Goodreads Doesn't Have it, Data Migration: Harvesting Shadows: Untold Tales from the Fur Trade
eally disturbing. The Russians were essentially keeping Natives as trapping slaves up near the Canadian border. That is hilarious because they go on and on about colonialism, but they told their men to only give the trapping natives the very basics of what they needed, then make a huge profit on the furs, selling them to the Chinese. Then these people whine about colonialism and Nazis. You are literally the person you hate the most on all that.
The UK is even more horrifying, literally building in the cost of getting the natives to make decisions in their interest including the cost of liquoring them up into their business costs. They would give them heavy alcohol, convince them this or that bottle of alcohol was worth a bunch of their furs, then sell them at high prices to people in the UK or again at Chinese tradeposts that were eagerly awaiting the products of this rapacious and what would nowadays be 100% illegal business.
The French learned from the natives, intermingled in cultures, and took on some of their practices. They were probably the best for the natives in the area compared to the Russians and the English and the Chinese, but of course, taking the techniques without creating a sustainable plan for the teachers is not the answer either. But out of all of them, they were the most respectable and least damaging to the furtrapping natives in the area.
Ironically even the natives overpoached, which is unusual for them. But they were being deliberately liquored up to make trades that werenât in their interest, got addicted to European goods they didn't really need, and the UK literally considered getting their prefrontal cortex down to make decisions that werenât in their interest as part of the cost of business. They knew they didnât have a lot to offer them.
However, some of the mass manufactured more accessible priced steel and other products were actually worth the native while and they probably would have purchased that sober. Thatâs only possible from a country economically advanced enough to have mass production mills. That takes awhile to get to that point of pretty organized mass production. Thatâs not something Russia ever really had to offer the natives, and never did. So overall, the Russians were literally the worst for the natives and are just huge hypocrites with their colonialism/Nazi BS when you learn about this.
This author, H.D. Smiley is really excellent, however heâs really condescending. He says natives didnât have a sense of currency, so acting like they were stupid didnât work. Natives had every sense of currency if they werenât trading without alcohol. Every now and then they would do a bad deal for a bauble sober. It wasnât enough so they put alcohol in the costs of business. As usual, they donât seem to see these were RATIONAL AGENTS who RATIONALLY DIDNâT WANT TO TRADE because thereâs wasnât ANYTHING IN IT FOR THEM AS IT MAKES SENSE FOR A RATIONAL AGENT TO REJECT.
If you are giving someone nothing, leaving them for dead, disrespecting them, viewing them as less than you, giving them fractions of what you would give someone of whatever identity you view as more similar to you, THEY WILL NOT TRADE WITH YOU AS RATIONAL AGENTS. And yet these idiots would still try and the costs got more and more expensive and comedically irrational to get them to conform to their incorrect stereotypes.
If itâs a white man who doesnât have any rational reason to engage in trade, they twirl their mustache and say, âAre you sure, my good man?â When this last ditch effort doesnât work, they clap him on the back for his normative strong white rational decision making. When itâs a native doing the exact same thing naturally, oh, donât take the no, but factor in literal alchohol to get their guard down to make the bad decisions they associate with them. Literally none of the white people were any better with alcohol brought down, but it wasnât âgentlemanlyâ to force business between whites, while this was ok, and what could be expected out of the native. It just shows how racist they are. If itâs white, itâs rational decisionmaking. If the exact same rational decisionmaking rejects a trade, itâs create pressure to excess until they conform to their stereotypes of inferiority. Some of the costs were so high the UK firms realized what a ridiculous amount of money they were spending to apply pressure to see behavior that conformed more to their stereotypes that didnât see them as fully human that some of them went bankruipt. That shows you how discrimination isnât rational from a business perspective. That much money sure of their position that the economies were crashing and burning. Thatâs not rational. Discrimination like that is not rational. The decision to reject trade sober was a rational decision of a rational agent seeing sober that there was literally nothing in it for them. But seeing them as a rational agent didnât fit with their hateful stereotype, so they spend irrational excess to see them conform back to their hateful stereotype. That shows that racism, sexism, etc., is not rational. This are more animal than not, the people who canât accept the evidence of rationality where they didnât think it existed. If they were less animal than not, they would see, âThis native made a rational decision to reject trade" much less expensively. Not sorry.
Anyway, H.D. Smiley is really condescending, saying they didnât understand how the prices would shift because they didnât have an understanding of currency. If you have ZERO exposure to advanced, organized factories and the shifting distribution of mass raw resources across the globe of course this would sound like a fabrication and a lie that the costs were changing. Plus, when the UK firms deliberately tried to change the prices to see what they could get away with, this is not irrational skepticism but calling gaslighting.
