Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living?

Comments

• rivermonster@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You’re going to get a LOT of reductive and low effort answers for Lemmy radicals. But this is a super complex question, and there’s not a 5-second ELI5 answer if you really want to understand.

  Also, when the radicals scream at you, there’s going to be a core of truth. They’re going to yell about colonization and empires. That’s a major factor, but not am exclusive one. However, for getting radical and rabidly furious its all they’ll bother posting to you.

  Things to investigate, because answering this for yourself in a meaningful way is going to take a while and require study. Here are some topics but NOT an exhaustive list:

  1. Colonization

  2. Resources (natural and otherwise)

  3. Schooling, education, etc.

  4. Stability, politically and otherwise (note this will have overlap with colonial and non-colonial powers destabilizing things intentionally for geopolitical gain)

  5. Infrastructure (transportation, economic, water, medical, etc.)

  6. Medicine as regionally practices, traditional vs based on the the scientific method.

  7. Geopolitics (isolationism, etc)

  8. Geography (i.e. the US’s greatest asset is its location, it neighbors no enemies and its main enemies are separated by an ocean. One of the key reasons the US focuses on the ability to project force)

  And again, honestly, a lot of these topics will overlap, but that’s what I mean by there isn’t a quick, easy answer.

  And the reductive stupid answer is just yelling colonialism.

  There’s a reason people get PhDs in thus subject. It’s not a quick easy question.

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  • ExLisper@linux.community ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Actually, you’re just reducing complex issue of exercising power over other countries to “colonialism” than trying to criticize people correctly recognizing this issue as “radicals”. Most of what you listed can be directly linked to western countries destabilizing other regions by military or covert actions, installing puppet governments, using their influence to steal resources and keeping other economies in check so that they don’t develop into competitors. No one thinks that it’s all because some country was a colony 200 years ago. Western influence never really ended in most of those countries and that’s what is keeping them down.

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  • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And the reductive stupid answer is just yelling colonialism.

    Most of those reasons, that are very real, are explicitly derived of colonialism.

    For instance:

    • 2 (resources) is the cause that the US promotes puppet right-wing governments or directly destroys countries to pillage them.
    • 3 (education) is systematically destroyed in many countries because they want to make public education disappear so it’s for profit. Again, following the US model and most likely benefiting US companies (for instance “educational” campaigns to teach proprietary products created by US companies, e.g. Microsoft)
    • 4 (stability) is directly threatened by the US foreign policy of destroying every country that is ideologically or economically inconvenient for the unimpeded proliferation of unbridled, savage capitalism.
    • 6: in many developing countries public health has been destroyed to follow for-profit schemes based in the US model, to benefit either US companies or US-backed right-wing politicians.
    • 11: Crime is worst in countries reduces to poverty, in many cases by US-backed lending policies sending countries into misery.

    All this, of course, is supported by years of colonial teachings after which the people in the “developing” countries despise themselves and look up to the powerful countries as inherently superior, even morally.

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    • XiELEd@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not just the US. Cambridge Analytica is trying to manipulate our politics through scummy means such as misinformation. And our country is being fucked by the effects of Climate Change while western countries are celebrating because “it’s more sunny and warm now! :D”.

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    • rivermonster@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Many of the issues CAN and are linked to colonialism, reread what I wrote.

      Yes, your points are pertinent and support problems that colonialism is relevant to, I did not claim otherwise.

      However, you’re clearly angry over crimes (in many cases rightfully so) and problems the US has caused. But the question wasn’t exclusive to the US and is not exclusive to the US.

      For the OPs question, trying to exclusively link everything to or overstate the colonial influence is an example of what I was saying as well.

      It’s comforting to pretend that we just say one word “colonialism” and think that now we’re experts on the subject. But there’s so much more than colonialism, which again is a big factor (the first I listed), and overemphasis of it while disregarding the other real issues and nuances is counterproductive to learning.

