Extractive capitalism pulls resources and wealth out of “developing” nations, leaving them poor. Power and money maintain power and money through a boot on the throat militarily and economically and by fomenting internal conflict within the “developing” nations.
Why then is there not such corruption in developed countries as in developing countries? Is it a matter of culture?
Because developed countries already went through their corruption. The processes by which these countries became democracies tend to be bloody. Other countries were behind the curve, then their political and social development was frozen in time by Western colonialism.
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I think a big factor is the western labour movement wrestling away some of the prosperity created by the industrial revolution. Developing nations have profitable industries but the wealth doesn’t make it’s way down to the average citizen because they haven’t forced it to happen. The small minority of people who do profit from dirt cheap labour are quite happy for things to stay that way indefinitely, and so it does, because they are the ones who hold political and financial power.
Mostly corruption and stability doesn’t allow for business to develop along with the wealth that brings.
There are other factors but mainly you need good governance and free markets to allow for wealth creation. It at least that is the only model that has worked so far.
Everyone seems to be focusing on colonialism, but that really only brought Europe to a standard of living near India and China.
The real major thing that happened was that “the West” started industrializing before the rest of the world did. Some of the wealth came from colonial holdings that industrial countries had, but a lot of it came from having citizens who were more than a order of magnitude more economically productive than citizens of other countries for over a century.
Why the Indian subcontinent and China didn’t industrialize at the time is up to debate, but some theories are related to lower labor costs not sparking the positive feedback engine of industrialization until it was too late to compete against the West and going into periods of relative decline that Western countries could take advantage of.
The West was able to make itself the factory of the world, pushing the rest of the world into resource extraction.
It wasn’t until after World War II that other parts of the world were able to industrialize.
I have always assumed that
whitelight-skinned people have a leg up because they’rewhitelight-skinned. That is, they’ve lived for an evolutionarily relevant duration of time in places where you need low melanin to get sufficient vitamin D to survive. Places with low sunlight and harsh winters, which means places where failing to develop efficient agriculture, food preservation/storage, insulated shelters, and textiles meant starving or freezing to death.Non-
whitelight-skinned people lived for an evolutionarily relevant duration of time in places with more consistent sunlight and milder winters, where sun over-exposure was a more pressing threat than under-exposure. That means more forgiving crops and climates, so less pressure to streamline agriculture and subsequently industrialize.Edit: I feel the need to specify that I am not talking about “white people” as a coherent race, but as a loose term to describe light-skinned people from harsher climates in general. Don’t read any racial commentary here, I’m not making any.
There are several times in history that Europeans would not be considered the peak of human development due to very measurable differences in quality of life.
You’ll also find other pseudoscience bullshit trying to justify the superiority of one group over another from at least Roman times.
The fact of the matter is that several areas had the resources and technical development to start the Industrial Revolution; it just happened to spark in the United Kingdom first and spread through Europe quickly.
Okay. I dunno if you think I’m saying any group is “superior” because I’m very much not . I thought I was very much explicitly saying that their advantage was much more based on incidental environmental conditions than any kind of genetic superiority, or anything remotely close to that. Just brainstorming explanations for history that cut that exact “superiority” bullshit out of the picture
Romans literally thought they were the best because the people north of them were too emotional due to cold weather and people south of them weren’t hard enough due to hot weather.
And I also brought up that the most developed part of the world shifted over time, something that you’ve talked past rather than addressing to how it affects your theory of vitamin D.
I really don’t understand the source of conflict here. You seem like you agree that Europeans did happen to have the conditions amenable to development, but what’s your alternative? That the cause wasn’t just a coincidence? I’m really confused what your disagreement is.
I also mentioned India and China. You probably could have included parts of the Middle East as well if they weren’t as wrecked by the Mongol invasions as they were.
The vitamin D hypothesis doesn’t play out when looking at those areas.
Nothing I said conflicts with any of that? Han, Mongol, Turkic, Persian, and many other “ethnicities” across the continent play out just fine when taking light skin tone into consideration. Again, explicitly not race. I am talking about “white” as a skin tone, potentially correlated with harsher climates.
I get what this guy is trying to say but the phrasing and unnecessary racialising explains the downvotes. A better and less offensive way to put this could simply have referred to climate: that you suspect the harsher climate in Europe rewarded industrial and penalised agrarian lifestyles in a way that wasn’t true for civilisations near the equator. Being white or not has nothing to do with it - correlation versus causation.
There’s something to say about winters leading to social orders around food storage and planning ahead, but then England didn’t really need to do that that much (it’s quite mild there, gulf stream and all) and they were the first to really start the industrialisation game. It was plain and simple pure capitalism. The Nordic countries, where those climatic conditions are very much real, are way more naturally Socdem than the Anglos.
Another geographic, not so much climatic, factor is the availability of water power: Europe is blessed with a metric fuckton of small streams large enough to build a mill on. Wheat and rye are also quite easy to deal with, you can use a scythe to harvest, etc. That meant a comparatively productive agriculture, which meant more tradespeople, traders, and with that finally a bourgeoisie which could do that capitalism and industrialisation thing and exploit the serfs harder than the nobles ever managed to do, being stuck in age-old social relations which didn’t allow for ordering people around like that. Then a ton of other small factors, including things like Luther lobbying nobles to institute public schools so that people would learn to read – so they could read the Bible, but they could of course also now read an Almanach and do some maths.
Yes, correlation is exactly what I’m saying. I’m not saying “white” as a race, I’ve been explicitly saying “white” as skin tone. The same environmental conditions which reward efficient agriculture and the conditions for industrialization also correlate to pressures toward sun-absorbant skin.
