Exactly. That is precisely the financial imperialism I'm criticizing. Instead of gunboats, it is capital that puts the Global South into servitude.
> Like Japan in the 80s, or Korea in the 2000s, Poland currently. It's a slow and painful process, but given a good enough government such as Singapore, it's possible to grind your way into a fairly well developed society given punitive laws, good infrastructure and public services, and a massive emphasis on intelligence.
This is an example of survivorship bias that is structurally limited to a few places. By the very nature of the system we find ourselves in, you will always need somewhere to exploit, somebody to do the shit work for shit wages.
The pitch you're making is basically "if you're lucky, you can become an exploiter, too!". No. We have to end the exploitation.
> Remember that not too long ago, children worked in factories in Britain and other developed countries, but they got rich enough to ban children from working so they would study for higher paid, intellectually challenging jobs.
Yes, now that Britain is rich enough, they make poorer people's kids work for them [0] [1]. That's exactly what people mean when they talk of colonialism as a form of capitalism, it's exactly why what you're proposing can only ever perpetuate exploitation, not solve it.
> It's possible to grind your way into a fairly well developed society given punitive laws, good infrastructure and public services, and a massive emphasis on intelligence.
Treating these as neutral axioms is an attempt to smuggle in ideological positions without any critical examination. Furthermore, the victim blaming frame of "it must be their own fault if they're exploited" ignores centuries of actual, old school guns and ships type of colonialism that set the stage for present conditions.
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=3tf6qc51Kbw
[1] https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/ghana-br...