• justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
    201·
    4 days ago

    The game now is different:

    1. Take raw resources from wealthy countries.
    2. Ship them to places with little to no labour laws, environmental protection or minimum wages(US, Malaysia, Philippines, China)
    3. Process them there, pocketing the extra money made.
    4. Ship the finished products back to developed countries.
      • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
        5·
        4 days ago

        Nah. By raw resources i mean:

        • Bitumen, gets mixed with top grade crude oil and water to make pretty good grade crude oil.
        • raw logs: the entire “softwood lumber dispute” is that rich US companies want unfettered access to Canadian raw logs, because Canadian labour laws make them pay people too much. There was never anything beyond that.
        • minerals: see the mines that companies and China are either opening or trying to open in Canada, the US and Europe with the goal of shipping raw resources offshore, making stuff them selling our own resources back to us at an extreme markup.
  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 days ago

    This is called World Systems Theory, and the world has changed here and there since it was proposed, mostly with the rise of middle class consumer society in places like China and many African nations… And of course, fairly well off places like Australia, Brazil, and Russia all do quite a lot of exporting.

    But yes, for a long time World Systems Theory has been a good critique of Imperialism abd still holds for many situations.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
      22·
      4 days ago

      Look, you can’t expect marxists to have a more contemporary understanding of the economy than their 19th century prophet.

      • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        Marx didn’t come up with World Systems Theory, and it’s not from the 19th century. It’s from the 20th century (the 1970s).

        The best Marxists focus on his criticisms of Capitalism, many of which are still highly relevant (which is why conservatives, libertarians, and others obsessively bring him up). The worst Marxists focus on his more Utopian ideas.

        But for the most part, being too quick to criticize Marxism under Capitalism, is a bit like being too quick to criticize human rights defenders under Nazism… In that, you’re probably unintentionally going to allow harms to society as a whole by focusing your criticism on the wrong group.

        Capitalism is the overwhelming philosophy in power today. It damages social cohesion, our rights, our health, and our ability to enact a free and fair democracy. Marxists are vastly outnumbered, and have some degree of protective effect against the ills of Capitalism… So going after “Marxists” under Capitalism is just, not something I can support.

        We need doorstops and ideas against the overwhelming force of Capitalist Fascism. We need other value systems to be compellingly humanistic, and not frowned on.