[wahern]

> IMF keeps the global south in debt entrapment with structural adjustment programs designed to prevent development. etc. etc. we never really left them alone

Countries invite IMF assistance. If they wanted to be left alone, all they have to do is do nothing. If IMF loans didn't have strings attached, they wouldn't be able to borrow money, as it's those strings which build bond investor confidence. The entire point of IMF assistance is to avoid being cutoff from international borrowing for being horrible credit risks (again).

The root cause of national debt problems is primarily government corruption, but also mismanagement, often at the behest of populist politics that excuse economic policy failures by, e.g., scapegoating outside forces. The US isn't immune to this problem, either, it just happens that the US had, albeit intermittently, long enough runs of solid financial management (e.g. Hamilton during the Founding) that it could grow an economic base that could withstand intermittent periods of mismanagement without the entire economy collapsing (yet).

Even when a country is dealt a really crappy hand at the outset, it's not irreversible. Haiti is the poster child for crushing debt unfairly imposed by foreign powers, yet the Dominican Republic had the same history, but managed to overcome it. In some instances, interventions blamed for keeping Haiti oppressed were precisely what helped the Dominican Republic flourish. Likewise, nobody hears about the IMF success stories, just the failures; and it's not because the former don't exist or are rare.

[WalterBright]

> Even when a country is dealt a really crappy hand at the outset, it's not irreversible

Hong Kong was poor until 1965, when they got tired of poverty and switched to free markets. The result was amazing prosperity.

[unmole]

> switched to free markets

Hong Kong has been all about free markets since the end of the Opium Wars.

[lyu07282]

> government corruption > mismanagement > populist politics > interventions blamed for keeping Haiti oppressed were precisely what helped the Dominican Republic flourish

The rhetoric transitioned into exactly this, instead of believing they were subhuman uncivilized people we needed to save from themselves (the white mans burden), it seamlessly transitioned into neoliberal ideas of sound economic theory seeking a "scientific" rationalization of why those neoliberal policies forced onto them fail them consistently and how it's actually all their fault. Any sovereignty is reframed into dangerous intolerable "populism" that needs to be crushed by any means necessary, including crushing sanctions and blockades (stop hitting yourself), covert actions, coups and military interventions.

[wahern]

I certainly didn't assign moral fault to anyone or any group. Indeed, framing it as a moral problem is, IMO, one of the problems here. A country isn't run like a business; similarly, collective morality doesn't look anything like individual morality, assuming it's even a thing at all.

Corruption being a root cause for impoverishment is a fact. How corruption arises, and how to get out of that local equilibrium, is a difficult collective action problem without any easy answers, though there's countless books on political and economic development that explore it. Colonial oppression is a horrible explanation as it has very poor predictive power, unless you define colonialism in a conclusory, tautological way; and even then, it does zilch in terms of identifying effective solutions. Indeed, relying on an oppression narrative is one of the ways corrupt governments and elites justify and excuse the consequences of their policies.

That said, "corruption" isn't a great explanation, either, but it's certainly better than the colonialism morality narrative. Unless someone has lived in some of these poorer countries and witnessed the extremes of corruption, they tend to equivocate all kinds of corruption, and when from wealthier, more democratic countries are unable to distinguish or even imagine what severe, pervasive corruption looks like and how it effects every aspect of society.

[crossroadsguy]

> Countries invite IMF assistance. If they wanted to be left alone, all they have to do is do nothing ….

Right. Countries that were stripped of anything and everything (lit-fucking-rally) and then left to fend for themselves when it suited the looters, they were enslaved (in every sense), "do" these things, "invite" these things! Yup. That's exactly what happens.

Just the blacks in USA and the browns in the Indian Subcontinent are backward because they "invite" those backwardness, all they have to do is stand on their feet, and how it is spelled around the West, "pull their weight". So it is.

Ffs!

[lyu07282]

It is kind of fascinating how the rhetoric shifted from the 'white mans burden' and scientific racism of colonialism to the modern day liberal international order with their purpose built institutions and their 'nobel prize in economics'. Like today it's: of course we buy coffee and cocoa beans for cheap from them, transport them and add 500% of the value to the final product, that's just how economics works, are you stupid? The 'its just in their blood, it's nature' became 'its just economics 101', it just happens to keep them under our crushing boot, it's nature. The contradictions are wild.