And where “doing a 90 degree turn in the Suez Canal, blocking international trade for days” ranks
Capitalists learning that climate change hurts the bottom line and still not caring.
They got theirs. Now they're waiting for society to bottom out while they chill in New Zealand or the Ozarks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
Scotland tried to make a colony in Panama, which failed horribly. The company involved "was backed by approximately 20% of all the money circulating in Scotland", and its failure crippled Scotland's economy. It fucked them up so hard that they got taken over by the English a decade later, where they've remained for the past 300 years
This was on Behind the Bastards or The Dollop, can't remember. Real real good episode.
I watched the cpg gray video on it (it was 9 years old? time flies I guess)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_MacGregor
I got it confused with a different failed colony.
Found the episode though Part One: The Con Artist Who Invented A Country
There's an episode about Gregor McGregor buried in Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast as well.
My brother used to work with a Tamil man who had been a freighter captain and he used to tell a story about blocking the suez canal because he hadn't been paid.
He also said that, working on the great lakes, captains blocking the welland canal was a somewhat regular occurrence.
The Soviets intercepting the Polish plans for the battle of Warsaw and discarding them as an obvious trick, preventing Soviet victory in the Polish Soviet war and Socialist control of continental Europe.
Understudied part of the USSR's history. Just imagine a red Poland with the USSR able to lend material support to the German revolutionaries of the early 20s. Lenin is not too stressed, doesn't have strokes. The revolution just keeps chugging west and England is sunk into the sea for being too limey.
my favorite head scenerio is the britian and the u.s. basically become fascist and the "bad guys" of alt-WW2. the u.s. gets engulfed in a civil war halfway through the war, england gets sunk by the combined european red forces. the pacific theater would be more iffy depends on how the hypothetical u.s. civil war goes and who are the factions in it.
the resulting communism would also look much different than the tradition siege socialism, as the outward oppresive presence probably wouldn't have been as bad
Polish fuck with the Soviets, found out. Soviet army was marching on Warsaw unopposed when the poles made a desperate hail mary plan to flank and encircle.
Plan works, because soviets find the plan, think "obvious trap" and make sure to do the one thing that will allow the plan to succeed.
Result, war is a stalemate, Soviets take massive losses
:deeper-sadness: If Warsaw went red then probably so would the rest of Europe
Surely some stupid thing the spanish did back when they had all the gold their slaves could mine.
my memory is fuzzy but I think mining so much gold was itself a mistake that destroyed their monetary policy
Exactly, coupled with "oh let's buy shit from abroad cuz it's better and we filthy rich, haha, nothing can go wrong in the long run"
The "west" after outsourcing all their manufacturing and moving towards a service economy :side-eye-1:
@spark155 bring us the knowledge from the book you suggested me and I haven't read yet.
I don't mind, but as I said my memory of the details is fuzzy. if I weren't busy dealing with other stuff and wanted to refresh I'd look up something like "Spanish empire decline gold oversupply"
I found this essay after some googling. Seems like it describes what you said. If anybody wants to read more about it.
This is a general thing that happens to resource-rich nations - the Dutch Disease, the resource curse. If a country makes too much money pumping stuff out of the ground, it depresses industrial growth. The country gets rich, which means it can buy lots of stuff from everyone else instead of paying its own people to make it (who now expect more pay for less work). Its stronger currency accelerates imports, depresses exports. Over time the country falls behind in economic development while its resource production falls as mines are depleted. Then it ends up as a poor backwater behind its developed neighbors (unless other factors intervene).
However, this story gets oversold a bit. Being resource rich has costs (which break countries if ignored), but it has more benefits. E.g., Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Bahrain/Kuwait have regional and even global significance due to oil wealth, even though they're patches in the desert hampered by ultraconservatism.
The Spanish Empire didn't just spend all its gold and silver on wine and fancy clothes - it bought giant professional armies. It absolutely dominated 16th and 17th century Europe, conquering half of Italy and repeatedly challenging France, the strongest European power, despite having a lower population and starting in a weaker position. It also colonized much of the New World plus the Philippines, making Spanish a world languge. Sure, Britain, France, and the Netherlands preyed on and eventually supplanted Spain (and did so without Inca slaves mining for them), but Spain was the number one world power because of all the wealth it acquired.
their only "mistake" was not subjugating the goddamn Dutch & English
Which the Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther,which should sheath his Sword in the Bowels of a Man with the quickest dispatch and expedition.
