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Path: utzoo!utcsri!utcs!clarke
From: clarke@utcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Better DEAD than RED
Message-ID: <703@utcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 12:28:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcs.703
Posted: Thu Jun 20 12:28:02 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Jun-85 12:43:55 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP> <5710@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: clarke@utcs.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Organization: University of Toronto - General Purpose UNIX
Lines: 34
Summary: 

In article <5710@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> Remember what the British did to the Indian cotton industry in the early
>> 1800's?  Remember how important the British cotton industry was to British
>> industrialization, once it had finished off the Indians?
>
>British industrialization was already well underway by the early 1800's,
>as I recall.

But far from firmly established.  And I don't think there were a lot of
other industries so suitable for mechanization as the cloth industry.  At
any rate, it *was* the cotton industry that took off -- and it would have
been delayed, at least for a couple of decades, if it had been in fair
commercial competition with the Indian industry.

>                 And the West was clearly the dominant culture on the planet
>well before that.  Non-dominant cultures are not in a position to forcibly
>suppress competing industries on the other side of the world!  I certainly
>agree that the West took advantage of its position once it *had* it.  But
>the notion that the West climbed out of the mud in the first place by
>pushing others back down into it is silly.
>-- 
>				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

Well, apart from that phrase "in the first place", which is a bit of a
weasel -- we all start at home, after all -- the notion doesn't seem at
all silly to me, but perfectly natural.  Everyone else did it that way.

The only difference I can see between us and the Mongol hordes is that we
last longer, and our means of oppression are a lot more sophisticated.
Of course it's not always "oppression"; I'm glad I grew up in this culture,
and most people who have tried two have a hard time rejecting ours.  But
there's a bad side too, and you can't just dismiss complaints of exploitation
as "silly".