3 ms·

You can develop a country without extracting its wealth.

Drakim 6mo ago
Can you? When our economic system's only driver is "extracting wealth", can we actually develop a country without it? The extraction of wealth isn't some unfortunate byproduct, it's a central cog in the machine of what makes it operate. Money is invested for returns.
- ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
  You two are using different definitions for "can". You are using it in the "is it probable or realistic to expect it" sense and the parent poster is using it in the "is it mechanically possible" sense. I think it's possible to imagine a way in which a country could be delivered money and expertise to develop with no expectation of return on investment. (One needs only read conquest of bread to see I'm not alone in believing such a thing is mechanically possible.) But I also agree it's vanishingly unlikely.
- watwut 6mo ago
  What you described is not "developing the country". It is "colonization and extraction of wealth".
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  Yes. It's misanthropic to expect returns and has driven decades of unnecessary war and violence.
cucumber3732842 6mo ago
So work for free? Who would invest in facilities, develop workforces, etc, without a payoff?
- cess11 6mo ago
  How does China approach this?
  - achierius 6mo ago
    Clearly they don't. They don't tend to occupy other countries, not outside of immediate territorial claims like Tibet (if you think that constitutes an "other" country)
  - cucumber3732842 6mo ago
    They finance projects with terms that drive business to Chinese companies. The Congo gets a highway. A Chinese construction company makes a buck. The financiers make a buck. Business relationships are created and the people who get the highway use that highway to import Chinese goods. That's how it's supposed to work, when it works. I'm sure it's gotten better with time. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/486/992/0f8.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/486/992/0f8...
    - throwaway27448 6mo ago
      The congo is basically the worst possible example you could have found for this—china notoriously doesn't invest in local infrastructure. There are literally hundreds of better examples across africa and south and central america and central asia and southeast asia.
- ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
  I would. I regularly do. One of the underpinning core beliefs of anarchist theory is "wellbeing for all". Every human deserves the best conditions we can collectively give each other, and we should all be working not for our individual enrichment, but for the enrichment of us all. Some people genuinely believe that helping others get bigger quality of life is more important than helping themselves get rich. It's not impossible to believe that such a community, if it grew large enough, would extend that belief to spaces like factories and workforces.
  - WarmWash 6mo ago
    It's a great idea that never works. Never. Inevitably you end up with people who do the absolute bare minimum to qualify for "the communal take" and a small cadre of power players who carry many multiples of their weight. Eventually the strong players get sick of carrying, and the whole thing collapses. You can have pockets of like minded individuals who understand the give and take, happy communes (which also seem to inevitably collapse, but I digress), however it is comically naive and foolish to think that it can scale to a societal default. Unless you start killing all the detractors and dead weights. Which is where it often goes...I'll stick with an economic democracy based system (people independently vote with their dollars for what they like/want).
    - ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
      I've fed and housed people for decades, provided transportation, donated skills, and rehabilitated wild lands. The people who receive the benefits from that didn't do anything to get them. They simply needed them. If I have extra and you need some, you can have some. Simple as. Most people want to contribute, pay it forward, or give in their own way. Almost no one wants to do nothing to give back. (Usually, the people who do are the people who have been stepped on their whole lives, and by receiving aid it buys them a chance to rest. Once they've rested, they tend to help out where they can.) I guess I'm going to believe my decades of lived experience with mutual aid over some stranger telling me things I've observed sustaining themselves are impossible.
      - 6mo ago
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  Sane humans? The payoff is a functional country and less conflict.
WarmWash 6mo ago
No, not really. Developing the country is effectively a service being performed, and a wildly expensive one at that. Never mind the high instability greatly increasing the risk of investment. And the ROI is likely decades in the future, during which time any tyrant can come to power and seize all your stuff for their state. So if the people of Sudan wanted to buy "country rebuilding service", the only way they could finance the loan to pay for that would be by offering their resources to skilled foreign enterprises to convert to usable resources. Then run the risk numbers and you get a crazy interest rate, that will last decades. If all goes well, Sudan gets a functioning society with a skilled workforce, the foreign players get a nice ROI and made whole for the service they performed, and everyone comes away happy. The problem is, that places like this are so chronically unstable, and the people so in tune with living in unstable, that it is practically guaranteed to go sideways.

