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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Comparing how poor South Korea was in 1950 vs how wealthy it is now, can you tell me which 3rd world country it exploited to achieve this wealth?

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Here's a few articles about them exploiting Asian migrant workers. They're both from this year, I can't imagine that the conditions have gotten better over 80 years. Not to mention that with the current state of market globalization, one could argue that simply by participating in international commerce your benefiting from some group being exploited somewhere in the global supply chain.

And as an aside, modern capitalism as it stands right now almost necessitates some group be exploited in order to produce cheap labor/goods for consumption for another wealthier group, and the exploited group is most often a poorer country and the goods/labor are then imported. You're not gonna get very far paying your workforce a living wage to produce things that people making that same living wage need to buy, not with the percentage of profit modern owners/shareholders take right off the top.

https://www.firstpost.com/world/in-south-korea-asian-migrant...

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1001194446/as-workforce-ages-...

One group being wealthier than another group does not automatically make interactions between those two groups "exploitation" / if that is the definition of exploitation that you're using it is practically meaningless.

You could try reading the articles I posted for some examples of what I consider modern exploitation. Terrible working/living conditions, paying less than minimum wage, etc, and they get away with it because the exploited lack the resources to fight for their own rights, and general apathy of the rest of their society that enjoys the cheap goods/labor the exploited produce ensures that no one else is incentivized to stand up for them.

edit: And that's just more modern examples exploitation, Western society didn't suddenly spring forth into existence in it's current state of being. If you wanna talk about how exactly Western society reached its current level of wealth and privilege I'm more than happy to talk about that as well.

I was mostly responding to this:

> And as an aside, modern capitalism as it stands right now almost necessitates some group be exploited in order to produce cheap labor/goods for consumption for another wealthier group, and the exploited group is most often a poorer country and the goods/labor are then imported.

Which certainly does not follow from the articles you linked.

Yours is a strawman argument. I was talking specifically and also have mentioned the west as colonizers.

Moreover if we are talking about South korea, they have benefited from US backing.

"International relations between South Korea and the United States commenced in 1950, when the United States helped establish the modern state of South Korea, also known as the Republic of Korea, and fought on its UN-sponsored side in the Korean war" [0]

Of course they are fully developed now and may not depend on US backing. Even Japan after WW2 was helped by the US in reconstruction [1]

So in essence unless one of the "developed" countries helps you get a head start, you either develop slowly or not at all. Since all the tech and trade agreements are controlled by the established dominant players

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea%E2%80%93United_Sta... [1] - https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconst...

Can you explain to me what this “head start” consisted of, exactly?

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