Hamilton was a tyrant

While I certainly don't think I'd agree with Hamilton on financial policy (I'm pretty fundamentally a socialist!), I also think it's probably not quite fair to presume that Hamilton or anyone in his time could have known what capitalism would become today.

I don't doubt that he was elitist (and for what it's worth, Hamilton the musical doesn't propose that he was right about everything he believed either; only that he was brilliant in his writing about it and his work ethic), but I also understand how the idea of capitalism is on paper can be appealing. NOW it's been around long enough that we can see all of its downfalls and how it inherently relies on the poor to be exploited in order to concentrate all the wealth at the very top, but when Hamilton was around it was a very new economic system. And in fairness, coming out of the Revolutionary War, the country was pretty darned bankrupt, and he obviously wasn't wrong that centralizing the national credit and making it competitive, and creating a national bank, was a way to get out of that!

Again, I absolutely agree that where that lead us today was a horrible mistake, and even at the time it probably was a policy that was way too negligent/damaging to the poorer citizens. But I just doubt that Hamilton, in his time, could ever have foreseen the degree to which all of it would be taken today. It was the building blocks for what we've got today that's spiraled out of control, but I can't pretend like I don't see how, at the time, those initial building blocks might have looked appealing, at least in the lens of helping the new nation as a whole to get its footing if not in the lens of the individual poor people and farmers who Lin himself has agreed got the raw end of the deal with Hamilton's policies.

Aaanyway, again, the musical isn't about Hamilton being perfect :) On the contrary, it makes him and all of the characters very human- yes, it emphasizes that Hamilton had an incredible mind because he did, but it also doesn't shy away from his flaws and arrogance.


Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy. - Kurt Hummel

Don't believe everything Thomas Jefferson tells you. He outlived his enemies by decades & spent most of those years polishing his own reputation--and destroying theirs.

Hey, less work that actually doing something about slavery....

True...