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Comment by aarroyoc | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I often say that the gold from America was a poisonous gift. It made the country so rich that they stopped caring about other stuff, they could just buy them from elsewhere. So there was little incentive to manufacture first, and industrialize later. Which is ironic because some of first steam engines you can find in Europe were invented in Spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jer%C3%B3nimo_de_Ayanz_y_Beaum...). It also enabled the funding of numerous stupid wars, with the human cost they bring. The name of this process is called the Dutch Disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Arab states could get into the same trap

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> It made the country so rich that they stopped caring about other stuff, they could just buy them from elsewhere. So there was little incentive to manufacture first, and industrialize later.

Transcontinental fleet of ships regularly circumventing the globe and transporting cargo requires lots of technology. Why marine industry didn't stimulate manufacturing and industrialization?

It's a recurring theme. At the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the US.

https://www.history.com/articles/slavery-profitable-southern...

> the Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita

TIL.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for a (relatively) good social/economic history of the Southern US states? (because I guess that that type of history book would cover this type of information).

from the antebellum era? try anything by eric foner, but a good place to start is forever free: the story of emancipation and reconstruction. it's accessible history that includes a bit of background about the political economy leading up to the civil war. any of his books about reconstruction might be interesting but not exactly what you're looking for. "black reconstruction in america" by dubois is a keystone text that has a bit about the southern economic history. and maybe "old south, new south" by gavin wright for post reconstruction economic history

Thanks a lot!

never heard of the dutch disease (i am dutch). pretty cool comment thanks.

kind of funny to think they still have trouble to actually extract that gas due to activism around earthquakes and ppl not eager to move away from these places. also now the climate push.

it kinda looks (from an uneducated perspective) they suffered this disease for nothing.

Spaniard there. We have gentlemen like Leonardo Torres Quevedo and the 'Telekino', something even the IEEE would get amazed of.

But our damn national motto on R&D was "Que inventen otros" (Let the -foreign- ones invent).

EDIT: It actually was "Que inventen -sth- ellos" (let the others invent -it-).

Something like let's just slack down/keep living under a traditionalistic, rural, Romantic life at the 19th century, let the rest do the modern inventions. OFC as I said Torres Quevedo was the exception, but overall I find our right wing politicians still have that Empire bound mindset. Even the progressive left are almost ranting luddites, they look the Science down from their Liberal Arts thrones.

In the end it's some kind of outdated rural-Romantic idiots fighting another share of left sided outdated jerks with, paradoxically, a similar love to the Rural Spain, with the pure, hard working, 'ecological' peasant against the polluting urbanite.

And sometimes I wish these Boomer (literal boomers in both sides) influenced journalists get to the times for once and all. Use science to fight the climate change. Use libre software to expand education and knowledge like anywere else in History. Act smart and not with the guts.

But that's Science Fiction here.

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