I explained very clearly why the circumstances surrounding the expeditions pushed the Europeans to be more greedy than their Chinese counterparts. The fact is that the Europeans pillaged the New World and the Chinese didn't. I believe mainly economic considerations led this to be the case. I don't know what your explanation is.
Don't be so sensitive that any hint of criticism as taken as a condemnation of your culture. I don't see how "opposing arguments" add anything to the conversation. I know very well that the reconquista was just finishing when Columbus set sail and that Spain had been dominated by an Islamic caliphate for centuries. I don't think that excuses his atrocities.
I neither wrote not implied that Europeans are evil -- you assumed that. The fact is that colonialism and the slave trade, despite creating massive amounts of wealth for some, were horrific for its subjects. And Western Europeans were the first to scale both colonialism and the slave trade globally. This isn't debatable, it's plain fact.
Unfortunately, people like the interviewee explain away early western economic domination by referring to Western European intellect and culture, and ignoring the dark side. This has been the case since the beginning of economic history. Adam Smith didn't even bother to discuss slavery in The Wealth of Nations even though he knew how critical it was to the development of capitalism.
It's time to be honest about how we got here. If the ugly truth offends you, I don't know what to tell you.
This article ignores decades of scholarship about the roots of the industrial revolution and capitalism.
The short answer is that the Europeans (maybe for some of the reasons given in this article), were greedier than the Chinese.
It's likely that the Chinese empire reached the New World before Columbus. http://www.economist.com/node/5381851. But the thought of enslaving an entire population and stealing all their natural resources didn't even occur to the Chinese explorers. Whereas the Chinese expeditions were financed by the empire, the Europeans expeditions were financed by debt, so the men needed to arrive on land and quickly acquire wealth for themselves at all costs, or else they would return to Europe broke or never return at all. And this led them to commit the horrendous acts in the New World we know so much about.
Western Europe, now full of gold and silver stolen from the New World had levels of wealth it had never experienced. This led to increased demands for certain goods (like English wool), which forced the population off of the land and into urban centers, thus creating the landless working class. This process was called The Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure. An urban, landless working class, was a necessary condition for the industrial revolution. The extraordinary wealth ready to be invested in industry, a product of colonialism and the slave trade, was another necessary condition for the industrial revolution.
This guy is an absolute douchebag. He's a disrespectful piece of shit and anyone involved with Soylent in any capacity ought to be ashamed with his antics. For those who don't know, Lincoln Heights is a working class neighborhood, that as of the last 2-3 years is undergoing rapid gentrification.
Give it up. I left out an important part in my original post: this guy only got media attention in America. No media attention in the Arab world, because being a Google employee didn't make his sacrifice any more significant. The European media had enough sense to not focus on this guy either. Only the insufferable mainstream American media is self-centered enough to push the narrative that an employee of an American company was instrumental in the Arab Spring.
Please, cut it out with the bullshit. This guy played a negligible role in the Arab Spring. The only reason he received the media attention he did was because he held a prominent position at an American company.
Calling him the Arab Spring's instigator is an insult to Egyptian activists and organizers, not to mention the revolutionaries in Tunisia.
This mentality was necessary for national survival given their history. From being doped up and murdered by imperialist westerners during the opium wars to being occupied and raped by imperial japan.
A unite and take on the world mentality is what allowed China to win sovereignty, and given how far they've come, I'd say the "us against the world" mentality has worked wonders for them so far.
The comparison is apropos. I've lived in Hollywood most of my life and have to spend time in SF for work. The entertainment people get a bad rap for being superficial douchebags and chronic bullshitters, but it doesn't even compare to the SF scene. At least in Hollywood, if someone thinks they're hot shit, you can go on imdb and see if they're really as self-important as they think they are. In SF everyone is the best programmer, is working at the most important non-profit, is building the next huge app, and it's very difficult to tell if they're full of shit (hint: 99% of them are).
Right, and many of the pirates become pirates because they were fleeing the autocracy of legitimate merchant ships.
And the newfound freedom of pirates was a direct threat to the state. It's no wonder that in a span of 50 years, as mercantilism developed, pirates went from being knighted (Francis Drake), to being the worst kind of criminals (Blackbeard).
Yea sure, those terms were used by Westerners in 1761. I bet the Africans would have seen it differently.
Nevertheless, it is our duty to correct the terms they used to better reflect the reality. And this is common practice. If it weren't, Socrates would be remembered as a corrupter of the youth and Galileo as a heretic.
No, not at all. Freedom does not occur in isolation.
Commemorating the end of WW2, German president Joachim Gauck said, "On May 8, 1945, we were liberated — by the people of the Soviet Union." The crew on the slave ship were not "free men," even if they were well-meaning.
First of all, the "slaves" were actually kidnapped Africans. They had yet to do a day of forced labor and had not yet undergone the years of conditioning it took to turn a free man into a slave.
Second, the "free men" were actually slave traders. Yes, there was a ban on slave trading at the time, but that didn't stop them.
If you're interested in learning about what happens when kidnapped Africans and free men come into contact, study what happens when slave ships came into contact with pirate ships. As a general rule, pirate ships were egalitarian, as it helped preserve social harmony on the ship. And the composition of the crew was usually multiracial. Over 60% of Blackbeard's crew was black. Oftentimes, when the pirates took control of a slave ship, they would take the goods they wanted, free and arm the kidnapped Africans, and let the ship go on its way.
Walmart has been pouring money into RFID as a replacement for barcodes since the mid-90's. Analysts have said that by mid-2000's, every product package would have an RFID chip. Fast forward to 2015 and we aren't any closer. Andreessen is a fool who got lucky.
This isn't a problem tech can solve. It's a problem only politics can solve.