-Caveat Lector-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> [snip] Until recently, the most knowledgable students estimated that there were
> somewhere between 15 and 20 million Indians in the hemisphere when Columbus
> arrived, agreeing also that probably only some 850,000 lived within the present
> boundaries of the contiguous states of the United States, [snip]
>
> Suffice it to say that North America held far fewer Indians at Columbus'
> entrance than people now believe and Josephy is a very fine reference, although
> he is a generalist, not a high brow scholar. Few ever quibble with his general
> materials, they are well researched.
Think about this for a few minutes before going off the handle...
In my opinion, the land mass that is now the contiguous United States had fewer
than 1,000,000 inhabitants in the late 1400's and early 1500's. The indiginous
people had been here for a long time... Ever wonder why there were so few? I
think it was due to OVER-POPULATION. You see, what we call "over-population" is
not a factor of "number of people per square mile," but is really a factor of
"under-productivity per person." The Indians simply were not producers... They
were foragers and gatherers, spending most of their energy getting something to
eat and providing shelter for themselves. Thus, they were plagued with the same
kind of problems we think of when considering so-called "overpopulated" countries.
I is usually shocking when people first learn which countries are the most
populated in terms of "people per square mile." When asked, most people respond,
"China" or "India" or some other such place where masses of people are barely
"getting by." In fact, the most populous country in terms of people per square
mile is England. Next in line for numbers two and three are Scandinavian
countries. Singapore is not even in the first three. Hong Kong is very crowded,
also... But these countries all have a VERY HIGH standard of living... Hong Kong
and Singapore do not even have any "natural resources" to speak of... Africa has
vast regions where people per square mile is a meaningless idea (divide zero by
any number and round off to the next highest number, and its still zero). The
reason is that productivity per person is high in the most crowded nations. And
Africa, though sparsely populated, much as was North America, is populated as such
by very poor people barely scraping by.
Why, then, was North America, with is vast potential wealth, inhabited by starving
people... as is Africa today? I believe it is because of what I called a "tribal
mentality" which is a form of socialism to the extreme. It is a socio-economic
system that stymies individual responsibility and productivity.. When the northern
Europeans came over here, many of them came precisely for "freedom" to run their
own affairs, which is the economic system known as capitalism... and "capitalism"
is the engine, the driving force, of productivity and wealth ... It is the force
that is responsible for creating and sustaining the most wealthy nation of people
the world has ever known... It is not responsible for the fact that not *everyone*
is wealthy... because there can be no such convergence as "Freedom" AND
"Equality."
Hawk
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