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Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

I'm usually Russia-phobic, but would you rather live in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan etc., or in Russia? And mega-states like U.S. and Canada and Australia clearly provide a decent standard of living and good wide labour market to thrive on for the people living in them...

And south American w.r.t. the U.S.: I'm really not that knowledgeable about geopolitics in this part of the world.

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Well, regarding South America there is a generation that grew up reading "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" (even the author Eduardo Galeano has criticized his own work).

Blaming all the region problems on the "imperialists" and stuff like that is a line of thought still very alive and kicking around here - it is way easier to blame some imaginary entity than taking responsibility for your present situation. It is very inline with the current "outrage porn" culture.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp...

That’s not my point. I am not blaming anything on imperialism (without quotes). The world geopolitics are to these days structured and governed by empires. We don’t have emperors but there are still empires. If you happen to be a citizen of a country that is in the vicinity of a powerful and big state (size matters a lot too) then you are out of luck. What I said regarding Russia, America also applies to China, Europe (guess why the European Union was created) and to lesser degree Turkey and Iran.

Azerbaïdjan and Afghanistan are two very different countries on a lot of levels.

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