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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38753 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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What do you think about the concept of the Global North and South?

I never payed much attention to this way of looking at global economics. I don't know anyone from South America or Africa and only a handful of folks from Asia. My only economic reference comes from Fukuyama's "The End of History", where he spent a few pages describing dependency theory and then refuting it by showing how poor Asian countries were able to grow while South American countries, despite being in a similar situation, were not.

A few days ago, I had a chance to meet some people from South America. I believe they were from Brazil and Venezuela. Both worked for NGOs. They quickly turned the topic to colonization, blaming it for all the problems in their countries. I know their countries are not doing too well, both in terms of civic freedom and economics, but I was surprised by how strong their views were--they basically said the Europe and the US are to blame for the bad situation their countries are in. Europe, for colonization and "mass rape", and the USA for the Monroe Doctrine (and the associated string of interference) as well as extracting wealth from South America.

I didn't have time to query them for more details. I'm ambivalent on the question of colonization. I haven't studied it much nor thought about it. I can easily imagine that US interventions have had a destabilizing effect on SA, but I can't imagine how big of an effect that would be. I remember reading Noah Smith's piece on Cuba and how its failure is not the fault of the American embargo, but rather of obviously bad economic policy. I can't help but think that this is the case for other South American countries as well.

How much merit do you think there is in accusing US and Europe for inflicting poverty on the global south? What should I search for if I wanted to know more--thinkers, articles, etc.?

If colonialism caused economic problems, we should expect a pretty smooth graph of economic function over time based on when various countries gained independence. This is why Haiti is the second-richest and best-functioning government in the western hemisphere, after the US. It's also why Hong Kong is the poorest and least functional in the whole world, they only got out a few years ago!

As with explaining the differential social outcomes of blacks, jews, indians, jamaicans and chinese people in the west with "white supremacy", explaining world economic function with "colonialism" simply doesn't make much sense at a sniff-test level. It's a convenient narrative for people who have a political need to lay all the world's problems at the feet of a couple countries they happen to hate, but it really makes little to no sense.

I think the entire concept of Global North and Global South is bunk.

How does it explain China going from Global South to Global North? Formally they're still supposed to be part of the Global South, yet they have a space station and roughly 28% of world manufacturing! They absolutely do not belong in the same geo-economic category as Columbia or South Africa. Europeans caused a lot of harm to China in the Opium Wars and various treaties, Japan killed around 20 million with bombing, bioweapons and conventional weapons, they addicted Chinese to heroin infused cigarettes.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/japanese-opium-trade-in-china

If anyone has an axe to grind about colonialism or imperialism, it should be China. Yet they're now an imperial, pseudo-colonial power themselves.

Or look at Ethiopia. They held off the Italians and maintained formal independence until 1937. The Italians only got to rule the country for 4 years until the British crushed them in 1941. They got to hold onto certain parts of Somaliland from 1949 until 1960. How could Italian colonialism be at fault for Ethiopia's problems today?

One counterargument is that Thailand was never colonized and is richer and more stable than its neighbours in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam. But couldn't you also argue that Thailand wasn't colonized because it was inherently stronger as a polity, so of course it would remain more stable and develop faster? Before Europe arrived, they were the regional hegemon.

World Systems theory seems to point out 'here are the strong countries and here are the weak countries'. Then they say 'the strong countries are rich and the weak countries poor, because the strong are exploiting the weak'. Instead, I suggest the strong countries are rich because they are strong, because they become more or less capable. This is mostly down to internal policy and the fundamental geographic and demographic qualities of the country.

Arguably, the Chinese do indeed have an axe to grind about the "Century of Humiliation."

EDIT: Also, I learned from C&Rsenal that Thailand/Siam was actually being sort-of colonized, or at least were losing territory to the British and French and underwent a sort of "self-colonization" in order to modernize and (try to) get a modicum of respect.

This might be an (whatever type of) NGO culture thing. I haven't heard that opinion too much in South America. Not that it's not there, but people weren't sharing it with me. Then again, I never really asked why their countries weren't more wealthy. In Bolivia, during the recent political crisis, people joked that I (from the US) was there to help overthrow the government. But they were in favor of that.

They quickly turned the topic to colonization, blaming it for all the problems in their countries.

It's a favorite Communist tactic to do this. Also saying European prosperity is based on colonialism.

Handy talking point. I know it's a Communist tactic because literal Communists functionaries to whom I was talking (my grandparents) were very big on it, and Communists were known to be hierarchical and coordinate their talking points very well.

You can ask them why then e.g. European countries that never colonised anyone such as say, FInland, Sweden, Poland are all vastly better off despite e.g. Poland starting from the low point of having had an inefficient planned economy imposed on it for decades.

It's mostly nonsense.

American meddling my have damaged South America, but prosperity is based not on piles of money but having functional industries and good economic policies. Ask South Koreans. Colonised, desperately poor in 1950s (poorer than Africa), now one of the richest countries in the world.

I've got some personal experience with this vis. living there, and there is something to it.

