Did slavery make America?

There was an article about what made America great – a think tank concluded it was the free market, but the reaction on the social media was that slavery and robbery were the more likely cause. The reaction on the social media shows how indoctrinated with Marxism everybody really is.

No, slavery didn’t do shit. The parts of America that kept slaves were backward and poor; the North industrialised exactly because there was no cheap slave labor to compete with the machines, so those were developed, to great effect. A combination of a very simple state structure, patent laws that encouraged invention (one hoped to become rich with patents), and, first and foremost, influx of some of the most competent people from abroad, like Tesla, is what made America. However, it still wasn’t much – the difference between America and Argentina for instance, before the world wars, was insignificant. It’s after the second world war, after Europe was completely ruined, and America essentially robbed it of the intellectual cream of the crop, controlled the world’s monetary system, and had the military upper hand, not to mention the occupying forces on the ground, that America surged up compared to Europe. The reasons are complex, but slavery played zero part in them. Also, the free land didn’t mean that much, or Australia for instance would be in the same ballpark, which it is not. Slavery exists even today in some countries, and how does it affect them? They are without exception among the poorest and least developed countries in the world. So much about the Marxist analysis, stating that if someone is rich, he must have robbed someone. Exactly the opposite seems to be true – where people are allowed to rob others, this interferes with the complexity of processes required for technological and economic development.