My position has nothing to do with “race” and everything to do with coincidentally correlated environmental effects. Was I not sufficiently clear? When did I even bring up race, distinct from skin tone in-and-of-itself? “White” isn’t even a race, so far as race is even a rational concept.
I do understand the point you’re making actually, but you’re wading into emotionally charged waters here. I would argue “white” is an inherently racial term, but the more importantly, the correlation is not really relevant to the discussion and needlessly muddies your broader point (that climate may inspire or disincentive industrialisation) by injecting it with racial discussion.
I don’t know how else to specify that my point is purely about melanin levels in the skin being coincidentally correlated, and NOT related in any way to implicit genetic arguments. I explicitly defined “white” by melanin levels, not by race. “White” isn’t even a coherent race.
You could easily have used geographical notions, and not bothered with the melatonin point. It even took a stretch to pull in colour into your point. If you drag evolutionary advantages of being white into a conversation, then you might be a racist.
Again, nothing to do with race. Western Europeans, Persians, Chinese, Turks, and various other races/ethnicities all have light skin. Again, not an evolutionary advantage, just coincidental effects of geographical pressures of regions with low light and greater seasonal causing.
I feel like twisting what I’m saying into having anything to do with race, especially after repeatedly clarifying, is in bad faith. I’m specifically trying to explain the relative technological advancement of lighter-skinned people in a way that completely nullifies the notion of evolutionary advantage. I’m specifically trying to counter any notion of racial advantage. Why are you trying to flip that around to the exact opposite of what I’m saying?
The fact that they refuse to acknowledge that the skin tone part of their argument is irrelevant leads me to believe that they are being disingenuous about their motivations. You’ve clearly pointed out that climate is a sufficient explanation and that references to skin tone are unnecessary and misleading.
What are you talking about? I have multiple times clearly pointed out that climate is the explanation, and skin color is just another result of climate. I’m trying to explain a correlation, not imply causation.
Why are you trying to explain this correlation? Nobody else had mentioned skin tone, so you weren’t correcting anyone. You just brought up a completely unrelated correlation out of the blue for no reason? And you’re defending it in comment after comment instead of just saying “sorry that was a non-sequitur, my bad”.
A question beautifully answered by marxist theory. See unequal exchange.
Because you need a middle class to have a high standard of living.
And you can’t have a middle class when your culture has internalized class oppression that tells you to never question your superiors.
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I’m just curious. Considering that, for example, there is political and economic instability in RuSSia, there is no justice, RuSSia does not pay for international debts, even because of sanctions. What happens if other countries refuse to pay?
1 The middle income trap. Many countries used their cheap uneducated population as an opportunity for cheap labour, for large companies. This brings lots of capital to the country and people, and the country develops. Building more schools, infrastructure etc. but as a country develops, pay increases for workers, and suddenly their labour is no longer cheap. Their country’s economy is now effectively stuck.
2 Conflict and instability. Investors don’t want to pour money into a country where it might have a coup, leadership change, etc. They don’t want to lose what they invest, since these events usually result in lots of private property being taken or destroyed. This fact leaves a lot of countries in a catch 22. They need investment to stabilize, but need to stabilize to gain investment.
A lot of countries are also unstable because of badly drawn borders. This often leaves a lot of ethnic tensions that continue to boil away indefinitely. Sometimes the borders give a country horrible geography and incentivise them to invade their neighbors.
One example would be that country #1 is downstream of a major river, behind country #2 and #3. Country #2 and 3 use a lot of the water and there is none left for country #1 and their only option is to invade.
The final and probably most common reason is that dictators don’t care about prosperity, and that dictators lead to more dictators. Far more often than not, coups lead to another, worse dictator, focused on holding power than their country’s success.
The reason that south Korea and Taiwan are successful and democratic today are because they rolled the 1/1000 chance on a benevolent dictator that WILLINGLY steered the country into democracy and genuinely improved the economy.
I think it is because of population vs resources allocated per person. When a nation is developing it is still trying to catch up with the high number of population it can service, but with little resource it can utilize or there is but not yet utilize. It has no choice but to cut corners in turn lower standard of education, health, social services, housing and unutilize laws. This in turn having some or majority of the people receiving less and some none at all. This makes them vulnerable to bad influence and bad decision e.g. vote buying, rebellion. They cannot participate in the nation building process in a right mind since they are trying to survive. Anyways, I’m probably just talking bullshit. To be fair not all Western nations have high standard of living e.g. some nations in eastern Europe.
That’s because it’s in the east, we’re talking ‘western’ here mate.
Jokes aside, citizens in developing nations are struggling with food, basic necessity and shelter while western people are generally not concerned about a roof above their head making them worry about higher level needs like education, Healthcare and improving their quality of life.
For example, a large population in India are seemingly ‘wasting’ their life unproductively while in reality they don’t even have the right psychological mindset to improve their conditions. And if, or when they try, it’s pretty easy to hit the brick wall of a meaningless rat race without any end in sight.
Easy way out? Scam people, sell drugs, local politics and other harmful activities that would give any kind of recognition (which again, is a basic need)
The “Western” countries pillaged the rest of the world for centuries.
There will always be 50% of countries poorer than the 50% richest countries
Imagine 3 people, with different amounts of wealth. 1 of them will always be richer than the other 2 by definition. There’s nothing wrong with this.
The problem comes when richest has much much more than the poorest. There’s little problem if poorest has 1 and richest has 3. There’s a huge problem if poorest has 1 and richest has 1 billion.
It’s not about how we sort countries, it’s about how wealth is distributed.
Look up ‘Elite Capture’. It’s really hard to build good institutions and keep them strong and free from corruption, and they will be under siege by special interests from day one.
Guess who colonized whom…
Fuckingcapitalists and goddamnedfascists