Can you? When our economic system's only driver is "extracting wealth", can we actually develop a country without it? The extraction of wealth isn't some unfortunate byproduct, it's a central cog in the machine of what makes it operate. Money is invested for returns.

ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
You two are using different definitions for "can". You are using it in the "is it probable or realistic to expect it" sense and the parent poster is using it in the "is it mechanically possible" sense. I think it's possible to imagine a way in which a country could be delivered money and expertise to develop with no expectation of return on investment. (One needs only read conquest of bread to see I'm not alone in believing such a thing is mechanically possible.) But I also agree it's vanishingly unlikely.
watwut 6mo ago
What you described is not "developing the country". It is "colonization and extraction of wealth".
throwaway27448 6mo ago
Yes. It's misanthropic to expect returns and has driven decades of unnecessary war and violence.

cucumber3732842 6mo ago

So work for free? Who would invest in facilities, develop workforces, etc, without a payoff?

cess11 6mo ago
How does China approach this?
- achierius 6mo ago
  Clearly they don't. They don't tend to occupy other countries, not outside of immediate territorial claims like Tibet (if you think that constitutes an "other" country)
- cucumber3732842 6mo ago
  They finance projects with terms that drive business to Chinese companies. The Congo gets a highway. A Chinese construction company makes a buck. The financiers make a buck. Business relationships are created and the people who get the highway use that highway to import Chinese goods. That's how it's supposed to work, when it works. I'm sure it's gotten better with time. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/486/992/0f8.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/486/992/0f8...
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    The congo is basically the worst possible example you could have found for this—china notoriously doesn't invest in local infrastructure. There are literally hundreds of better examples across africa and south and central america and central asia and southeast asia.
ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
I would. I regularly do. One of the underpinning core beliefs of anarchist theory is "wellbeing for all". Every human deserves the best conditions we can collectively give each other, and we should all be working not for our individual enrichment, but for the enrichment of us all. Some people genuinely believe that helping others get bigger quality of life is more important than helping themselves get rich. It's not impossible to believe that such a community, if it grew large enough, would extend that belief to spaces like factories and workforces.
- WarmWash 6mo ago
  It's a great idea that never works. Never. Inevitably you end up with people who do the absolute bare minimum to qualify for "the communal take" and a small cadre of power players who carry many multiples of their weight. Eventually the strong players get sick of carrying, and the whole thing collapses. You can have pockets of like minded individuals who understand the give and take, happy communes (which also seem to inevitably collapse, but I digress), however it is comically naive and foolish to think that it can scale to a societal default. Unless you start killing all the detractors and dead weights. Which is where it often goes...I'll stick with an economic democracy based system (people independently vote with their dollars for what they like/want).
  - ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
    I've fed and housed people for decades, provided transportation, donated skills, and rehabilitated wild lands. The people who receive the benefits from that didn't do anything to get them. They simply needed them. If I have extra and you need some, you can have some. Simple as. Most people want to contribute, pay it forward, or give in their own way. Almost no one wants to do nothing to give back. (Usually, the people who do are the people who have been stepped on their whole lives, and by receiving aid it buys them a chance to rest. Once they've rested, they tend to help out where they can.) I guess I'm going to believe my decades of lived experience with mutual aid over some stranger telling me things I've observed sustaining themselves are impossible.
    - 6mo ago
throwaway27448 6mo ago
Sane humans? The payoff is a functional country and less conflict.

WarmWash 6mo ago

No, not really. Developing the country is effectively a service being performed, and a wildly expensive one at that. Never mind the high instability greatly increasing the risk of investment. And the ROI is likely decades in the future, during which time any tyrant can come to power and seize all your stuff for their state. So if the people of Sudan wanted to buy "country rebuilding service", the only way they could finance the loan to pay for that would be by offering their resources to skilled foreign enterprises to convert to usable resources. Then run the risk numbers and you get a crazy interest rate, that will last decades. If all goes well, Sudan gets a functioning society with a skilled workforce, the foreign players get a nice ROI and made whole for the service they performed, and everyone comes away happy. The problem is, that places like this are so chronically unstable, and the people so in tune with living in unstable, that it is practically guaranteed to go sideways.