Very often when I end up in a debate with a anti market, anti property rights person, they will throw out argumenets about how crimes commited against the Native Americans as some kind of proof that private profit is awful or that without government, private organizations would go around conquering each other. I don’t know much about the history . But my main question would be, were the crimes that were commited against Native Americans mostly government sanctioned or not? I always had thought that it was official government policy to push them off lands for different purposes? Anyone know some details on this subject or know where I can read about any of this?
The crimes against the Natives were almost exclusively government sanctioned (e.g., Jacksons purge of the Natives in the famed trail of tears) Keep in mind that nearly every treaty with the Natives was broken by the government.
The salient point, however, is that the Natives were victims of Smallpox, which is what devastated them. Since all Native populations in the Americas were essentially “virgin” populations when it came to disease, they were wiped out quite extensively. This contrasts with the European settlers who had genetic resistance after hundreds of years of exposure to European, Asian, and African diseases.
The “white man killed the Native Americans” argument is just another makeshift abortion to salvage the untenable doctrines of cultural marxism that pervade academia.
Governments don’t conquer other people? It’s not essential to private profit or capitalism that one group will try to steal from another if they want to, it’s essential to humans in general.
I don’t understand: We solve the ‘profit’ problem by conferring ridiculous amounts of power to certain groups or individuals?
Like most things it was a joint effort the private and public sector shoring up land and resource. Settlers move in and put up fences, threatening to shoot any tresspassers (on land that was once freely roamed, by the same living generation). Government, in order to “keep the peace” (or protect the interests of its’ favored class) moves in and tries to restrict the natives to certain lands, usually ones that settlers didn’t want anyway.
There’s also the rancid meat and horrible conditions the government kept them in, and of course the disease; some of which was deliberately done by government figures.
It’s not so black and white as “gubment did it.” The government is just a medium for people’s desires.
I’ll drink to that.
Watch this stossel episode. It’s not about the crimes commited agaisnt, but an intersesting prespective.
“some of which was deliberately done by government figures.”
If you’re referring to smallpox blankets…I always thought it never actually happened.
I was referring specifically to the rancid meats, inadequate food supplys, and squalid conditions I had mentioned before. I’m just not knowledgeable enough to comment on the small pox blankets.
False. This is one of the most insidious myths of modernity. It is true that the government is constrained by what the people will bear but it is certainly not true that the government “is just a medium for people’s desires.” Even Rousseau was not that idealistic. I would list the reasons for my assertions but you’ve already heard them all and your mind is just made up.
Clayton -
I don’t understand… are you saying the government is not an institution consisting of individuals pursuing individual desires? I’m a methodological individualitst: that tells me that any collective is merely a medium for people’s desires.
Unless you’re David Icke, I fail to see how the government could possibly be anything other than a human institution.
Maybe medium was the wrong word as it implies some kind of mediator role to the government. If that is what you took from my post, I apologize, as that was not my intention.
The trouble is that it’s not just a medium for any desire, like the market is. The government can only do the business of government.
The government is the monopoly on and magic enabler of what would otherwise be criminal, so it can only really give effect to desires which would otherwise be criminal…
“Medium for the people’s desires” sounds to me like General Will; that’s what I object to. There is no general will, there are only individual wills.
Clayton -