I lived in a place with good relations with the U.S. 'cause they didn't get caught up in the initial fruit wars and otherwise had no useful resources to extract and are extremally tourist friendly; and everyone on the ground knows that their economic success is 90% attributable to the grace of good 'ol Uncle Sam.

The neighboring country has the Same geography, same racial makeup, same culture, same language, same resource distribution, was inhabited by the same group pre-Spanish settlement, was Conquista'd in the same period, was managed as one administrative unit by Europe during the colonial period, and gained independence within the same Year, month, and day, and had the same style of government after that independence.

Literally the only difference between these countries is that they were slightly richer pre-1900's, and were involved in the first set of Banana wars.

100 years latter, the poor country is doing pretty well, the neighboring rich country occasionally has refugee convoys getting out just ahead of the death squads and has a currency valuation that is doing sick trampoline acrobatics.

It's had to assign the separation point to anything but U.S. colonial ambitions in the 1910-1930's.

Thanks for sharing. I'll dig a bit into what happened in the early XX century.

I recommended Smedley Butler's book, and just general research on the Banana wars, our anti-communist actions in SA during the cold war, and the knock-on effects of plantation economies on modernization.

It's also just mad interesting, IMO.

I was just thinking today that when checking Twitter for what people in some Global South country are saying about colonialism, you often see quite a few ones that do blame colonialism... for putting the wrong tribe in charge of their country. For instance, Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project. Or, as a variation, black South Africans blaming white South Africans not as much for apartheid but for facilitating illegal immigration from Nigeria and Zimbabwe to South Africa, taking away native black South African jobs by employing illegal immigrants. And so on.

Just recently I saw some United Nations organ make a basic "colonialism was bad" post Tweet related to Africa and pretty much all comments were people from various African countries bashing some other tribe or ethnic group in their own country.

Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project

I think those complaints are much more legitimate. Direct material exploitation is, speaking long-term, easy to recover from, but wrecked geopolitics in already-fragile regions can lead to long-term stability issues and consistent human capital flight. And that's far worse.

https://freaktakes.substack.com/p/bombs-brains-and-science?s=r

In total, Allied bombings completely destroyed about 18.5% of German homes. Inner-city homes represented an inordinately high chunk of these homes since inner-cities were the very rough target of these campaigns. Coincidentally, inner-cities also are where a high share of universities are located.

All of that is to say: there was a large sample of university research buildings that were partially or fully destroyed by Allied bombs without much rhyme or reason.

Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?

Now, getting your academic building partially blown to shreds is obviously bad for departmental productivity. But, so is having up to 15% of your professors fired for something as arbitrary as having a Jewish grandparent or attending a communist party meeting. And, while it’s obvious that both of these will at least temporarily decrease departmental output, it is not clear at all which is worse, either in the short run or in the long run.

In the short run, a 10% shock to human capital—dismissing 10% of a department’s scientists—reduced departmental output by .2 standard deviations. A 10% shock to physical capital—the destruction of 10% of a department’s buildings—lowered output by .05 standard deviations. The effects of losing 10% of your researchers was 4X that of losing 10% of your buildings in the short-run.

In the long-run, the effects of dismissing researchers persisted. Departments continued to underperform up through 1980, when the data for the study stops. Meanwhile, by 1970, departments that were bombed were experiencing increased productivity, meaning that bombed departments may have benefited from upgrading during postwar reconstruction.

the dismissal of scientists in Nazi Germany contributed NINE TIMES MORE to the decrease in scientific output in Germany than did the destruction of a large percentage of its research buildings.

Sounds simply like outgroup-versus-fargroup effects. The nearer enemy will take more attention than one encountered primarily in theory. This changes if your milieu changes, such as if you're an employee of an NGO.

I happen know quite a few Brazilian nationals and expats due to a hobby. I’ve not once heard them blame Europe or US for their problems. When they’ve talked about the issues, they blame the local politicians and general poverty.

I’m pretty sure your experience is explained by the three letter term ”NGO”.

The "blame colonialism and the supreme capitalist whiteness" looks like it is more diffused in certain particular demographics (left-wing above all, but especially academics and women) than between the lower-middle classes natives of these countries.

All the above I have seen in my life came always from upper-middle class women, often daughters of immigrants themselves, and almost never from the proletariat

Especially when I saw the influencer daughter of Africans complaining about the last oppression, and immediately after that hearing the congolese taxy workers saying "this place (Belgium) is amazing and the people are even better.

I have a hobby of learning spanish and portuguese (via actually talking to people online, I learned through hundreds and hundreds of conversation partners and this has ranged across every single latin american country). Which then also led to a job working with people in south america.

Most people aren't very political, of course. When this topic does come up, my experience has been the same as yours. While I think most people would say that US interference for example had a detrimental effect on their country, it's pretty rare to find someone who pins all of the blame on that.

Just like the biggest activists for black people are not usually black and the ones for trans people aren't trans, the biggest anti-colonial activists are not the people supposedly hurt by colonialism.

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