The USA became the world's leading economy in the late 19th century, yet was still somewhat removed and isolated from foreign affairs. When did the US begin exerting its influence?

Bernie_Roscoe · 2012-05-26T06:03:15.057496+00:00

Indeed; people forget that the last major US war prior to the Civil War was the invasion of Mexico in the late 1840s (it was Lincoln's opposition to this war that made him a one-term Congressman). One of the reasons Lincoln and the Whigs/Northerners generally opposed this war with Mexico was their fear that it would be used to spread slavery to any newly-acquired territory (as in fact happened with Texas when the US annexed it).

The interconnection of slavery and foreign policy is illustrated quite well by Albert Gallatin Brown, who said on the Senate floor in 1858: "I want a foothold in Central America... because I want to plant slavery there...I want Cuba,... Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason - for the planting or spreading of slavery." (The ellipses look suspicious I know, so here's a fuller transcript of his speech.)

One of the much-mooted compromises to avert the Civil War faltered because Republicans believed its provisions would implicitly endorse the invasion of foreign countries to promote slavery, constituting "a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego."

In other words, even though the US Civil War was over issues of domestic policy, these issues themselves were very, very much related to foreign policy, and questions of how the US should use its geopolitical power.

johnleemk · 2012-05-26T03:04:43.450600+00:00

The equivalent would be the gov setting aside a bunch of land and saying, "this land, no one can touch. The rest we'll parcel out and y'all can squabble over that like usual. Next year, depending on how things go, we might increase the amount no one can use - we'll see."

Given that governments own land in their own right and preclude private usage of it, and also regulate the usage of land in general, the comparison seems quite apt to me.

The point is, it's communally managed, and the quota amounts are decided centrally. It's terrible to call this "private property" and give people the erroneous impression that private property is how to solve the tragedy of the commons, when in fact, the solution in this case and in all cases is strong, central communal ownership, oversight, and rules that are enforced.

That's your interpretation of it, but that is highly unconventional, and for good reason; viewing this as "just another type of regulation" obfuscates the fact that unlike most conventional environmental regulatory schemes, catch shares/ITQs are fundamentally predicated on defining a set of property rights based on certain rules, and then getting out of the way.

To suggest that catch shares/ITQs are another form of central command-and-control regulation is also to obscure the theoretical origins of catch shares/ITQs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Transferable_Quota#A_move_to_privatization_and_market_based_mechanisms

anonymousssss · 2012-05-26T02:21:48.272986+00:00

Australia and New Zealand have defined their national identities in no small part by their wartime sacrifices. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_spirit

Plastastic · 2012-05-26T02:17:18.308718+00:00

What I've always heard is that the UK and Germany had a gentlemen's agreement not to bomb each other's college towns (Heidelberg and Goettingen being the German counterparts), but I haven't been able to find good corroboration for this.

When I was studying at UCL, we were told that the University of London Senate House was intended to be the nerve hub of the Nazi presence in the UK -- it's certainly a very appropriate-looking structure for a Nazi HQ. (Pic)

johnleemk · 2012-05-26T01:54:29.716318+00:00

The whole point of property rights is that they are regulated by the government. Anarcho-libertarians who believe property rights can exist without government are a distinct minority and do not represent mainstream thinking on property rights in any way.

Would you argue that property rights to land do not exist in countries with land registries, because these rights are "managed" in some way by the government?

johnleemk · 2012-05-26T01:53:37.770680+00:00

Precisely.

johnleemk · 2012-05-25T09:15:22.753498-07:00

These quotas are Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) -- this term is mentioned but not well-defined in the article. They are individual, not communal (i.e. each licensee owns a share of the catch in their own right, separate from any industry-wide quota), and they are transferable, which is a key property right.

Unlike traditional licences, ITQs can be sold or transferred, much like pollution permits under a cap-and-trade regime. Consequently, the licence in of itself is valuable, and the value is directly tied to the sustainability of the catch. The right to sell your licence in the future encourages current licence owners to think sustainably about their fishing practices and trade-off the current value of catching more fish versus the future value of having more fish for the future licence owner to catch.

johnleemk · 2012-05-25T16:13:54.272432+00:00

The key part which dagMan didn't mention is that these quotas are Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) -- this term is mentioned but not well-defined in the article. They are individual, not communal (i.e. each licensee owns a share of the catch in their own right, separate from any industry-wide quota), and they are transferable, which is a key property right.

Unlike traditional licences, ITQs can be sold or transferred, much like pollution permits under a cap-and-trade regime. Consequently, the licence in of itself is valuable, and the value is directly tied to the sustainability of the catch. The right to sell your licence in the future encourages current licence owners to think sustainably about their fishing practices and trade-off the current value of catching more fish versus the future value of having more fish for the future licence owner to catch.

johnleemk · 2012-05-25T09:11:26.346605-07:00

Unlike traditional licences, ITQs can be sold or transferred, much like pollution permits under a cap-and-trade regime. Consequently, the licence in of itself is valuable, and the value is directly tied to the sustainability of the catch. The right to sell your licence in the future encourages current licence owners to think sustainably about their fishing practices and trade-off the current value of catching more fish versus the future value of having more fish for the future licence owner to catch.

foggybottom · 1 day

It has a reputation for very boxy fits, and certainly their jackets which I've tried on have not been slim-fitting in the least.

foggybottom · 1 day

Depends on how much time you have (thrifting takes time), how picky you are about fit, and what kind of look you're going for. If you don't mind more boxy sack suits, Jos A. Bank might actually work for you. If you're more picky about fit, your only low-cost way out will be to thrift -- but it will take a lot of time and effort to find suits with a cut and fit that you like.

uplift17 · 1 day

Wouldn't the use of a presidential system be the effect of an essentially authoritarian political class, rather than the cause?

