Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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> for the past half century poverty worldwide has been reduced drastically, and i see no reason for that trend not to continue

Because of capitalism, not wealth redistribution from white saviors.

> this is not an issue of white saviors rescuing africa. this is an issue of us colonialists cleaning up the mess that we created and are responsible for.

You won’t do that, and anyone who waits around for that to happen or wasted energy or political capital engaging with that is a moron. A dangerous moron. For example, Britain will not give India back a cent of the trillions it stole from them, nor will the Muslim empires who came before them. The only non-idiotic course of action for a country like India is to try and get rich on the same course of development Britain pursued. Not sitting around with their hand out.

It occurred to me the other day that if my home country of Bangladesh had pursued capitalism from the outset, instead of fucking around for decades with socialism, my family might still be together in Bangladesh instead of scattered around a bunch of white people’s countries. What happened before doesn’t matter. What matters is economic development, as fast as possible. The prospect of white saviorism meaningfully fixing anything is so remote—because the sacrifice that would be required in their part is so massive—that even talking about it is destructive in distracting from the urgency of economic development.

What matters is economic development, as fast as possible

absolutely, yes!

but economic development also needs fair payment. and that is currently not happening.

fair trade is not wealth distribution.

do you think fast economic development is possible if we continue to exploit those countries?

> do you think fast economic development is possible if we continue to exploit those countries?

Yes, and it has already happened in many places. In 1950, the GDP per capita of South Korea and Taiwan were under $900, not much more than the $600 of Pakistan. Those East Asian countries rapidly industrialized and became rich. Nobody wasted time talking about fairness. Pakistan fucked around with socialism and other leftist garbage and doomed its people to decades more of poverty.

about south korea:

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

"The growth has been attributed to the hard work of the labor force. External factors include the enormous economic and technical assistance provided by foreign countries, particularly Japan (see: Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea) and the United States, access to Western and Japanese markets, and the acquisition of foreign currency by Korean migrant workers in the early stages of economic growth."

other east asian countries look similar. foreign investments and international trade play a large role in a countries economic development.

that doesn't look like continued exploitation that was and still is happening in africa.

sure, the countries need to do their part to develop on their own. but we can also contribute by actually trading fairly with them.

In the aftermath of WWII and the Korean War, the US invested significantly in rebuilding + supporting most of the rapidly industrialized countries that you've named.

Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, all received extensive economic development support from the US from 1940's-1970's, which helped a lot with that rapid industrialization.

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