Another really good point made in that essay I quoted from in the previous post is that she says one of the big reasons the Protestant Reformation spread is because publishers who owned printing presses realized that Martin Luther’s writings against the Catholic Church were making them a lot of money. Not mentioned in that essay, but entirely related is that the German princes who supported Martin Luther also realized they could make a lot of money by confiscating Catholic Church property, and removing Roman influence from their system of government. This raises probably the single-most important point that modern activists and revolutionaries seem to be forgetting: that you have to make sure your revolution is profitable.

Same thing could be argued for the American Revolution. Rather than some kind of idealistic this and that, it was an attempt to circumvent trade restrictions and taxation placed on the colonies by the British. People with money realized they could make more money if they branched out on their own. And thus a nation was born.