WEBVTT - The Founder Who Made America Rich | Founding Fathers Series Part 3 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:17.920 For most of human history, wealth was presumed to be finite. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:20.960 Consider a boy in a playground with ten marbles. How 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.680 can he get more? There's only one possibility. He has 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.080 to take someone else's marbles. Until relatively recently, wealth was 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.600 mostly in land, and the only way to get more 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.080 land was to take it. Conquest was the natural mode 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.360 of human acquisition, and that's how most countries evolved and 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:42.080 grew through force and conquest. The American Revolution was motivated 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.239 in large part by resistance to this old way of 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.400 doing things. To put it clearly, the colonists didn't like 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.760 the idea that the English Crown could take their money 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:57.320 or property without their consent, no taxation, without representation, they protested. Still, 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.240 the control of money and property was only part of 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.640 the picture. The bigger challenge would be this, could the 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:07.480 New world find a better alternative to the old world's 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:12.240 conquest and seizure model. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasurer of 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:16.000 the United States, had the answer. Under his brilliant stewardship, 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.280 the new nation developed a new concept of wealth creation 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.600 capitalism based on innovation, invention, and enterprise, and it would 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.959 be available to every citizen from any background with the 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:31.920 willingness to work for it. America could get more marbles 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.480 without seizing anyone's marbles. We would just make new ones. True. 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:40.399 Later in American history, the government seized Indian Land, but 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.240 that wasn't Hamilton's idea. And obviously there were inventors and 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:48.000 merchants around before America. But America's the first society to 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.800 be based on invention and trade. America, as Carl Marx 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:57.280 later understood, is the capitalist society par excellence. Hamilton was 0:01:57.320 --> 0:01:59.680 the man who made it so. Indeed, Hamilton's own life 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.840 refine the upward mobility he wanted to be a defining 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.440 characteristic of the new nation. Born on the small Caribbean 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:11.000 island of Nevis, he was orphaned at twelve. By fourteen, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.840 he was running a shipping company for a local merchant. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:15.960 At age twenty, he made his way to New York. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.640 Soon thereafter, he fully embraced the revolutionary cause. By twenty three, 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:23.600 he was George Washington's most trusted aid. At thirty four, 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.760 he was running the US Treasury, the largest apartment by 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:30.320 far of the new government. In contrast to Hamilton, the 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:35.400 other leading founders, Washington, Jefferson Madison, were Virginia farmers. If 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.359 it were up to them, America would have been set 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:41.280 up as a network of farming communities, with towns conceived 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.840 as places where agricultural produce was bought and sold. It 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.000 was Hamilton who laid the groundwork for America to become 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:53.960 a prosperous urban, industrial, commercial society. Hamilton and envisioned America 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.360 as a nation whose nuclei would be cities centers of 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:04.280 vigorous invention, innovation, and trade, with new types of people entrepreneurs, mechanics, financiers, salesmen, 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.920 and so on, all working to enjoy the quote bleasing 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.639 reward of their toils. But how to create such a society? 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:13.799 That was the question. How to make New York, which 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:16.440 was then a modest town, into the New York City 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.480 we know today, a flourishing center of finance, commerce, publishing, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.160 and the arts. Coming from the islands of the West Indies, 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.680 where the buying and selling of human beings was the 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.359 defining feature of the economic system, Hamilton well understood how 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:33.600 easily the passion for conquest control over other human beings 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:38.760 could overwhelm man's better nature. Yes, slavery was a lamentable 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.640 feature of the new Country. The question for the pragmatic 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:43.960 Hamilton was how to get rid of it. Not immediately 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.800 that was impossible, but eventually inevitably. In his mind, there 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.480 was only one way, make it easy as possible for 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:54.520 as many people as possible to become as prosperous as possible. 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.360 This would happen through the myriad ways of commerce. E 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:00.880 Commerce of this sort, Hamilton knew, would require strong central 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.440 government not to curb freedom, but to protect it. The 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.840 elaborate system of rights and contracts on which capitalism is 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.480 based requires the government to be the neutral arbiter of 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.200 the disputes that inevitably arise. A weak central government of 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:17.800 the sort and vision by Jefferson would not be up 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.159 to that challenge. To say that these two intellectual giants 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:25.000 butted heads over this question would be an understatement. Fortunately, 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:30.040 Hamilton's vision prevailed. That vision included one more crucial component, 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.160 one that's easily overlooked. Patent protection for inventors and innovators. 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.640 Article one, Section eight of the US Constitution gives Congress 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.279 the power to quote promote the progress of science and 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.200 useful arts by securing or limited times to authors and 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:51.520 inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.320 end quote. No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln would 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.479 note that this right the only right listed in the 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.240 original Constitution prior to the addition of the The Bill 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:04.120 of Rights accelerated the economic development of the United States 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.599 by adding quote the fuel of interest to the fire 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.120 of genius in the discovery and production of new and 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.360 useful things. It was no accident that within a matter 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.680 of decades the United States became the most prosperous nation 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:21.400 in world history. It's no accident because Alexander Hamilton was 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.640 there at the founding, the man who understood that, thanks 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:28.839 to capitalism, you don't have to take anyone else's marbles 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:31.440 to get more marbles of your own.