Where I’d say Friedman is arguing in bad faith is that the obvious goal of colonialism is value extraction by force or coercion. He may argue that due to inefficiency or resistance it didn’t actually produce significant wealth for Britain but the evidence shows otherwise.
That or he may argue that the East India Company (the origin of multinational capitalism) was not colonialism which would be divergent from historical consensus.
There are several estimates. Some as high as $45 trillion.
Friedman’s take has been repeated in many Western circles.
As you’ve mentioned there were multiple members of Parliament who were directly invested in the EIC and made sizable profits. The EIC managed to extract explotative taxation during the Bengal famine of 1770 (promoting starvation) while shareholders increased their dividend from 10 to 12.5%. The massive transfer of wealth from India, the Atlantic slave trade and Opium sales to China essentially built Britain during this era. It was the seed capital of the industrial revolution.
The British Raj took over after the failed sepoy mutiny in mid 1800s. It was at this point Britain introduced the strategy of the ‘civilizing mission’, denigrating Indian culture as a justification to the British public to continue colonization. The British public accepted this. It was the independence movement in India that ultimately secured freedom (along with Nazi destruction of British infrastructure).
As we watch power and wealth slowly drift back from West to East and South, African, Indian and many other voices that speak truth on this matter will be heard more clearly.
Often times Westerners are not open to accepting voices from the global south on these matters and portray them as biased. I usual refer to the writings of historian William Dalrymple (the self admitted descendant of colonists) as a starting point to those that feel morally threatened by this history but want to learn more from someone who doesn’t feel too foreign.
For those that are open to Indian voices, Sashi Tharoor’s writings or his YouTube series ‘Imperial Receipts’ does a good job capturing the history and scale of extraction.
Didn’t know much about the guy except that he’s a Nobel laureate. Happened to come across a YouTube video where a curious college student asks him about how slavery and colonialism contributed to Western wealth. He had an elaborate answer but within it he actually said Britain did not have slaves and America did not have colonies (for the most part).
Nevermind the fact that America absolutely had slaves and Britain certainly had colonies (he was selective on who didn’t have what), Britain absolutely did profit from slavery also.
He added on that Britain spent more on administering colonies than it gained extracting their resources which may be one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard. How can someone that worships at the altar of capitalism not understand that greed was the obvious motivator? Or is it only the motivator when it fits his narrative?
If this is the messaging we get from our intellectuals, what hope does truth have?
This sounds more like H1b fraud (failure to meet prevailing wage for hours worked) on the part of the company rather than an issue with the H1b visa itself. More oversight is certainly necessary to ensure American companies don’t break the law.
I am curious since it appears you are Canadian, what reform would you propose? The LMIA system in Canada faces similar issues but for a shorter period since immigrants with a high enough score on their application can secure PR within around 2 years. During those two years Canadian employers have similar leverage over immigrant employees. However under the American H1b system if you’re terminated, you have up 60 days to leave which is often not enough time to secure a new sponsor. Under the Canadian LMIA system you have 90 days and can potentially apply for a temporary visitors extension which allows immigrants and their families a better shot at staying. This delverages the employer to a degree.
There are several different aspects of policy that can be tweaked but the employer leverage is really a tough one to eliminate. Though it can certainly be cushioned by removing barriers to PR and offering a longer grace period in the event of termination as Canada has.
I think the systems employed in the middle east where passports are confiscated and more overt coercion is involved are closer to slavery.
The conditions you describe certainly exist but are the nature of employment based immigration everywhere. It’s hard to imagine any country forgoing that initial period of leverage in their corporation’s favor. What’s uniquely exploitative in the US is keeping people in visa limbo for a period of 10 to 15 years because each nation has a cap of 7% of total green cards regardless of size or level of immigration. That mean the number of greencards available to a nation of 1 billion is the same as the number available to a nation of 20 million.
In the end it’s not the population of an immigrants origin country that matters, it’s how many are coming to the US. If there are a larger number of immigrants admitted from one country via H1b then there should be a greater number of green cards alotted. This way that exploitative relationship doesn’t stretch for 10 to 15 years which allows employers to engage in questionable labor practices.
Immigrants have always had to come in, put their heads down, and work. That’s the nature of moving to a new country. To a degree, anyone (even locals) that joins a new employer has a probationary period and has to avoid making waves initially, at least in the many parts of the country with at will employment. Those circumstances are not likely to change.
Instead we should be focussed on immigrants getting at minimum fair (median) pay and having a clear pathway to permanent residency to curtail an employer’s ability leverage visa status.
If there is another “nation of immigrants” that does it better I’d be interested to hear about it. As far as I know Canada’s LMIA system faces similar issues.
I can’t speak for the tech industry only the system as a whole.
I think people calling it slavery or likening it to some kind of bonded labor are obviously exaggerating to a degree.
The only situation where its clearly problematic are for countries like China and India that have massive populations but still have the same green card cap as a nation a tenth of their size.
Everyone else on an H1b would generally be working towards a green card on a timeline of 3-5 years. Yes mobility is limited during that time (though not absolutely so) but I can’t think of a country on earth where new immigrants don’t have to work with their hands tied to a degree.
Right now employers only have to pay the prevailing wage to an H1b employee. This can be significantly less than the median.
I think the median should be the absolute floor. One can make an argument to have 75th percentile be the floor also.
