> it has been built upon slavery, colonialism and/or cheap imported labour
You're undermining your own argument. Those things, collectively, were the norm for most of human history, not that "short window of time", so something else must have happened that made people optimistic about hard work yielding the fruits of a better life (however you want to define that).
If you were living in the west at that time it was true for you, not for the slaves toiling it away in the colonies. America's trading partners wealth was all built upon that. Plenty of America's own wealth was built upon slavery, even after slavery was technically outlawed.
You realize that humanity is several hundred thousand years old, and most of that was brutal slavery, of the strong imposing their will on the weak, of kings and chieftains using their gangs to take from the rest?
If you think American slavery was unique, you need to get your money back for you education. The Romans had a special tool to knock out the teeth of slaves so they could be better abused sexually. The N. African kingdoms castrated their slaves so that they would be more docile. There are a plethora of horror stories from history, because that was the norm. Just like it is in the norm in nature for the strong to take from the weak.
What we have today is a brief moment of respite, but it sure looks like a hell of a lot of people want to regress to the mean.
"Ecologies don't tend to work the way human societies do" maybe you need to get your money back also. Either you don't understand the word tautology, or you don't believe an elephant seal taking breeding and hunting rights from smaller seals is something stronger taking from something weaker. Nature is completely filled with hierarchies, where those that are stronger and more fit take resources from those are who are weaker and less fit.
What humans have today is an aberration from history and nature and should be protected at all costs. And those that would destroy it can't fathom the kind of hell life was for 99.9% of humanity just a bare fraction of our history ago.
You have no definition of "strong" here other than "one who takes from others, and no definition of "weak" as "one who is taken from". That's a tautology.
> Nature is completely filled with hierarchies, where those that are stronger and more fit take resources from those are who are weaker and less fit.
The sort of understanding of "evolution" and "fitness" might do well in the circles you move in. It doesn't have much to do with reality. The "heirarchies" you insist fill nature are as much a projection of 19th century naturalists' understanding of their own societies as they are a description of actual power dynamics among other creatures.
There are huge numbers of examples of both intra-species and inter-species dynamics that do not play out in the simplistic way you're describing. Sure, there are also examples that do, but it's inaccurate to suggest them as the dominant form.
Co-evolution, overlapping resource extraction, and of course the tension between the health of a group and the health of the individuals within it are just three basic ways that complicate your strong-takes/weak-taken description.
"Co-evolution, overlapping resource extraction, and of course the tension between the health of a group and the health of the individuals within it are just three basic ways that complicate your strong-takes/weak-taken description."
Why would that possibly complicate anything? You think a cheetah making the gazelle faster over time is some sort of gotcha that changes the fact that cheetahs eat gazelles?
I can throw out some terms and claim they'll contradict you too. Dominance hierarchy, infanticide, territoriality, and reproductive fitness are just 4 basic ways that uncomplicate my strong-takes/weak-taken description.
I wasn't making a broad claim about the natural world, you were. To contradict your broad claim, I merely pointed out a couple of counter-examples that suggest something other than the heirarchy-based view you described.
If you want to contradict me, given that I'm acknowledging the presence of strong-takes-weak, but noting that it's not the whole picture, you'd need to show that actually, it is the whole picture.
Slavery was frequent but led to minor growth in gdp (as evidenced by Columbus living at only twice the average standard of living of Jesus-times in 0 AD). Cheap labor perhaps even stalled industrialization, which lead to living standards doubling every 5-10 years during the fastest periods. Slavery was a better wealth generator for the slaveholders than nothing, but the idea that it’s some great wealth generator compared so what came after is ridiculous. Maybe 1% of the wealth of the US came from slavery, steam power is a much much larger chunk, and computing thereafter.
You're undermining your own argument. Those things, collectively, were the norm for most of human history, not that "short window of time", so something else must have happened that made people optimistic about hard work yielding the fruits of a better life (however you want to define that).