yackˡᵐᵃᵒ

People often say that the developing world is poor because the Western world colonized them and stole their resources. The truth, however, is that over the past century, the developing world has, for the most part, shown that they are completely incapable of harnessing their own resources. They are not poor because we stole from them. They are poor because they do not know how to run and administer their own countries, resources be damned. Take Venezuela. The world's largest oil reserves mean nothing if you have a corrupt communist as your leader. People will actually be starving and trying to eat zoo animals while you sit on trillions of dollars in resources! Africa is another example. Europeans left behind farmland, trains, roads, and mines in Africa. What happened to it all? It's not that all of a sudden, the Africans started running things like anti-colonialist activists had envisioned at the time. No, no. All the infrastructure fell into disrepair and/or was stripped down and looted. They were literally handed fully functioning, completed supply chains for resource extraction, and basically unlimited wealth, but they couldn't manage the simple upkeep. Now, the defense for Africa might be that "The Europeans didn't teach the Africans how to manage any of this! It's not the Africans' fault they couldn't run it independently! They were never trained!" But my brother in Christ, the Europeans DID try to train locals for management! Obviously it would have been easier to have at least some locals in administration, rather than having to import an ENTIRE workforce, but efforts to find African talent were largely unsuccessful. Don't believe me? Just look at the different outcomes in Hong Kong and Singapore when compared to Africa. In East Asia, Europeans often did work with locals in administrative and management capacities. When colonialism ended, Hong Kong and Singapore were able to manage themselves. Not the case with Africa. Now, none of this is to say that colonialism is good. People have the right to self-rule and seld-determination. However, the idea that colonialism and resources extraction are responsible for the developing world's ongoing poverty? That is quite simply a crock of shit.