Remix.run Logo
potamic a day ago

The first world overcame those problems by extracting obscene amounts of wealth from the third world to make their populations handsomely rich. When you have everything and lead a comfortable life you're more likely to spend your free time at the pub than go enlist with some private gang or militia. If you look at all the places where organised crime is rampant, the common denominator is always extreme poverty. People living a wretched life, unable to meet their basic needs, with no glimmer of hope for their future are just begging to be recruited into a gang for even the smallest of incentives.

rayiner 16 hours ago | parent [-]

> The first world overcame those problems by extracting obscene amounts of wealth from the third world to make their populations handsomely rich.

This is incorrect, bordering on flat-earthism. It's also impossible if you think about it for more than two seconds. If the "third world" had possessed "obscene amounts of wealth" to begin with, the first world never would have been able to "extract" it.

potamic 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Even a cursory search will find you literature from respected economists on this subject. There may be debate on how much wealth transfer or the actual impact of it, but there's wide consensus on the fact that there was. Comparing these ideas with flat-earthism is quite extremist, I'm curious if you've reached this conclusion on your own or have been led to it by some sources?

[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/economic-impact-colonialism

[2] https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/r...

[3] https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-drain-of-wealth/

[4] https://wid.world/document/unequal-exchange-and-north-south-...

[5] https://ideas.repec.org/p/gnv/wpaper/unige144406.html