Turing test. Slavery or Capitalism?

Author: Greyparrot

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America developed from a struggling collection of colonies to the wealthiest nation in the world mainly due to....

1) Capitalism...or...

2) 100 years of Slavery.


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@Greyparrot
3. Geopolitical isolation
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@ResurgetExFavilla
So why isn't Haiti an economic powerhouse then? It's pretty isolated geopolitically....
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@Greyparrot
Not really, it's in the Carribean which was a playground of European colonialism for centuries after the US was independent. Islands which are isolated geopolitically and culturally aren't really a good comparison because they can't combine together as the thirteen colonies could. Haiti was also essentially a plantation as well, not a real country. Its catastrophic slave revolt ended in predictable dilapidation.

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@ResurgetExFavilla
Don't be silly. Haiti won its independence in 1804... only 30 years after the USA. Since then it has been very isolated.


You're pulling this geocrap isolation out of thin air, because America was never considered purely an isolationist nation from 1776 to the present. American policies historically shifted from one to the other while wealth steadily increased. Isolationism therefore is clearly not a correlating variable to the generation of national wealth.

Most importantly, there exists zero evidence, (even if America was supposedly an isolationist nation) that it was the MAIN cause for America's dominating wealth status, especially when compared to other indigent nations that emerged in the Americas around the same time that were actually historically considered to be isolationists.

Points for attempting to appear clever though.

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@Greyparrot
Mainly by caring about nothing but becoming that very thing.
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@Greyparrot
America has been pretty good at picking it's battles, and of course if government can do its job and still stay out of the way, the economy is going to do what it needs to do....it's not that America was greedily hording wealth as a goal. Switzerland is fairly comparable model that is probably better off than the US.  

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@Plisken
Answer the OP question please.
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@Greyparrot
Geopolitical isolation =/= political isolation. You should know this. The US had the CHOICE to be isolationist when it served their interests. Countries like the Ukraine and Poland did not have that choice. Neither did France and Germany, or even England. When we entered a war, it was half a world away, we sold weapons and supplies during the build-up, and then we sold the materials to rebuild infrastructure afterwards. Haiti's 'independence' consisted of a genocide of the ruling class and a descent into poverty and chaos. Very different from the American revolution on all terms.

The Monroe Doctrine was a real thing, and it was very effective, but it would not have worked anywhere else in the world.
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@Greyparrot

Answer the OP question please.

Your question is fallacious.  Slaves were considered 'capital'.  

Its like asking what makes orange juice, a juicer or an orange.
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@FaustianJustice
This is the correct answer.
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@Greyparrot
Capitalism.  
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@Plisken
This is a turing test question designed to have you think outside of the box rather than answer the scripted dogma answers.

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@Greyparrot
How would people generate accountable wealth without profit? 
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It just makes sense, that you need to account for stuff on your own or you can't even assume what you need to survive...but a capitalist system can exist with restriction on wealth generating members of society.  I don't know if calling "capitalism" a main contribution would be appropriate to real world consideration but it doesn't hurt.  
ethang5
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Your question is fallacious.  Slaves were considered 'capital'.  
Then it was capitalism no?
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@ethang5
The Americans in charge of business didn't suck at conducting their business, and most Americans were busy.
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Other countries like Brazil had slavery.  However, Brazil went socialist for some time and they are now an economic failure.  America on the other hand, is capitalist and abolished slavery before Brazil did.  Capitalism is the cause of America's Success.

I vote Capitalism.
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I would concur with the above posts that slavery was capitalism. Slavery was a component of capitalism centuries ago, the branch of the whole tree. Capitalism is the obvious answer.
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@ethang5
So the answers are really
1) Captialism
2) 100 years of (currently unaccepted) capitalism


Yeah, that is a fallacious question, Ethan.