Also, how does the west benefit from instability? This kind of thing is said by conspiracy theorists a lot but it's never made sense to me. Less oil, natural gas and other exports.
It's like asking how the prisoner's benefit in the prisoner's dilemma. They each try to maximise their own utility and in doing so, because of the way the system is set up, they do worse than if they had co-operated.
>the west got better at the expense of the rest of the world
"At the expense" means that there's a link.
I don't buy it. American intervention is down from it's glory days :/ of the '60s and '70s, violent deaths are down worldwide, and other countries are getting rich along with the US.
(Now that I reread the above comments, I guess it's more likely the point was just that "We should also mention a negative thing about America for balance," in which case this is all just argument for argument's sake.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry [2] http://time.com/4161613/us-arms-sales-exports-weapons/
Which is about one-half of Walmart's employee base, but the USA doesn't base its foreign policy on the whims of the Walton family.
What's more persuasive about the military-industrial-government complex is that most of its leaders emerged from the same universities and think-tanks. Essentially they share the same viewpoints and philosophies and can pull the appropriate levers in the domains that the control and they freely move from one domain to another.
This doesn't take away the fact that there is interest in having these companies operating in the future.
> but the USA doesn't base its foreign policy on the whims of the Walton family.
If by "the USA" you mean the government, yes you are right, because it doesn't have to. Companies as big as Walmart, Lockheed Martin, McDonald's are fully capable of influencing the 'outside world' by their own means.