These were equals. They were the superior hunters. It is not easy to be a good shot. These natives were notorious for taking one or two bullets out so as to only burden the earth with one or two kills each hunt. Meanwhile, you go throughout the area and you hear shooters shooting 1,000 shots and bringing nothing back. They were the superior shot. They were rational agents. And yet, just because they were native, they didnât see them as such. Where if this was a fellow white man they would have said ok, thatâs a rational agent saying no when told no, they applied irrational and excess pressure to make the native population conform to their stereotypes of irrational agents that would trade 30 pelts for a bottle of alcohol. Yet, this only happened when they were given alcohol that the firms literally factored in. Between Englishmen, this was seen as non-gentlemanly. But if you did it to a native, it was just the cost of business. This was an irrational cost. These Englishmen were animal than not. Iâm not sorry.
H.D. Smiley has done an accessible ($5), excellent work of research. However, he is extremely condescending from a benevolent racism perspective at several points. Just like you donât have to pretend like Spopee wasnât a nasty little you know what who deliberately befriended the white man to steal his guns just because he was white, you donât have to pretend like they were naive idiots who couldnât understand fluctuating inflation costs. A lot of the costs were genuinely lied about because they didnât view them as human. They were. This action by the English was irrational and in its irrational, more like an animal than not. These animals were being taken out with one or two shots by the natives while the English knew they couldnât compete and didnât try to, probably averaging 20-30 shots if not more.
Basically, racism bankrupted a bunch of idiots who couldn't accept that natives were making rational decisions.
As a woman from the Washington area where prostitution pressure is insane and only recently started getting cleaned up, I 100% have seen just this sort of discrimination costs hilarious excesses only to have zero power. They hadn't factored in the woman was a rational agent. They thought they could bully her into having sex, spend thousands if not millions kicking her out of her self-supporting non-sex work jobs, bully her into wearing makeup, wearing certain clothes. It was because she wanted to and back when it was around there had been sufficiently enough in it for her to continue, but around when they started to structure her having her guard down in as costs of illegal trafficking business, there ceased to be anything in it for her so she stopped. That was a rational decision by a rational agent, and as a rational agent, unless what was in it for her comes back, that's not coming back (mutual respect, mutual sustenance). As long as they have no respect, there's nothing that she wants there and they still haven't put that together unable to integrate them as fellow rational agents. It's just hilarious. It's like watching the black knight fight the white knight in Monty Python. The woman's a rational agent. You spent about two arms and two legs to get her to conform to the idea that she's not. And she still is. It's just comedic. And yet these traffickers spend embarrassing amounts trying to bring it back trying to make it conform to the idea that it was them that did it when it was not, and this was a rational agent making a rational decision because previously there had been something in it for them--like basically respectful partners that basically sustained them--that are now just completely gone. Financial abuser 1. Why isn't working? Because you're a financial abuser with a history of financial abuse not even paying the basic minimum for the work she's actually interested in doing. Financial abuse 2. Why isn't it working? You don't respect nonprofit structure literally at all and are so vain you think she should pay attention to you for literally not effing reason when you have literally nothing to offer her and sustain her in literally 0 way, in fact are begging her to make money on her account. Financial abuser 3. Gives you a clear front company bs just to do it in front of you because you think she sees nothing because you have that little respect for her and can't even pay a living wage and are baffled when someone that repulsively disrespectful gains none of her natural interest. Like keep going. Financial abuser 4. Why didn't it work? You're financially abusive. There's nothing in it for me. Financial abuser 5. Why didn't it work? You're financially abusive. There's nothing in it for me. 0 learning. It's just comedic. Just like natives shooting one shot come from a 1,000+ year history of working with that territory and becoming that skilled. They see a teepee and think, "Oh, nothing to learn", then they spend $50 in bullets trying to kill one deer. Meanwhile the natives are trading their stories of "the one" deer who they spent their one bullet on just yesterday. Complete animal irrationalilty. Misogyny and racism that costly. That's hilarious.
Anyway, if you're spending, thousands, millions, and billions of dollars to make minorities or women conform more to your stereotypes when they're rationally rejecting business with you because there's literally nothing in it for them you're looking a hell of a lot more like an animal roaming the plains in terms of rational agency than they are.
It's really like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInk... out here with white men struggling this hard to accept women and minorities make rational decisions as rational agents. That sword is just pure rationality and they're like "tis but a scratch, there was no rational agency there, fight me man".
Like there's literally nothing in it for these people. You're financially abusive. Financial abuser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Enjoy your 44B "scratch". Literally spending about 100k of that directly on the rational agent would have probably gotten you the result you wanted. Just enjoy man. Just enjoy. Veronica Moss is the CEO of Goodreads, at least she'll get paid something in the next 44B "scratch". That's a win for female CEOS. There's still nothing in it for me.