A Forgotten Legacy

 

Image source: Australia for everyone.

People are in large part wrong about how the West became so rich and powerful. Many think it was capitalism and free markets. But America built its wealth in the 19th century on protectionism, tariffs, and a combination of public funded infrastructure to help private investment. But they had started to get rich even before this. And Britain built a lot of its wealth on the work of private companies like the East India Company, but this effort was not exactly competition friendly, as we conceive of as necessary for building wealth today.

There is an often forgotten, overlooked and ignored reason why the Western nations took off as they did. One of the core reasons the West spread the wealth so successfully among its people is that Colonialism acted as a form of debt forgiveness.

Many convicts were in debtors’ prison, or in prison for petty crimes committed out of poverty. Many early settlers had very few economic prospects in England, or to a lesser degree some of the other countries they came here from.

Colonialism allowed these people to move to countries like Australia, Canada, US, and other places, and be free of their debts, or have the resources of an untapped wilderness to be able to pay them off, in the case of convicts. This untapped wilderness acted as a kind of debt forgiveness. As people came free of old world restrictions, rules, bureaucracies, slaveries and often also debts, and more, and could start again. It was in many ways like an economic reset for those who came to the new world.

Taking people from the most advanced societies in the world, and letting them act free of all the downsides of a stultified society, is more responsible for what made us so wealthy, than the pet economic theories of the left or right.

And we should learn from this. As we are now the stultified society. From housing policy, to immigration policy, to banking policy, our entire system is becoming as exploitative as the old world. We even see slavery, literal slavery, increasing in Australia. Especially amongst poorer Asian immigrants.

A Jubilee is our legacy. We are also overdue for a new one. This is really the only way to reset society so that upcoming generations can have some of the same opportunities as previous generations.