alt Hacker NewsCan 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.
Replies
throwaway27448 • today at 3:20 PM
Yes. It's misanthropic to expect returns and has driven decades of unnecessary war and violence.
watwut • today at 2:44 PM
What you described is not "developing the country". It is "colonization and extraction of wealth".
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.