I think if a company is allowed to pay below median wage for a large number of employees they should be forced to invest in local education / apprenticeship. Even if they are allowed to, there should be strict caps on this.
There are many H1bs that get paid above the median wage in the US but I think conversations around the tech sector tend to dominate so the perception is that these are mostly lower wage entry level workers. It’s really the tech sector that has exploited the system the most so I think it’s worthwhile distinguishing tech H1bs and therefore considering more significant restrictions on a sectoral level.
Ancient India and China (largely due to Dharmic and Daoist philosophies). The political aspects which make up 80% of the Kama Sutra are undeniably feminist by many standards, promoting female education, financial autonomy, right to divorce, agency and consent. It also promotes respectful treatment towards female sex workers. It’s not perfect, but it sought to describe an ideal perspective towards sex according to Dharmic philosophy at the time.
Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican and other Indigineous cultures also did not perceive sex in what I’d describe as a simple minded penetrative dominance.
Roman attitudes towards sex were based on power and control. It wasn’t seen as a connection between two individuals, that was secondary. It was informally allowed for a high ranking official to have sex with individuals below them in status including other men and adolescents without harm to one’s reputation.
Having sex with a man of higher status was seen as emasculating and worthy of ridicule. Essentially it was seen as taking on the role of the woman in a relationship and women were very much subservient to men in this society.
Christianity has had a cultural impact on some of these views but there are definitely times when it seems like modern Western cultural attitudes (especially amongst regressives) have not progressed very far beyond that old conceptualization of sexual relationships.
Tl;dr: Having a sexual encounter with a man of higher status is feminizing which is more damning than crimes against humanity to the backwards minded.
The romanized versions of Indian names rely on more recent standardized transliteration rules.
Eastern European names keep legacy orthographies that are tied to centuries‑old literary traditions, records, and national identities.
I struggle with many Polish names especially.
He certainly has more political experience than Mamdani having been AOC’s chief of staff.
This was certainly centrally planned. There’s no way they would be able to coordinate having it be 8 that are not up for re-election without that.
Here’s what occurred. It has been widely assumed that the group of eight mostly centrist Senate Democrats, who have been looking to broker a hollow deal on Republican terms, were freelancing. In fact, they were acting with the express approval of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and were reporting to him daily.
At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to reopen the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal.
The leaders of the proposed Democratic cave-in, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, then backed down. Only after that did Schumer go public with his proposal to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies, along with a bipartisan commission to figure out a long-term solution.
Informed observers tell me that the obvious compromise deal, which would allow each side to claim a partial victory, is either a shorter extension of the ACA subsidies for less than a year, or an extention with a partial cut at higher incomes. It remains to be seen whether both sides can get to yes.
The mystery is why Schumer keeps flirting with capitulation in exchange for nothing. Democrats have the political momentum, Republicans are divided, and a majority of voters blame Republicans for the shutdown. Schumer himself faces a likely primary challenge for his own Senate seat. He is even more vulnerable if he presides over a Democratic capitulation.
https://prospect.org/2025/11/08/why-does-schumer-keep-trying-to-cave-government-shutdown/
This was reporting from last Thursday. Of course today after following through with the capitulation we find they secured no concessions, just a promise of a vote on the issue on December.
Sadly capitulation leaves us in a position where suffering is the only outcome. Now millions of people will lose healthcare coverage and millions more will have their premiums increase. Tens of thousands already die annually in the US due to lack of access to coverage. This will add thousands more.
There was a court order for Trumps administration to tap into an emergency fund to send out SNAP benefits for this month which Trump intended to defy.
The question is who do people think is responsible? I cited those numbers because clearly the average American holds Trump and his administration accountable for this.
Your language is weak and passive. People were starving? No, Donald Trump and his administration were willingly and conciously starving people. It was up to them to find a solution to that and there were several options. They control all facets of government. They just didn’t care.
The only point of having the shutdown go this long was to secure concessions. Some type of long term benefit for the short term struggle. Now people have suffered for nothing, courtesy of the Democrats.
We need to stop acting like the Democrats are the adults in a room full of children, left no choice but to “save” every situation by capitulating to fascists. Because I think you know where that takes us. Or at least I hope you do.
Defeatism and capitulation haven’t gotten us very far these past 10 months.
The majority of Americans (52%) blame Republicans for the shutdown and Trump’s disapproval rating was up to 63%.
All they had to do was sit and wait. The heat was on the Republicans.
But no, let them off the hook like centrists always do. This country is in desperate need of a progressive wave.
The ACA subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised a vote in December which, I’ll tell you right now, probably means we aren’t going to hear about this again in a meaningful way. You’ll see reporting that the subsidies have expired and that’s it. Sure this was likely going to be the outcome but there isn’t going to be a dramatic vote where the public will lay blame on Republicans unequivocally. This shutdown was that opportunity for accountability and the Democrats blew it.
No way he didn’t sign off on this. I wouldn’t be too quick to let him off the hook.
EDIT:
Video: https://nitter.net/atrupar/status/1987874651209404646
They put Democratic in front of Socialist because in America anything leaning towards socialism is seen as authoritarian thanks to Cold War propaganda.
There were five elections yesterday, all went blue suggesting a rebuke of Trump. Some were expected but its a reassuring sweep.
We call that extortion in our part of the world. I assume the British call it that today too.