Mexico - 1829
England - 1834
France - 1848
US - 1865
Brazil - 1888
Many other countries were still abolishing slavery well into the 1960s. Also important to note that, the years these laws were passed around the world doesn't mean slavery stopped instantly at that date. It was quite the norm that slavery continued after it was abolished, not only in the US, but globally. It may not have been realistic to truly end it abruptly for many reasons, so some transition period was necessary.
Also worth mentioning that the US had a relatively small per capita population of slaves compared to many other countries. During this same relevant time period the US was seeing huge amounts of immigration from Europe which dwarfed any sort of slave labor, an expanding rail network, the leveraging of deep water harbors for shipping thanks to wonderful geography and an energy boom. New York was an absolute powerhouse of shipping.
We did containerize some domestic shipping before the rest of the world, but transitioning to it fully took some time.
Many countries had innovators, but what did they do with their innovators? Many countries had labor (slave or not), but what did they do with their labor? You can keep asking a series of questions like this and tend to find that US adapted its use of resources better on average.