What if Jefferson had gotten the agrarian country he wanted?

[brewster]

The other problem with your premise is...

My premise was the question, not the one scenario I posited. You are on your anti-city hobbyhorse but aren't interested in the question of what a victory for the first Republicans would have had on the course of the US history. The city thing is an argument, but I don't want to have it here.

[Speaker to Animals]

The other problem with your premise is...

My premise was the question, not the one scenario I posited. You are on your anti-city hobbyhorse but aren't interested in the question of what a victory for the first Republicans would have had on the course of the US history. The city thing is an argument, but I don't want to have it here.

What do you think Jefferson was on about?

[brewster]

The other problem with your premise is...

My premise was the question, not the one scenario I posited. You are on your anti-city hobbyhorse but aren't interested in the question of what a victory for the first Republicans would have had on the course of the US history. The city thing is an argument, but I don't want to have it here.

What do you think Jefferson was on about?

That was part of his schtick, but I'm asking about THEN, not now. And all of the places of suburban sprawl you tout he would recognize as cities.

[Speaker to Animals]

Yes! And I am telling you it's a silly premise. It could not have happened in the 19th century. The cities were destined to emerge. But the irony of all this is that the inverse really is happening right now.

[Zlaxer]

Yes! And I am telling you it's a silly premise. It could not have happened in the 19th century. The cities were destined to emerge. But the irony of all this is that the inverse really is happening right now.

I think you're partially wrong - the cities are not going away...rather, their populations are being merged into mega cities......Take Hartford for example....it's productive population is moving to NYC and Bean Town.....same thing with all the other 2nd-3rd tier cities like Mobile....The elites like their mega cities.....all that's going to be left in Hartford in a few years, is a bunch of poor uneducated proles....eventually, they'll move out when the city/state can no longer support their asses....Callous? Yes. True? yes. Sucks to be a prole when the nanny state goes broke.

IMHO, the cities are going to become truly divided between the halves and the have-nots, with the professional class living in the country side and working remotely.....

[brewster]

I think you're partially wrong - the cities are not going away...rather, their populations are being merged into mega cities....

There's that, but also the migrants to red States aren't moving to farms, they're moving to urban areas. In Texas the native population is concentrating in the urban centers.

[Speaker to Animals]

LOL. You are really fixated on this farm straw man.

[brewster]

LOL. You are really fixated on this farm straw man.

answered in the "current events" thread

Yes! And I am telling you it's a silly premise. It could not have happened in the 19th century. The cities were destined to emerge. But the irony of all this is that the inverse really is happening right now.

I don't see why we couldn't have ended up like latin america, at least for a long while, if the government disincentivized industry. Look at Tokugawa Japan for a society held deliberately stagnant by its leaders.

[Okeefenokee]

I imagine we would look like other parts of the world that didn't modernize but have resources.

They don't call it the resource curse for nothing.

Are you reading the Chernow Hamilton? My favorite thing in that book is his detailing Hamilton's industrial espionage against English textile companies.

Yes, that's the book. I had read quite a bit about that story before. A lot of it he played no part in, was kinda inevitable.

It's hard to imagine the US looking like a 3rd world country, but there's been many places, notably in Latin America, that had as much potential and failed to realize it. What Okee got wrong in his juicing analogy is that the US, unlike the European mercantilists, had both the resources and the domestic market for industrializing. They didn't need to compete in the colony game, and it wasn't what Hamilton was proposing.

that's one hundred percent horse shit.

18th century industry does not work without exploitation. that's why colonies were geographically isolated. the plan from day one was to squeeze them, and they needed them stuck in a corner with nowhere to go.

you couldn't do it in europe, because europeans didn't want to see their own people being exploited so blatantly, so they hid it from view.

the united states couldn't go the colonial route without out overcoming the mythos built into the revolution about that being a bunch of shady shit that america wasn't about.

so the only option to industrialize as an america with no colonies was to exploit your own populace for cheap raw materials and force them to purchase your manufactured goods. and that is precisely what dominated american history from 1787 to 1861.

so you don't know enough history to debate this if you think northern industry was perfectly settled with both the domestic market and access to cheap resources, because that definitely was not true.

Southern states exported one third of their yield to northern industry, and the other two thirds went to europe and was reciprocated with european goods, not northern goods.

that's the whole basis for all of it. for the tariffs that nearly caused secession while jackson was president, and him having to go to carolina to talk them out of it. it was all a way to bring southern ag to heel to they could have their own colonial possession, and they couldn't compete industrially without that. which is why they invaded the south on trumped up charges about a fucking fort, that no one in their right mind would sensibly argue can be maintained by a foreign power without permission in someone else's nation except as an act of war.

the entire basis where you are trying to make this debate start is horse shit also. these events are not the context for a question of whether or not the nation should have gone industry or ag. that's bullshit. in the actual timeline, not some fucked out made up one you want to imagine, both sides went forward with their plans.

agriculture was only profitable because of slaves, and industry could not be profitable as long as agriculture was. so the industrialists did everything they could for almost a century to box in the ag states, just like britain had done to them when they were colonies, until they finally got a resolution.

[TheReal_ND]

There is also the fact that without slaves we would likely not have been able to out compete the other countries that were here in the South. Current states that federalists love. Or loathe. Whatever