Not sure if one should say that is more true in notable presidential countries like the US and France than it is in notable parliamentary countries like the UK.

But as I said, this is why it's one thing to answer the question of whether a correlation exists (though even this is fuzzy, given how one defines various terms) -- it's yet another to explain which way, if any, causation runs.

Chinese_redditor · 1 day

Not too sure on the cultural reasons, but for your question #3, the West Lothian Question arises because the British Parliament has full freedom to legislate on English law and policy; there is no separate English Parliament. In the US, this would be akin to Congress being able to make state law for ~2/3rds of the country, with this 2/3rds lacking any state legislative body.

The obvious solution to the West Lothian Question in principle is for there to be an English Parliament. But the reason why there isn't such an English Parliament...that's not so clear/easy to explain, beyond the tl;dr of "politics".

One thing you don't seem to have mentioned is linguistic differences. Scots, Welsh and Irish/Gaelic are distinct languages from English. Beyond that, English policy was also fairly repressive toward Wales, Scotland and Ireland (Ireland especially and most recently) historically. These have obviously contributed to a greater sense of identity separate from the British state, although how far they've contributed, I can't say.

osamabindrinkin · 1 day

Naturally I agree, but I don't think historical research (defined as producing new knowledge about history) is necessary to developing those skills. A lot of the same learnings come just from knowing a bit about history, developing hypotheses based on what you already know, and reading more (whether it's primary or secondary material) to confirm or disprove those hypotheses.

When one says research in the context of history, I think of trying to add to the body of existing knowledge, which though in of itself highly educational, isn't fully necessary to get the main benefits of a historian's education. Building the mental muscle to think critically can be done just by "researching" in the body of existing knowledge, because so much of existing historical knowledge is not widely known.

In other words, I think musschrott's points #1 and #2 are an extension of my point #1, and his point #3 is an extension of my point #2. IMO the benefits of a historical education aren't so much that you're forced to write papers (writing a paper in of itself is beneficial, but it's a sufficient, not a necessary condition IMO), but that you're forced to engage with other scholars of the same materials you've been studying; this engagement need not be through conventional academic papers.

uplift17 · 1 day

This question is extremely broad so I don't know how good an answer you'll be able to get for this. In the first place how does one define the term "democratisation"? Do you just mean that parliamentary polities tend to be more observably democratic in the liberal democratic sense compared to presidential polities?

Even assuming the correlation holds true (my prima facie impression would be yes, parliamentary systems seem to be more historically democratic than presidential systems), it would be very, very difficult to answer the next bit -- why. You could write several books offering several different explanations and still not come close to exhausting the possible range of answers.

But anyway, probably the tl;dr answer to your question is in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system

Some scholars like Juan Linz, Fred Riggs, Bruce Ackerman, and Robert Dahl claim that parliamentarianism is less prone to authoritarian collapse. These scholars point out that since World War II, two-thirds of Third World countries establishing parliamentary governments successfully made the transition to democracy. By contrast, no Third World presidential system successfully made the transition to democracy without experiencing coups and other constitutional breakdowns.[citation needed]

Note these scholars tend to be political scientists or sociologists so you should also try to find some answers in those fields.

schueaj · 1 day

The argument tends to hinge on some idea of East Asian cultures being more entrepreneurial (or alternatively, collectivist) or otherwise having traits that make them more amenable to modern development (e.g. a long history of state-centred bureaucracy in China, etc.). Southeast Asian cultures on the other hand have been mostly agricultural, although there were certainly some mercantile empires or states that are often forgotten about when these arguments are made.

I don't know how much currency these arguments have in modern historical scholarship -- little, I would suspect -- but the East Asian exceptionalism argument often finds its way into the press and other pop journalistic outlets, both in the West and in Asia. In Malaysia, PM Mahathir in the 1980s quite openly exhorted Malaysians to model economic society and culture on that of the Japanese.

Aurevir · 1 day

I found the Copperhead (Northern Democrat) slogan, "To maintain the Constitution as it is, and to restore the Union as it was", which is pretty damn similar. Maybe this is a derivative?

Possibly. I've heard this phrase ("...the Union as it was, and the slaves where they were") before but can't remember where. Possibly stems from Republican/Unionist rhetoric lambasting the Copperheads.

johnleemk · 1 day

So the policy response is to lower interest and do QE to increase liquidity. But banks aren't lending more, consumers continue to deleverage. Either consumers don't want those good/services that are idle or banks can't find credit worthy people to loan to, right?

You're confusing money and credit. Easy money does not require more lending. Money has quite clearly been too tight in any event.

So how does the fed you create easy money? and how does easy money translate into real growth once easy money is taken away?

The money illusion leads to sticky wages which artificially force people out of work and drive down AD. The role of keeping the price level growing is to ensure real wages can adjust appropriately to any shocks; when wages do not adjust properly, you get weak AD.

The only reason really easy money is needed now is to correct for the Fed's failure in keeping money too tight, and catch nominal income back up to where it would have been if the Fed had kept nominal income at trend through the crisis. Once the failure has been corrected, the Fed can easily cut back to an appropriate inflation rate.

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