China pretended to privatise some companies, but in practice the state ran them. It was just a ruse to get foreigners to shift their operations there so they could reverse engineer their technologies.
Yes, African countries are largely poor because for centuries they continue to be exploited for low value raw materials. Yet, we can’t shy away from how this very arrangement has also created native billionaires.
The poor, Black and White, spend more on visible goods if they live in poor communities, because it gives them more relative status. But those living among wealthier people don't spend extra on visible expenditures, since they are too far behind to get more status from it.
Until mineral-rich countries own the means of production, not just the raw materials, but the tech, the patents, the platforms, they will remain trapped in a role that the system has assigned to them: extraction zones for consumption empires.
Even though we live in one of the most unequal societies in history, people still don’t advocate for better redistribution of resources, and many actively oppose it.
This is because people see themselves not as part of the lower class they are, but as millionaires-in-waiting🧵🧵