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  • XiELEd@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Colonialism has done really bad things in the African and Middle Eastern continent. When they withdrew they irresponsibly drew the borders and now civil wars happen all the fucking time

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    • rivermonster@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, but OP was asking for more than a single high-level example. And, again, exclusively answering colonialism would be disingenuous if we implied that was the exclusive answer instead of part of it.

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  • doublejay1999@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You wrote all that, and didn’t mention the main reason, which is debt

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    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not convinced, considering the US and many other countries with high standard of living are also leading the world in external debt (both total and per capita).

      en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_external_…

      Maybe you mean debt to GDP+wealth ratio? Or more specifically, bad credit with international banks.

      I’m not an economist though, so I’d be curious to hear if there is more explanation for why you consider debt to be “the main reason.”

      I am aware that some countries have been “screwed over” by large banks that had specific detrimental stipulations for debt forgiveness though. For example, look at the Latin American Debt Crisis.

      …the Fed convened an emergency meeting of central bankers from around the world to provide a bridge loan to Mexico. Fed officials also encouraged US banks to participate in a program to reschedule Mexico’s loans (Aggarwal 2000). As the crisis spread beyond Mexico, the United States took the lead in organizing an “international lender of last resort,” a cooperative rescue effort among commercial banks, central banks, and the IMF. Under the program, commercial banks agreed to restructure the countries’ debt, and the IMF and other official agencies lent the LDCs sufficient funds to pay the interest, but not principal, on their loans. In return, the LDCs agreed to undertake structural reforms of their economies and to eliminate budget deficits. The hope was that these reforms would enable the LDCs to increase exports and generate the trade surpluses and dollars necessary to pay down their external debt (Devlin and Ffrench-Davis 1995). Although this program averted an immediate crisis, it allowed the problem to fester. Instead of eliminating subsidies to state-owned enterprises, many LDC countries instead cut spending on infrastructure, health, and education, and froze wages or laid off state employees. The result was high unemployment, steep declines in per capita income, and stagnant or negative growth—hence the term the “lost decade” (Carrasco 1999).

      federalreservehistory.org/…/latin-american-debt-c…

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    • rivermonster@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Quoting myself here…

      Here are some topics but NOT an exhaustive list:

      Thought debt could go into some of the other categories. Calling it out individually or under a broader umbrella of economics would be fine, too. It’s just a suggestion list for OP to research.

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• dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In this topic: people who underestimate the importance of infrastructure and low crime and low corruption.

  1st answer: developing countries don’t have enough infrastructure to benefit from wealth. Not enough trains to move raw goods around, not enough roads or not enough electricity to do anything even if those good arrived.

  2nd level: when governments get the money for such projects, they steal it from the people through corruption. See Turkey and all the invested dollars on earthquake-proofing buildings, it was all stolen in ways people didn’t understand or realize until the earthquake happened.

  3rd level: even if the government didn’t steal the money, criminals can. Even in the USA we deal with transformer thieves (transformers are bundles of copper that convert long distance high voltage power into short distance power for houses). These copper bundles can sell for $$$$ in the black market.

  So even if #1 and #2 miraculously happen, a criminal will steal the infrastructure and they gotta start all over again.

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  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    developing countries don’t have enough infrastructure to benefit from wealth

    It’s even worse: they have the infrastructure to allow us to profit from wealth. Colonial powers made sure the railroad between the mines and the ports are top notch, so their mineral riches can be carted off efficiently to the metropole.

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    • dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      China and other advanced nations prove that an export based economy can work though.

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    • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can see this in painful clarity watching the Argentinian railroads. Created and operated by the UK originally, it has a clear shape of a funnel from all over the country towards the main port city, Buenos Aires.

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  • labbbb@thelemmy.club ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But the USA and the European Union are, so to speak, rich, and China, India, Mexico and others are not very rich, how is this possible?

    Even New Zealand is rich, but other island countries are not

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    • Wanderer@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Culture plays a big part. But people don’t like admitting it.

