>>939506No, it's because even before Africa was colonized they had not produced much in terms of capital. No real mining, no real lumbering, no real construction, no education, hardly anything existed in Africa and most of its people lived semi-nomadic or in tribal feudalism. That was not the fault of Europeans, although the Europeans did bring a wave of new development throughout the continent. It actually cost Europeans to build their empires, they did not make money off of it because imperialism was an ideological position that called for showing off your might any way you can, even if it meant spending tons of the peoples' (and, note, the riches') money just to acquire a chunk of useless clay that would not provide an economic return.
>>939508They had success BEFORE. They had great success and had highly developed industry before their modern day economic policies.
And of course GDP growth slows - China's is slowing right now. As a pile of money grows bigger, growing that pile by the same amount grows it by a smaller percentage. This is a simple statistical fallacy.
Defense spending is not done for the rich, it is done for the government. I swear, I'm starting to believe the military-industrial complex is a boogeyman, because there is no way the rich could just get a democratic country to send troops away to fight a war just to make money, not in a post-Vietnam world where even the slightest intervention could cost you your re-election and your fortune.
>This is obviously bait and switchYou say as you switch topics because you can't refute this simple fact: markets, even with governments involved, are superior to Marxist total control of the economy. And no, South Korea and Japan are not good examples of state capitalism. China right now is state capitalism, because the totalitarian party controls all trade at the end of the day and takes its cut, and North Korea is still total state control.
