COLUMN. To win the cultural and intellectual battle, Europe must staunchly defend its model, writes the economist in his column, dismantling the narrative of a 'declining' continent.
Neocolonialism actually amounts to a tiny little trickle of wealth. It’s significant if you’re making a dollar a day in a heavily effected region, but it’s like pennies on the Western end.
Overall, the West’s wealth comes from the West’s wealth, and the institutions that wealth has made possible.
If you had read my comment, you would have seen that I never said we had stopped anything.
I said that we made huge progress — you can’t deny it — and did a huge amount of good in the meantime.
Compare us to any other continent or country and not some ideal, imagined perfection. The UAE, China, Russia, the USA…
If you think we’re bad and exploit people, I suppose we should replicate the approach of one of those countries, right? Then we will stop exploitation, wars, everything bad in general and become better people! Is that what you believe?
If you think we’re bad and exploit people, I suppose we should replicate the approach of one of those countries, right? Then we will stop exploitation, wars, everything bad in general and become better people! Is that what you believe?
If your whole argument is “we cant be bad people because look at these even worse people” then I have nothing more to say to you. There will always be someone more stinky than you. Doesn’t mean you’re clean.
This argument applies to you even more. You will never be perfect, not even in case there will be no one better than you.
If you are good and try to be better (which I believe we do) and focus on why you are not perfect and you just complaining the whole day - you:
a) will not improve
b) give even more power to the bad guys
c) you will discourage others from trying to become better, because no one wants to follow a path that leads to eternal dissatisfaction - and that’s what you present
If you believe this sentence
“not even in case there will be no one better than you”
is the same as calling myself the best and that
“Do we try to be better?”
with a few examples of progress is “ignoring glaring structural exploitation” then i have noting more to tell you. Have a nice day!
Just because I am not totally conviced you are in fact a troll I just want to explain to you why I don’t find what you are saying very convincing.
The original top comment of this thread said:
Proud of extorting the whole world for centuries for our wealth? No, thank you
You then went ahead and said this:
If you think that what people living here 500 years ago did is a reason for us to feel bad, then you need therapy.
This showed to me, that you think extortion of wealth from all over the world is a thing we stopped 500 years ago. This is wrong on a number of levels, not the least is, that the original colonial age is decidedly less than 500 years ago. The USA is just close to 250 years old.
In response to that honestly already troll-like twisting of reality I just said:
If you think we have stopped extracting wealth from other countries you are the insane one
You then acknowledged that we didn’t in fact stop 500 years ago (rendering you first comment completely invalid) but then went ahead and tried to excuse that with this:
Compare us to any other continent or country and not some ideal, imagined perfection. The UAE, China, Russia, the USA…
If you think we’re bad and exploit people, I suppose we should replicate the approach of one of those countries, right? Then we will stop exploitation, wars, everything bad in general and become better people! Is that what you believe?
Never did I mention any of these countries, never did I claim that anyone did a better or worse job. I just maintained that we did not stop extorting money from other countries to benefit our own. Which I expressed thusly:
If your whole argument is “we cant be bad people because look at these even worse people” then I have nothing more to say to you. There will always be someone more stinky than you. Doesn’t mean you’re clean.
You then went ahead with a baffling try to convince me with a list of paywalled financial times arcticles that for some reason only pertain to anti-climate-change measures. Giving you the benefit of the doubt one could interpret this as connecting the fight against climate change with the unjust effects it has on the global south that is typically a target for our extortionism. But that would really need a mention from you. The way you put this it is way too removed to support your claim of us “doing better” with extorting money from other countries for out benefit. Again, you also list articles showing how other counties are doing bad shit.
I’m not even going to explain to you, that everyone can collect 7 positive and 4 negative articles about any country. Trying to paint a picture like this is childish at best. Convincing: not so much.
Anyways, thanks for indulging me in a lesson on how to earlier detect bullshit and disengage.
Thanks for this, I missed their comments before deletion.
Good on you for your thinking capacity as well, that seems to be getting kinda rare…
Let’s hope and assume it’s a “empty vessels make the most noise” type of situation.
If you think we have stopped extracting wealth from other countries you are the insane one
Neocolonialism actually amounts to a tiny little trickle of wealth. It’s significant if you’re making a dollar a day in a heavily effected region, but it’s like pennies on the Western end.
Overall, the West’s wealth comes from the West’s wealth, and the institutions that wealth has made possible.
If you had read my comment, you would have seen that I never said we had stopped anything.
I said that we made huge progress — you can’t deny it — and did a huge amount of good in the meantime.
Compare us to any other continent or country and not some ideal, imagined perfection. The UAE, China, Russia, the USA…
If you think we’re bad and exploit people, I suppose we should replicate the approach of one of those countries, right? Then we will stop exploitation, wars, everything bad in general and become better people! Is that what you believe?
If your whole argument is “we cant be bad people because look at these even worse people” then I have nothing more to say to you. There will always be someone more stinky than you. Doesn’t mean you’re clean.
This argument applies to you even more. You will never be perfect, not even in case there will be no one better than you.
If you are good and try to be better (which I believe we do) and focus on why you are not perfect and you just complaining the whole day - you:
a) will not improve
b) give even more power to the bad guys
c) you will discourage others from trying to become better, because no one wants to follow a path that leads to eternal dissatisfaction - and that’s what you present
Do we try to be better?
Hell we do. Others instead do this:
Yeah that’s right, calling yourself the best and ignoring glaring structural exploitation of others will surely lead us to stop doing that
If you believe this sentence “not even in case there will be no one better than you”
is the same as calling myself the best and that “Do we try to be better?”
with a few examples of progress is “ignoring glaring structural exploitation” then i have noting more to tell you. Have a nice day!
Just because I am not totally conviced you are in fact a troll I just want to explain to you why I don’t find what you are saying very convincing.
The original top comment of this thread said:
You then went ahead and said this:
This showed to me, that you think extortion of wealth from all over the world is a thing we stopped 500 years ago. This is wrong on a number of levels, not the least is, that the original colonial age is decidedly less than 500 years ago. The USA is just close to 250 years old.
In response to that honestly already troll-like twisting of reality I just said:
You then acknowledged that we didn’t in fact stop 500 years ago (rendering you first comment completely invalid) but then went ahead and tried to excuse that with this:
Never did I mention any of these countries, never did I claim that anyone did a better or worse job. I just maintained that we did not stop extorting money from other countries to benefit our own. Which I expressed thusly:
You then went ahead with a baffling try to convince me with a list of paywalled financial times arcticles that for some reason only pertain to anti-climate-change measures. Giving you the benefit of the doubt one could interpret this as connecting the fight against climate change with the unjust effects it has on the global south that is typically a target for our extortionism. But that would really need a mention from you. The way you put this it is way too removed to support your claim of us “doing better” with extorting money from other countries for out benefit. Again, you also list articles showing how other counties are doing bad shit.
I’m not even going to explain to you, that everyone can collect 7 positive and 4 negative articles about any country. Trying to paint a picture like this is childish at best. Convincing: not so much.
Anyways, thanks for indulging me in a lesson on how to earlier detect bullshit and disengage.
Thanks for this, I missed their comments before deletion.
Good on you for your thinking capacity as well, that seems to be getting kinda rare…
Let’s hope and assume it’s a “empty vessels make the most noise” type of situation.
Tbh after the comment with the ft links I was 50/50 on this just being an AI bot. I am very susceptible to getting sealioned this way