      Was reading a book about the Congo and there was a Malaysian UN guy. He said this country fucked. He said colonialism had an affect on this country sure but it also had an affect on his. He said, in a nicer way, at some point they need to take responsibility for their country and short their shit out. They are responsible of the mess it’s in. Seen another doc where a Chinese guy was building a road but he couldn’t even buy gravel and all the local workers were lazy and they kept working a day, stealing stuff and not coming back. He seen a railroad the Belgians built that was in complete disrepair he basically said “look you inherited a functioning country with low crime, infrastructure and an encomy. You guys butched it all”.

      Just look at Rhodesia, South Africa and God knows how many other countries.

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    • dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is it all culture or not?

      Culture and wealth. But wealth creates better culture, and better culture makes more wealth.

      Only Russia seems to be the only country doing things wrong in your list btw. I expect China, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, and Mexico to all be richer in 10 years than they are today.

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• HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Everyone seems to be focusing on colonialism, but that really only brought Europe to a standard of living near India and China.

  The real major thing that happened was that “the West” started industrializing before the rest of the world did. Some of the wealth came from colonial holdings that industrial countries had, but a lot of it came from having citizens who were more than a order of magnitude more economically productive than citizens of other countries for over a century.

  Why the Indian subcontinent and China didn’t industrialize at the time is up to debate, but some theories are related to lower labor costs not sparking the positive feedback engine of industrialization until it was too late to compete against the West and going into periods of relative decline that Western countries could take advantage of.

  The West was able to make itself the factory of the world, pushing the rest of the world into resource extraction.

  It wasn’t until after World War II that other parts of the world were able to industrialize.

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  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have always assumed that white people have a leg up because they’re white. That is, they’ve lived for an evolutionarily relevant duration of time in places where you need low melanin to get sufficient vitamin D to survive. Places with low sunlight and harsh winters, which means places where failing to develop efficient agriculture, food preservation/storage, insulated shelters, and textiles meant starving or freezing to death.

    Non-white people lived for an evolutionarily relevant duration of time in places with more consistent sunlight and milder winters, where sun over-exposure was a more pressing threat than under-exposure. That means more forgiving crops and climates, so less pressure to streamline agriculture and subsequently industrialize.

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    • sparky@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I get what this guy is trying to say but the phrasing and unnecessary racialising explains the downvotes. A better and less offensive way to put this could simply have referred to climate: that you suspect the harsher climate in Europe rewarded industrial and penalised agrarian lifestyles in a way that wasn’t true for civilisations near the equator. Being white or not has nothing to do with it - correlation versus causation.

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    • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There are several times in history that Europeans would not be considered the peak of human development due to very measurable differences in quality of life.

      You’ll also find other pseudoscience bullshit trying to justify the superiority of one group over another from at least Roman times.

      The fact of the matter is that several areas had the resources and technical development to start the Industrial Revolution; it just happened to spark in the United Kingdom first and spread through Europe quickly.

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• actionjbone@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The “Western” countries pillaged the rest of the world for centuries.

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• thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Guess who colonized whom…

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• NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There's a lot but it mainly comes down to how Europeans were more developed than the rest of the world due to their frequent wars, so when they went to colonize the world nobody stood a chance. And since colonialism and the subsequent horrible decolonization messed up those countries, we get the state of the world today.

  To be more specific, colonialism basically turned affected countries into oversized plantations run by foreigners. Any political development that was already there went out the window, and of course no more could be made. Then you got decolonization, where you had countries either being fought off (like France) or packing their bags and leaving (like the British). This created massive power vacuums, and when you have power vacuums you get power struggles and dictatorships and from there we see the world's current state. On the other hand you have Botswana, where they actually had a native ruler class who could rule when the British left. They were an occupied country, not an oversized plantation, so they're virtually one of the best places to be in Africa.

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  • count_dongulus@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s true, former British colony The United States is still a developing country for this very reason.

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    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Due to the lack of functioning government, the mafia/corporations took over and nowadays the government is but a puppet. I send my thoughts and prayers to the Americans.