They snatcht young Babes from the Mothers Breasts, and then dasht out the brains of those innocents against the Rocks; others they cast into Rivers scoffing and jeering them, and call'd upon their Bodies when falling with derision, the true testimony of their Cruelty, to come to them, and inhumanely exposing others to their Merciless Swords, together with the Mothers that gave them Life.
They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reacht the ground, every one of which was so order'd as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them: But those they intended to preserve alive, they dismiss'd, their Hands half cut, and still hanging by the Skin, to carry their Letters missive to those that fly from us and ly sculking on the Mountains, as an exprobation of their flight.
The Lords and Persons of Noble Extract were usually expos'd to this kind of Death; they order'd Gridirons to be placed and supported with wooden Forks, and putting a small Fire under them, these miserable Wretches by degrees and with loud Shreiks and exquisite Torments, at last Expir'd.
I once saw Four or Five of their most Powerful Lords laid on these Gridirons, and thereon roasted, and not far off, Two or Three more over-spread with the same Commodity, Man's Flesh; but the shril Clamours which were heard there being offensive to the Captain, by hindring his Repose, he commanded them to be strangled with a Halter. The Executioner (whose Name and Parents at Sevil are not unknown to me) prohibited the doing of it; but stopt Gags into their Mouths to prevent the hearing of the noise (he himself making the Fire)till that they dyed, when they had been roasted as long as he thought convenient. I was an Eye-Witness of these and and innumerable Number of other Cruelties: And because all Men, who could lay hold of the opportunity, sought out lurking holes in the Mountains, to avoid as dangerous Rocks so Brutish and Barbarousa People, Strangers to all Goodness, and the Extirpaters and Adversaries of Men, they bred up such fierce hunting Dogs as would devour an Indian like a Hog, at first sight in less than a moment: Now such kind of Slaughters and Cruelties as these were committed by the Curs, and if at any time it hapned, (which was rarely)that the Indians irritated upon a just account destroy'd or took away the Life of any Spaniard, they promulgated and proclaim'd this Law among them, that One Hundred Indians should dye for every individual Spaniard that should be slain.
the portuguese losing all their control over the atlantic trade to india to the dutch is also up there, although funding the industrialization of your enemies with gold that is causing incredibly disruptive inflation on your economy is spanish excelence in display
Chernobyl ranks up there in terms of how it only took about a day of mismanagement to cause one of the worst and longest lasting disasters.
Real talk though the most expensive disaster historically in the US has probably got to be the financialization and industrialization of farms around the turn of the century. Killed a lot of farming and led to a whole slew of bullshit. People had to come into the cities to find work after going bust trying to finance their tractors with loans against their farms, which led to food shortages and the Dustbowl.
only took about a day of mismanagement
It took more than that - it was a shit design. Instead of requiring labor and energy to keep it from turning off, it required labor and energy to keep it from exploding. And like most industrial disasters, it was the inevitable result of actually longstanding systemic mismanagement
I never get this one. Like Flappy Bird and Roblox is somehow the downfall of society.
Like the very bottom of the bird's dip, the Flappy Bird truly is the nadir of society 😔😔😔
Probably not the most expensive but one of my favourites is the Swedish ship Vasa
Swedish king when Sweden was sorta a power wanted a big fuckoff flagship to dickwave against all the other kings, so a huge proportion of the country's wealth and timber was poured into making this giant thing. Even back then, the naval engineers knew the thing was gonna be unstable as they were building it, plus the obvious effects of sticking lots of big heavy bronze cannons placed up high on the sides of an already unstable ship, but the king ignored them cos he wanted his cool ship. The thing got launched to great fanfare with lots of European dignitaries invited so he could rub their noses in it, and then as soon as they put the sails up in the gentlest of breezes it immediately tipped over and sank in Stockholm Harbour in front of everyone.
It was super well preserved in the cold water so they pulled it up in the 60s and it's now in a great museum
She took 1.3 km to sink, but I like to think she just slid promptly from the drydock into the depths. Bloop
When Belgium left the Netherlands and the latters tax base was gone
Good thing they had Indonesia to make up the difference
Wait, was this a mistake? I thought the boat was blaming a sudden gust of wind from unusually turbulent Egyptian sandstorms. If that's the case we could start blaming climate change.
I’m still half expecting to hear “the captain was drunk” or some shit and that the gust of wind thing was a cover up lol
