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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

That's highly debatable. There is evidence that the longer a nation was colonized, the more developed it became. See this paper, for example:

http://www.economics.neu.edu/activities/seminars/documents/i...

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Colonizers and their descendants often write papers claim there are benefits for the colonized. This "study" doesn't have a control group ("each of the islands in our dataset spent some time under colonial rule") and uses two numbers as measures of "good modern outcomes" - one of which (GDP) is a synthetic measurement created by colonizers. Color me unimpressed.

True - the study does not eliminate the possibility of a discontinuity at 0 colonization. (I.e., no colonization is better than some colonization, but once you have some, more is better.) Do you believe this to be present? If so, could you explain why?

(I'll generally ignore the "I hate descendents of people distantly related to colonisers sooo much" part of your post, with one exception. The other measure of "good modern outcomes" is dead babies. Is "fewer dead babies" also a synthetic measurement created by colonizers?)

For the discontinuity at 0, off the top of my head I would point to the relative success of uncolonized Western Europeans and their descendent colonizers in the US. Japan is another example. Do you believe Western Europe and the US to be more successful than colonized countries in Africa? Within the US, do you believe that descendants of Western Europeans are more economically successful than colonized Native Americans and blacks descending from slaves?

> I'll generally ignore the "I hate descendents of people distantly related to colonisers sooo much"

You're mischaracterizing what I said. Some of my best friends are descendents of colonizers and for that matter so am I. However, if we claimed that there were benefits for the colonized, we'd be just as self-serving as you and the person in this thread who suggested that it was really in Native Americans' interests to be colonized and the guys who wrote the paper.

Self serving? As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of my ancestors (mostly Italians, Irish and Greeks) never got their shit together well enough to colonize anyone. In fact, if I recall correctly, Ireland was basically a colony of England, which resulted in my ancestors fleeing the country to the US.

Oh, while we are on the topic: Ireland was a colony of England. Some Western Europeans were colonized, mostly by other European countries (e.g., "France" wasn't always a single nation). And while you are cherrypicking Japan as an example of uncolonized Asian countries, keep in mind where Thailand ("Land of the Free") got their name.

(Also, Native Americans were a very special case. Unlike most of the rest of the world, North America and the Amazon had no livestock. This rendered them uniquely vulnerable to communicable disease.)

"As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of my ancestors (mostly Italians, Irish and Greeks) never got their shit together well enough to colonize anyone"

I love political history threads on HN.

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