[3dbrows]

I’m not sure it was mainly rich folks who suffered. Many small scale investors also lost money. So severe were the losses that something like 25% of private wealth in Scotland was destroyed.

Some argue we are still feeling the effects of this today. It certainly didn’t help with social attitudes towards being miserly with money (which we very much are).

[jakderrida]

>I’m not sure it was mainly rich folks who suffered. I've read it was 1/3rd of their annual GDP.

>Some argue we are still feeling the effects of this today. Of course you are. Think of it this way. The reason they poured everything into it and kept pouring more into it wasn't just to increase personal wealth of investors. It was a unique opportunity to poll vault towards becoming a major European empire. While they knew it was a massive endeavor, the rewards would be incalculable. For them to control the most important manmade waterway to global trade 3 times as long as the US has would be a success story that we'd be reminded about in every grade school class but Golf and Gaelic.

[Affric]

A little diversion into the tiers of people you’d hear about constantly in primary school. S+ from P3 onwards, S from P6 onwards, A tier are more those that you’d be told invented the modern world

S+ tier: Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, Rabbie Burns.

S tier: James Watt, Alexander Fleming, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

A tier: David Hume, Adam Smith, James Dunlop

[3dbrows]

Yep. Rotten luck with the malaria and blockades, eh.