re: What do liberals consider the reason south of border nations are failed states

quote:

---

Why were we able to do that?

---

Well one reason is that the US had few rivals near its borders save for various indigenous groups. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when the country was young, ensured that that the country could expand westward with no state impeding it. Another reason is that the British colonial system was superior to the Iberian versions in Central and South America.

quote:

---

why did they start out basically equal to us and then fall so far behind that we could do this?

---

Many of them did not start out equal to the US.

quote:

---

Inferior People?

---

Awww, you think people, cultures and nations are all equal. That's so cute.

quote:

---

Geography is often forgotten. Natural harbors and ports, arable land that isn't jungly and difficult to develop, navigable waterways for shipping food/goods around the country/region, ect.

---

Funny mountainous countries with basically none of that like Switzerland are among the worlds wealthiest

Do they have a country with insane demand for illegal drugs bordering it?

It's up to Mexico to solve their own problems but the massive demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. does create problems south of us. We can pretend it doesn't but it does.

And since we are using the excuse that basically says the United States caused all of those places to fail because of our imperialistic tendencies can someone explain to me how those Tendencies manage to frick up Brazil and Guatemala but not Canada

Its not eugenics or race. It’s culture.

Stupid Americans think they are filled with little poor brown people, when Mexico is majority euro and Brazil is nearly 50 percent.

quote:

---

Cultures are superior to other cultures. Your lack of comfort with that reality is irrelevant

---

Cultures are fluid, mutable, and change. Someone mentioned Switzerland, a mountainous country with few natural resources. 150 years ago, Switzerland was among the poorest nations in Europe. The keys to its current wealth is multifaceted, but we can distill it to a couple of things. Firstly, the Swiss avoided the wars that characterized Central European geopolitics, with their last armed conflict a civil war in 1847. Secondly the Swiss championed the idea of dual education, an outgrowth of the apprenticeship and guild system of the medieval period, which provided Swiss companies with a skilled and well-educated workforce. The federal system in Switzerland also helps it navigate its diversity, as there are 4 national languages, by helping ensure local control. The cultural history of the Swiss, informed by its previous poverty, also helps.

The key for me is to avoid violence, especially in smaller nations which do not have much room for error. Central America in particular haven't been able to avoid violence for long enough periods to develop other cultural habits that are needed for a country to succeed. Avoiding violence is fundamental, as well as finding the right political system for the groups that inhabit a country. Switzerland direct democracy wouldn't work as well, in all probability, in larger countries, but it seems to work there.

How does a violent culture avoid violence?

quote:

---

How does a violent culture avoid violence?

---

Well firstly, you need to let groups win. The reason why Europe has found relative peace was that they had centuries of warfare, from the Hundred Years War onward to WWII, was that there were clear winners and losers. That's an oversimplification, but preventing conflict and letting groups remain who still have claims is almost always going to ensure further violence. For the nation-state system that's been in place since Westphalia, you need to develop nation-states that are mostly organic. After all the coups and juntas in South America, you have had relative peace, and with that the creation of wealth. Brazil, for example, might reach a GDP of 2 trillion in the next five years, and their poverty rate is now below 5%.

But all human cultures have strains of violence, because humans are innately violent, and designing institutions with the belief that they are not violent is a surefire way to ensure more violence. I'd argue that ending the Drug War, with the effects it has had on the Northern Triangle, is important for ending endemic, organized violence in Central America.

Economics
Banana republics.
Exploitative 1%

Jungle
Mountains
Volcanos