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  • Delphia@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also its created a cyclical problem. (And Im going to do a terrible job of explaining this but I hope people can grasp what I’m on about.)

    Getting any kind of significant change going in a “developing” nation requires MASSIVE investment that they cant afford, which requires investment from mega-multinationals or foreign nations, who then (either rightly or not) have to tread super carefully because it looks like they are trying to buy the country by proxy, which means they dont want to make the super-mega investments because one little leadership change and a little nationalisation makes their investment worthless.

    Basically you need either a super benevolent form of colonialism or super ethical capitalism to get the ball rolling without just repeating the mistakes of the past.

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    • Arxir@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      ethical capitalism

      :D

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• weeeeum@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  1 The middle income trap. Many countries used their cheap uneducated population as an opportunity for cheap labour, for large companies. This brings lots of capital to the country and people, and the country develops. Building more schools, infrastructure etc. but as a country develops, pay increases for workers, and suddenly their labour is no longer cheap. Their country’s economy is now effectively stuck.

  2 Conflict and instability. Investors don’t want to pour money into a country where it might have a coup, leadership change, etc. They don’t want to lose what they invest, since these events usually result in lots of private property being taken or destroyed. This fact leaves a lot of countries in a catch 22. They need investment to stabilize, but need to stabilize to gain investment.

  A lot of countries are also unstable because of badly drawn borders. This often leaves a lot of ethnic tensions that continue to boil away indefinitely. Sometimes the borders give a country horrible geography and incentivise them to invade their neighbors.

  One example would be that country #1 is downstream of a major river, behind country #2 and #3. Country #2 and 3 use a lot of the water and there is none left for country #1 and their only option is to invade.

  The final and probably most common reason is that dictators don’t care about prosperity, and that dictators lead to more dictators. Far more often than not, coups lead to another, worse dictator, focused on holding power than their country’s success.

  The reason that south Korea and Taiwan are successful and democratic today are because they rolled the 1/1000 chance on a benevolent dictator that WILLINGLY steered the country into democracy and genuinely improved the economy.

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• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Extractive capitalism pulls resources and wealth out of “developing” nations, leaving them poor. Power and money maintain power and money through a boot on the throat and fomenting internal conflict.

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  • labbbb@thelemmy.club ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why then is there not such corruption in developed countries as in developing countries? Is it a matter of culture?

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    • dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Be careful of falling into the exceptionalist trap (my culture is special, we don’t do corruption), or the natural progress fallacy (you have to be corrupt and warmonger first, then you grow up, mature and become a stable and moral democracy, it’s the way it happens). Both are false premises that stem from cultural hegemony. There’s plenty of corruption (lobbying is a form of legal bribery too), and instability in the developed western world. The US survived a coup attempt just a few years ago. Lots of officials and politicians are caught stealing public funds every year.

      The difference lies in the narrative lens. When it happens to the west it’s “a few bad apples”, or a lone bad actor. When it happens in the developing world it’s that filthy culture struggling to become as civilized and democratic as us. It’s the pure expression of neo colonialism. The real material difference is that the West has accumulated more wealth for longer. And they control the mass media machinery.

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    • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because developed countries already went through their corruption. The processes by which these countries became democracies tend to be bloody. Other countries were behind the curve, then their political and social development was frozen in time by Western colonialism.

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• pelerinli@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Riches have high standarts of living. Poors have no life, they survive. “Developed” countries has more middle class than others, which are promised to be rich by rich if they help rich to get richer by stealing from poor by capitalism.

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• Kbin_space_program@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because you need a middle class to have a high standard of living.

  And you can't have a middle class when your culture has internalized class oppression that tells you to never question your superiors.

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• Zippy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Mostly corruption and stability doesn’t allow for business to develop along with the wealth that brings.

  There are other factors but mainly you need good governance and free markets to allow for wealth creation. It at least that is the only model that has worked so far.

