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Comment by drstewart | Hacker News Reader

>banana republic

>Learn to pronounce

>noun

>a small state that is politically unstable as a result of the domination of its economy by a single export controlled by foreign capital.

Do words just not have meaning anymore?

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"Banana republic" implies more than what the dictionary definition is. If you look at the wealth distribution in any example "banana republic", you'll find a few very wealthy people/warlords and many dirt poor with close to nothing in between

There’s already a well-established word for a country run by rich elite.

Calling the US a “banana republic” is a shocking headline, which I think is the real point. The US economy is not very similar to actual banana republics though. There are some aspects which are becoming similar, yes, but also many in which they’re not.

To me it reads as a clickbait headline.

> "Banana republic" implies more than what the dictionary definition is.

I think that any argument that needs the dictionary to be wrong, is probably wrong.

My pet peeve is 'third world' (in lower case), originally intended as Third World (in upper case). An alternative presented by certain countries as the Cold War heated up. Binding together to resist ceding functional sovereignty to either the First World (US and its allies) or Second World (the USSR and its allies).

It is today usually employed neutered of its casing and tossed around by First World citizens as a general unfalsifiable pejorative towards places that are less politically or economically stable. In many cases because of First World decisions such as Bretton Woods 1973.

Yes words can change meaning, but this is a particularly devious evolution.

Oh, and it gets especially sillytown when you hear an American say 'this place is turning into a third world country'

That might be the way one dictionary choose to define the term. But the term as I've known it for decades refers to any entity that has the distinguishing property of the small Central American Republics which exported fruit to the United States: A very small wealthy minority preceding over the much larger mass of poor.

> A very small wealthy minority preceding over the much larger mass of poor.

There's an exact word for that: oligarchy.

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

Yes, thank you, English often has many synonyms of varying levels. From that very page:

> the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy

The definition of "banana republic" being used here is

> a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.

The meaning of words changes over time, based on how people use them. More at 11.

That isn't a license to misuse words in a way that forgets your agenda whenever you want.

It seems you're trying to imply that anyone talking about the .1% owning as much as the 90% has "an agenda", and that's bad for some reason.

And no, it's not a misuse of the word.

> Over the past century, “banana republic” has evolved to mean any country (with or without bananas) that has a ruthless, corrupt, or just plain loopy leader who relies on the military and destroys state institutions in an egomaniacal quest for prolonged power.

- https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-america-bec...

> The banana republic term is a derogatory term often used to describe countries plagued with a variety of problems, including a tyrannical or otherwise problematic government or government officials

- https://examples.yourdictionary.com/what-is-banana-republic-...

Etc.

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