----- Original Message ----- From: "tfast" <tfast at yorku.ca> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 9:16 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] was Is Imperial Liquidation (now metrics ofimperialism)
> > tfast wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > This seems quite contorted. At best mistaking consequence for cause
> and
> > > intention.
> >
> > Granted -- and I won't try to defend it particularly, but I will suggest
> > that imperialist systems are themselves pretty damn contorted, and the
> > question of where and how the benefits flow is not really very clear.
> > Certainly the dead & wounded in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, & Iraq
> > haven't benefited.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> I have always found the imperialism debate with respect to flows of
surplus
> very odd indeed. At the end of the Seven Years war the French got to
choose
> between Quebec (Canada) and Guadalupe. They choose Guadalupe because it
> made something like 200 times what the French were getting from beaver
pelts
> which were themselves valuable enough to finance the colony of Quebec. So
> what seems so hard for contemporary academics to figure out seems to have
> been a straightforward calculation for the powers that be at that time
with
> the information they had.
>
> As an aside we don't ask how much someone spends on their home invasion
> tools and arms when calculating whether or not the bandits were net
> beneficiaries.
>
> Travis
>
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