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why is the global south locked into producing low-value commodities for export while the west holds monopoly power over advanced tech, pharma, aviation, producer goods?
Not locked in. Plenty of poor countries broke the cycle and got out of poverty. Don't look at the west. Look at your peers who had the same problems you have and fixed them with capitalism and friendly trade deals with the US. If you choose socialism and the PRC, of course you're going to stay poor.
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why is the global south locked into producing low-value commodities for export while the west holds monopoly power over advanced tech, pharma, aviation, producer goods?
They're not. They're locked in there by shitty values and rapacious states and insecure property rights.
Also: oh no, not the horrid hellhole that is AUSTRALIA.
Also #2: stop talking about "extracting" and "surplus." and "periphery." Those are not real things
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Yours is a teenage-level objection, sure. However, let me ask you something: why is the global south locked into producing low-value commodities for export while the west holds monopoly power over advanced tech, pharma, aviation, producer goods? Why do countries that try to break out through industrial policy, nationalization, or sovereign development get always couped?
The argument is structural, not moral. When production is organized exclusively around profit maximization, the system requires a periphery where labor and resources are cheap. That's a feature, not a bug. Read Samir Amin on unequal exchange. Even Benjamin Powell's book shows you the terms under which that work happens are structured to extract surplus from periphery to core. You see it, you just won't say it.