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• bouh@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s only my interpretation of it, so be wary. My idea is that after ww2, USA was terrified of USSR, so they did their best to avoid countries “falling” to it.

  This best was of two categories: if it was an old power, feed it with all possible money, so they can can develop an industry to get all of the modern commodities (home, car, a fully equipped kitchen…) If it was a colonised or USSR friendly country, forbid all trade, and feed civil war with all means possible, so that this country stop being communist.

  Then, democracy had that people had to be listened to a bit, or they would vote communist. Car industries were favoured because it can be converted into a war industry if it needs. Roads and trains are also war assets. Healthcare and food are priorities to make people happy. Education and research are priorities for any country that want to stay relevant, and these benefit from co-operation with other countries.

  The way I see it, the west built solid infrastructures and invested in the people in order to fight USSR, while USSR progressively fell into an oppression that prevented these progresses. The third world countries were left alone because no side would allow them to join the other side.

  Now the world is full capitalist, so no one will invest in the countries that were left behind. With less investment they progress more slowly.

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• BA834024112@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you’re interested in a good read check out “Guns, Germs, and Steel”

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  • TheChurn@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Check it out to throw in the trash. Jared Diamond's book is thoroughly condemned in anthropological and archaeological circles.

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• Mubelotix@jlai.lu ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There will always be 50% of countries poorest than the 50% richest countries

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  • piyuv@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Imagine 3 people, with different amounts of wealth. 1 of them will always be richer than the other 2 by definition. There’s nothing wrong with this.

    The problem comes when richest has much much more than the poorest. There’s little problem if poorest has 1 and richest has 3. There’s a huge problem if poorest has 1 and richest has 1 billion.

    It’s not about how we sort countries, it’s about how wealth is distributed.

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• ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Look up ‘Elite Capture’. It’s really hard to build good institutions and keep them strong and free from corruption, and they will be under siege by special interests from day one.

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• aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A question beautifully answered by marxist theory. See unequal exchange.

  invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=DtziEZAR1Qk

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• wabafee@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think it is because of population vs resources allocated per person. More population means lesser value of each person. When a nation is developing it is still trying to catch up with the high number of population it can service, but with little resource it can utilize or there is but not yet utilize. It has no choice but to cut corners I.e lower standard of education, health, social services, housing and unutilize laws. This in turn having some or majority of the people recieving less and some none at all. This makes them vulnerable to bad influence and bad decision e.i vote buying, rebellion. They cannot participate in the nation building process in a right mind since they are trying to survive. Anyway I’m probably just talking bullshit. To be fair not all Western nations have high standard of living. I.e some nation in eastern Europe.

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  • And009@lemmynsfw.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s because it’s in the east, we’re talking ‘western’ here mate.

    Jokes aside, citizens in developing nations are struggling with food, basic necessity and shelter while western people are generally not concerned about a roof above their head making them worry about higher level needs like education, Healthcare and improving their quality of life.

    For example, a large population in India are seemingly ‘wasting’ their life unproductively while in reality they don’t even have the right psychological mindset to improve their conditions. And if, or when they try, it’s pretty easy to hit the brick wall of a meaningless rat race without any end in sight.

    Easy way out? Scam people, sell drugs, local politics and other harmful activities that would give any kind of recognition (which again, is a basic need)

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• doublejay1999@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s #debt

  www.bing.com/search?q=3rd+world+debt&form=QBL…

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• splonglo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think a big factor is the western labour movement wrestling away some of the prosperity created by the industrial revolution. Developing nations have profitable industries but the wealth doesn’t make it’s way down to the average citizen because they haven’t forced it to happen. The small minority of people who do profit from dirt cheap labour are quite happy for things to stay that way indefinitely, and so it does, because they are the ones who hold political and financial power.

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• Lightrider@lemmynsfw.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Fuckingcapitalists and goddamnedfascists

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• Kbin_space_program@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because you need a middle class to have a high standard of living.

  And you can't have a middle class when your culture has internalized class oppression that tells you to never question your superiors.

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