The Billionaires Plan To Escape From Us

[WSHazel]

34. I don't know where to start

This idea that humans had such a better life when they were nomadic gatherers is a tiny variation from neo-libertarian tripe of someone like Yuval Noah Harari.

I referred to Germany before World War I, when it most certainly was not a Liberal democracy. Japan was ruled by Samurai until the Meiji restoration, and over half the population literally had no rights at all. Japan industrialized in about 30 years heading into the 20th century, but its military was still run by Samurai families, which led to its disastrous involvement in World War II. Russia had serfs until 1861, but was industrializing faster than any country in Europe in the first decade of the 20th century. England was not ruled by a traditionalist class in the 19th century. It had adopted many of the Liberal approaches from Holland, particularly when it came to property rights, in the 17th and 18th century, and by the 19th century, rights and freedoms were rapidly expanding beyond just the upper classes. Development happened in fits and starts, but it was light years beyond the quality of life in Feudalism.

The people that moved to cities during the industrial revolution had no land. There is some fundamental disconnect where you think that everyone in medieval times owned land. Almost no one owned land, and the value of human labor was virtually nothing because there was more labor to work the fields than was necessary, and in a primitive, agrarian economy, you don't need people for much else beyond farmwork.

Colonialism was terrible, but that was an mercantilist, neo-Feudal approach to resource aggregation and utilization more than it was capitalism. It is hard to argue that colonialism is Liberalism or capitalism when none of the colonial people had agency in their exploitation. That is a prerequisite for both.