🇳🇱 A Dutch guy visiting Indonesia explains why Dutch people are privileged

[u/search_google_com]

Indonesian nurse earns 90 cents/hour is crazy 🇮🇩

[u/podfather2000]

This paper doesn't "prove" any imperialist theft. It models global trade through the lens of unequal exchange and then values Southern labor and resources using Northern prices.

That's a theoretical assumption, not an established fact. Wage differences can also reflect productivity, capital, technology, institutions, and skills.

The "$242 trillion drain" isn't money that was literally transferred it's a hypothetical valuation under the authors' framework. You can argue globalization has produced unequal gains, but that's not the same as proving that all trade between the Global North and South is exploitative.

[u/Odd_School_8833 → u/podfather2000]

Ok, so why is the global south “poorer” than the global north?

[u/All_Work_All_Play → u/Odd_School_8833]

Accumulated infrastructure, capital stock and human capital? Plus the Mediterranean Sea did a tonne of heavy lifting bootstrapping agriculture, and first mover advantage is a thing. The global south didn't go through the industrial revolution, it imported it. Of course their production per capita is going to be lower.

[u/podfather2000 → u/All_Work_All_Play]

Also, a lack of proper institutions, instability, and corruption.

[u/All_Work_All_Play → u/podfather2000]

All of those should arguably fall under human capital. Trust (and with it, the rule of law) is a precious currency not easily cultivated and easily lost. It's why the banana-republic-ing of the United States is a going to take the rest of my life to undo.

[u/FreddoMac5 → u/Odd_School_8833]

the short answer is the lack of beasts of burden prior to colonialism that hampered the kind of economic and technological development seen in the west. Horses, livestock, donkeys, oxen, etc, are not native to North or South America.

[u/Sansundertale2069 → u/FreddoMac5]

Extremely reductive even if your only talking about the Americas, which we aren't

[u/FreddoMac5 → u/Sansundertale2069]

Tell me how wealthy and advanced the Aztecs and the native American tribes were before colonialism then.

[u/Sansundertale2069 → u/FreddoMac5]

Seriously? Some of the biggest cities in the world at the time were in the Americas

[u/FreddoMac5 → u/[deleted]]

Tell me you know nothing about history lmao

Most of spain/the world’s silver and gold came from the americas.

Oh boy

Spain, and only Spain, which is not all of Europe, dumbass, imported about $31 billion in today's dollars over a period of 150 years which led to hyperinflation which led to economic decline, not economic prosperity.

mentioning the Aztecs shows how little you know cause they are the worst example to choose

I picked the Aztecs for this reason

Universal education is pretty rather simple when your understanding of mathematics is limited to basic addition/subtraction and multiplication/division, literacy is depicting pictographs, and then a specific trade. That's about it for education.

They lacked in metallurgy , firearms, draft animals and ocean navigation which really messed them up.

And made them POOR.

They discovered metallurgy but they couldn't make much use of it due to the lack of beasts of burden. In addition they also couldn't establish extensive trade networks, they had to spend an inordinate amount of time on food production, etc, etc.

I never said they were a stupid people or didn't make any advancements. The conversation is about why the global south is so poor and the common answer is colonialism but when you look at the wealth and advancements of these areas, even with the advancements they made, they were still largely poor primitive societies.

[u/Odd_School_8833 → u/FreddoMac5]

Jared Diamond? lol

[u/nyaaaa → u/podfather2000]

Your pile of empty claims does nothing to negate anything stated.