[flagged]

BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Aren't the people who survived Spanish colonization better off than they would have been?

"The ends justify the means" is certainly a valid metric by which to judge things, but an honest application of it leads one to conclusions such as "Mao Zedong was the greatest humanitarian to have ever lived" (as seen here: https://i.imgur.com/3QUXVi3.jpeg).

▲

rayiner 3 days ago | parent [-]

Mao is bad because he delayed the growth that China was capable of achieving and did achieve after Deng Xiaoping. 40 years after the communist revolution in 1990, China was still as poor as India per capita. In the 35 years since then, China became five times richer per capita than India. If the Chinese republicans had maintained power continuously since 1912, there's a good chance that China would be as developed as South Korea or Japan today.

It's valid to ask a similar question about the Americas. What would life be like for people today? It's probable that the Aztecs or their descendants would have taken over the Americans, since they were by far the most technologically superior. Would they have evolved into a prosperous industrialized society today?

▲

vacuity 3 days ago | parent [-]

I find it reasonable to assume that any civilization will gradually adapt to meet demands, given whichever constraints burden it. Europe (and the US) had opportunities (partly due to colonialism) to become industrialized and prosperous, and it has taken those opportunities. So it is with China. Africa has opportunities, but colonialism has made progress difficult. In the long term, I think cultural/societal differences are not the deciding factor, so much as the geopolitical environment shapes society. The formation of mountains doesn't much care about the contemporary scale of human construction projects, either.

You seem to be saying that colonialism advanced society even for the oppressed, but the causality of history is complicated. As far as we know, you may as well say that the extinction of the dinosaurs as it happened was essential for human proliferation. Maybe the dinosaurs would've gone extinct at some point, or diminished greatly, or maybe the dinosaurs and humans would coexist. Just because a somewhat plausible scenario presents itself does not mean it is compelling. You have brought up counterfactuals, so use your imagination seriously, instead of taking the easy way out. If you have a motivating belief on the matter, it is untoward to speak as if you are unbiased and objective.

▲

rayiner 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I find it reasonable to assume that any civilization will gradually adapt to meet demands, given whichever constraints burden it

So your theory is that civilizations are the way they are because of exogenous rather than endogenous factors? That seems difficult to reconcile with the historical record. Your viewpoint just begs the question. For example, why was Europe in a position to colonize the Americas in the first place? Why weren’t the Spanish greeted by Aztecs with swords and guns?

	▲	vacuity 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		In the long term, I think civilizations grow along the lines of natural selection. They are neither optimal nor pessimal, but are likely to display a high degree of fitness. Environmental shocks in the short term will challenge fitness. Competition among civilizations also challenges fitness. Why indeed was Europe technologically advanced? Why were the Americas not so much? Resources are one factor, which is why obtaining resources from other lands is valuable. But the main impetus for advancement surely isn't based on one's "skill in advancing". Most people could be trained to fix cars, if desired. Also, Rome fell, but people now live where Rome was with far greater technology. I posit that, if the indigenous peoples of the Americas were given the desire to advance to the level of Europeans, the resources to do so, and time, similar advancement would arise.

▲

extropic-engine 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, they are not better off.

I have provided as many facts for my argument as you have for yours.

▲

Larrikin 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Prove that without any colonization they would be worse off.

▲

Throaway195 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Latin America is a horrifically corrupt and inequal place, so, no, probably not!

▲

jacobolus 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Probably not, but this counterfactual depends on the circumstances, and depends on your values. For example: people might argue about the relative harms of various kinds of slavery vs. cultural genocide vs. land dispossession and forced displacement ....

After contact there were waves of mass die-off of people throughout the Americas due to disease brought from Eurasia: are we positing that those deaths still occurred? Because they were extraordinarily destabilizing. For example, if we hypothetically imagine that the balance of disease severity was the other way around and 90% of the population of Eurasia was wiped out over a century in several waves of horrific pandemics, then history would look quite different indeed, and it's all but impossible to predict precisely how.

European states other than Spain also did horrific atrocities in their conquests and colonial projects. Are we positing that we just replace Spanish kingdom(s) with some alternative European monarchies? Or are we imagining a situation in which peoples of the Americas retained some autonomy?

▲

WalterBright 3 days ago | parent [-]

The Black Death killed approximately 30–60% of Europe's population between 1347 and 1353.

▲

jacobolus 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Now imagine that happening once per generation for 3 or 4 generations in a row, followed by / contemporary with getting invaded by an alien army with significantly superior weapons and ships whose goal was total domination and enslavement / elimination.

▲

rayiner 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. Your average European alive today likely is better off because half their ancestors died of the plague.

▲

Tor3 3 days ago | parent [-]

So the general theory is that if you kill half of the population the descendants will be better off? What's the mechanism, and what happens if you follow that to its conclusion?

▲

3 days ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

rayiner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a whole body of research on this: https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-bet...

	▲	Tor3 a day ago \| parent [-]
		That's only about the black death, and some specific reasons for why that helped, kind of, _some_ parts of Europe. First, it definitely didn't help everyone - Norway, for example, lost all economic power and went into the 400 year night, as it's called (it was under Denmark). And secondly, it's a single case. You can't create a general rule from that. It's vastly different to compare that case to when e.g. 95% of the population died out in certain places during the Spanish conquest. And, again, take that "rule" to its logical conclusion: How many people will inhabit the Earth after a while, and under what conditions will they live?

▲

hitarpetar 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

no, they're not, this whole line of thought is explicitly white supremacist. shame on you