The "compared to what" argument is such frustrating, specious, horseshit. They're argument is essentially that because only one reality can actually exist at a time, then it must be the best reality because there's nothing else to compare it to. The reality where we didn't let companies sack other countries doesn't exist, so we can't point to a reality where that didn't happen. Therefore we can't really say that reality would have been better, we can only go by the one that exists. Then they can make up whatever they want about the non-existent reality because it's not real. Yeah if we didn't do that then the indigenous people wouldn't have gotten a good work ethic and they would have self-destructed. Yep, that's what would have happened so it's good that we did imperialism actually. It saved them from themselves. Even though we just established that you can't use counterfacutals in historical analysis, we suddenly can when it comes to dispelling socialism. It's almost like the entire argument is a tautology that venerates capitalism.