• lime!
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    23 hours ago

    wait, _neo_colonialism? we did do some minor superpower stuff in the 1700s together with the rest of europe, but what have we been doing recently?

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      17 hours ago

      The “Global North” is largely de-industrialized and mainly functions by exporting industrial Capital to the “Global South.” The US is chief among these Global North countries as world Hegemon, but the Nordics do it too, especially with regards to predatory debt traps through IMF loans. Hudson’s Super-Imperialism goes over this, but is US-focused.

      • lime!
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        16 hours ago

        the nordics are heavily industrialized though. our economies are mostly based on exporting metals, minerals and wood, as well as products made thereof, including heavy machinery, medical-grade steel, oil, and so on. yes the IMF sucks for having a destabilizing effect but that’s not really something an area with half the population of canada can do much about. we don’t have that much influence on the global stage.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          16 hours ago

          I think you should read these articles by The Guardian and Al Jazeera respectively. Norway, for example, has one of the largest Sovereign Wealth Funds. At a country-level, the Nordics heavily financially invest in and profit off of countries in the Global South, like investment bankers. This in turn expropriates large amounts of money, which are used to fund safety nets. The welfare in the Nordics is funded by the Global South.

          • lime!
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            4 hours ago

            yes, norway is an insanely rich oil nation. the fund is called “oljefondet”. it comes from oil sales.

            as for SDI, since it’s normalised and based on development, the nordic countries falling is only natural, since emerging economies are doing the stuff we did in the 70s. it doesn’t mean we’re getting worse, it means they’re rapidly getting better. ideally, SDI regresses to the mean.

            also none of those articles mention that third point?