• rivermonster@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    You’re going to get a LOT of reductive and low effort answers from Lemmy radicals. But this is a super complex question, and there’s not a 5-second ELI5 answer if you really want to understand.

    Also, when the radicals scream at you, there’s going to be a core of truth. They’re going to yell about colonization and empires. That’s a major factor, but not an exclusive one. However, for getting radical and rabidly furious its all they’ll bother posting to you.

    Things to investigate, because answering this for yourself in a meaningful way is going to take a while and require study. Here are some topics but NOT an exhaustive list:

    1. Colonization

    2. Resources (natural and otherwise)

    3. Schooling, education, etc.

    4. Stability, politically and otherwise (note this will have overlap with colonial and non-colonial powers destabilizing things intentionally for geopolitical gain)

    5. Infrastructure (transportation, economic, water, medical, etc.)

    6. Medicine as regionally practiced, traditional vs based on the the scientific method.

    7. Geopolitics (isolationism, etc)

    8. Geography (i.e. the US’s greatest asset is its location, it neighbors no enemies and its main enemies are separated by an ocean. One of the key reasons the US focuses on the ability to project force)

    9. Religion

    10. Corruption (politically and non politically)

    11. Crime and non-military/nation based violence (also could get grouped under personal safety and security)

    And again, honestly, a lot of these topics will overlap, but that’s what I mean by there isn’t a quick, easy answer.

    And the reductive stupid answer is just yelling colonialism.

    There’s a reason people get PhDs in this subject. It’s not a quick, easy question.

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      6 months ago

      Actually, you’re just reducing complex issue of exercising power over other countries to “colonialism” than trying to criticize people correctly recognizing this issue as “radicals”. Most of what you listed can be directly linked to western countries destabilizing other regions by military or covert actions, installing puppet governments, using their influence to steal resources and keeping other economies in check so that they don’t develop into competitors. No one thinks that it’s all because some country was a colony 200 years ago. Western influence never really ended in most of those countries and that’s what is keeping them down.

      • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        I’m not convinced, considering the US and many other countries with high standard of living are also leading the world in external debt (both total and per capita).

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

        Maybe you mean debt to GDP+wealth ratio? Or more specifically, bad credit with international banks.

        I’m not an economist though, so I’d be curious to hear if there is more explanation for why you consider debt to be “the main reason.”

        I am aware that some countries have been “screwed over” by large banks that had specific detrimental stipulations for debt forgiveness though. For example, look at the Latin American Debt Crisis.

        …the Fed convened an emergency meeting of central bankers from around the world to provide a bridge loan to Mexico. Fed officials also encouraged US banks to participate in a program to reschedule Mexico’s loans (Aggarwal 2000). As the crisis spread beyond Mexico, the United States took the lead in organizing an “international lender of last resort,” a cooperative rescue effort among commercial banks, central banks, and the IMF. Under the program, commercial banks agreed to restructure the countries’ debt, and the IMF and other official agencies lent the LDCs sufficient funds to pay the interest, but not principal, on their loans. In return, the LDCs agreed to undertake structural reforms of their economies and to eliminate budget deficits. The hope was that these reforms would enable the LDCs to increase exports and generate the trade surpluses and dollars necessary to pay down their external debt (Devlin and Ffrench-Davis 1995). Although this program averted an immediate crisis, it allowed the problem to fester. Instead of eliminating subsidies to state-owned enterprises, many LDC countries instead cut spending on infrastructure, health, and education, and froze wages or laid off state employees. The result was high unemployment, steep declines in per capita income, and stagnant or negative growth—hence the term the “lost decade” (Carrasco 1999).

        https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/latin-american-debt-crisis

      • rivermonster@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Quoting myself here…

        Here are some topics but NOT an exhaustive list:

        Thought debt could go into some of the other categories. Calling it out individually or under a broader umbrella of economics would be fine, too. It’s just a suggestion list for OP to research.

    • XiELEd@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Colonialism has done really bad things in the African and Middle Eastern continent. When they withdrew they irresponsibly drew the borders and now civil wars happen all the fucking time

      • rivermonster@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Yes, but OP was asking for more than a single high-level example. And, again, exclusively answering colonialism would be disingenuous if we implied that was THE answer instead of part of it.