Poor countries are poor not because they lack resources but because they lack effective political institutions.
Fukuyama, in Wade, p 148
I would just add, they are not poor because of Western colonial domination, slavery, or oppression. See also Bairoch.
They were colonially dominated oppressed, and enslaved, by coincidence, and also because they were endemically poor and poorly governed by comparison.
The West did not need the Rest economically, and to dominate it to do that. Bairoch.
Re The NYT 1619 Project, The Rest did not build the West.
Some examples of Western trade involve no colonization or takeover of the trading partner in the Rest.
It dominated it opportunistically and ideologically; theologically as well, thinking to convert savages to Christianity.
There has now been a lot of talk here about reparations for slavery, and even talk about reparations for Western Civilization dominance of the Rest in general.
All this is the result of the crippled state of Western Civilization at this point, a sort of dead man walking, in Krugman's terminology, a Zombie.
Some of the West Zombie's actions involved aid transfers, not "reparations" God forbid, to un and underdeveloped areas which were former colonies of the West (and of each other at various times; but that is another story).
"Billions of dollars' worth of (Western) aid have been poured into Africa in the past half century with little impact on the standard of living." Wade p. 148.
But, I do not agree with the Why Nations Fail thesis, and Wade, maybe, will not either. We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment