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| An illustration of Neo-Colonialism |
Following my previous write up Media influence and the core and periphery
It still makes me worry about why the world has put some countries and some of us lowly citizens into a position of question.
I have had it with looking at the world as a place of opportunity; it seems unfair we try to enjoy the finer things in life, but we are solely dependent on making ends meet while some in higher places see us as just another ordinary statistic of some sort of misfortune or even worse as a slave to the world systems.
You live in a society where you are born into class and stature, you are living on borrowed times time belongs to the next generation, and we are just caretakers of this planet.
It’s like a school you serve your time in a particular institution but you will never remain there forever and it seems to evolve once you have left, evolved positively, or went down the drain.
You serve a purpose and leave, but who is responsible for you being birthed into your current state?
For myself coming from a "Third World" "Developing Country".
My forefathers and their exploiters, that’s right colonialism and western claim to resources.
Okay maybe my forefathers were not able to think outside of the box, simply because back than it was called crates, okay box crate whatever it doesn’t matter.
It still makes me worry about why the world has put some countries and some of us lowly citizens into a position of question.
I have had it with looking at the world as a place of opportunity; it seems unfair we try to enjoy the finer things in life, but we are solely dependent on making ends meet while some in higher places see us as just another ordinary statistic of some sort of misfortune or even worse as a slave to the world systems.
You live in a society where you are born into class and stature, you are living on borrowed times time belongs to the next generation, and we are just caretakers of this planet.
It’s like a school you serve your time in a particular institution but you will never remain there forever and it seems to evolve once you have left, evolved positively, or went down the drain.
You serve a purpose and leave, but who is responsible for you being birthed into your current state?
For myself coming from a "Third World" "Developing Country".
My forefathers and their exploiters, that’s right colonialism and western claim to resources.
Okay maybe my forefathers were not able to think outside of the box, simply because back than it was called crates, okay box crate whatever it doesn’t matter.
What matters is they were statistics of their time, their seemingly feeble mindset was exploited by more cunning greed mongers, who traded tobacco and sharp pointy objects, okay axes to gain their favor.
When the modernization theory was conjured by Walt Whitman Rostow in the 1960s it was challenged by others.
Wait a minute! is the idea of capitalism built on exploiting the developing nations? damn skippy it is Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein forged ahead and made a mince out of the Modernization theory.
You see Rostow had a theory that there were five stages of development for each nation, but he left out something significant that cannot be erased, which he tried to erase, that’s right colonization.
The scramble for Africa and Asia by Europe caused chaos to native populations, they were displaced to be slaves forced to boom the industrial revolution of Europe in the 16th to 19th century.
Our forefathers especially those in Papua New Guinea my home nation and my native land the autonomous region of Bougainville were forced to work in plantations, I know it is a borderline issue, I don’t want to cross any path with this one, it has its positives and negatives.
So you see our ancestors were forced to work for the empire with low wages and cheap labor no real labor laws governed their right, no proper workplace policy lack of safety equipment and all the atrocities attached to colonial driven labor
Commodities such as Coconut, sugar, tea, coffee, cotton, and other agricultural commodities were being shipped back to Europe to feed the demand of the people back in the motherland.
Fast forward, with World War two and with the colonies being disbanded, most African countries and others across the world gained independence.
Welcome Neo-Colonialism, this is what we are facing right now that’s right welcome to the real world all you lovers of foreign mass media and American hegemony, hopefully, this statement does not blacklist me from visiting America I see so much on TV I too want to go there but alas let me think twice before going further with this essay.
(two days later) okay I think I should go ahead with this, I know I am just another wannabe philosopher, who had spent four years of his life studying international relations and politics, I am just making use of my knowledge and with the greatest American invention, I too can be seen and heard globally.
Okay here is the difference between the first world they were undeveloped.
While the developing countries were underdeveloped, simply meaning we were used and thrown to fend for ourselves after independence was granted to us.
Prostituting us into Neo-Colonialism, okay I had to say that it seemed fair!
And then we have the capitalist system which was widely praised by Rostow, which still puts us in a neo-colonial state.
What happens these days is that we still hang on to these commodities that were introduced by our colonizers but they control the price.
It is an issue of supply and demand, there is a demand for commodities like coffee and tea including cocoa and copra but we are not the price controllers.
Transnational corporations that buy our commodities set the price, because the supply of agricultural commodities is abundant, if the Transnational corporation buys coffee for example says $1 USD a kilo that’s the price! if one country doesn’t agree they have no choice or the buyer will always buy elsewhere, but it is so cheap, right?
to make more money farmers produce more and that's when overproduction happens, and in Economics we know that when supply increases price drops.
It’s a vicious cycle, we work hard and overproduce but we end up having little to gain from the increase in supply except for low price, that’s Neo-Colonialism right there.
These cheap commodities which countries like my own Papua New Guinea try our hardest to work our butts off for are somewhere being produced in mass quantities and at lower prices.
Okay the other thing is tariffs, this is tax put on items that are being imported or exported, import tariffs add more cost to the specified item forcing those importing commodities from our country to pay less when buying from us, they face losing money on tariffs.
For countries like Papua New Guinea which produce the more expensive commodities like Gold and Oil we think we should be making money right, “no way Jose” just a little off the top maybe but these transnational corporations end up getting tax breaks???
What solutions are there to help us, poor peripheral people?
Honestly we will never escape Neo-Colonialism unless we somehow start building weapons of mass destruction and vaporize half of the world, meaning vaporizing the established countries and transnational corporations, and then maybe we will be the superpower.
The other outlandish dream could be we form transnational corporations of our own, you see transnational corporations are spread throughout the world ever-expanding in Search for the cheapest production locations to maximize profit and maintain a competitive edge.
They have geographical flexibility easy to shift resources and operations across the world and are responsible for 75% of world trade and one-third of global output
Companies like Coke, Mac Donald’s, and Oil companies minimize costs and exist to make money for shareholders so they keep moving to find more markets, in places where wages are a lot cheaper and at a fraction of a cost to ship back products to developed nations.
I say PNG should have a transnational company that buys technology from the west and invests money to develop the technology.
A corporatocracy invest all the money to the corporation and it looks after the Government and its people, we invest and make money instead of slaving over cheap commodities.
But that would be preposterous because PNG as a country has a GDP of fewer than 30billion USD, Jeff Bezos the world’s richest man owner of Amazon the e-commerce giant has a net worth of 149.4 billion USD and the biggest transnational corporation listed number one in the fortune 500 is US-based retailer Walmart with a revenue of more than $486 billion a year.
Now let me just cast the biggest shadow over all this and blanket the shame of Papua New Guinea and most African countries.
I almost felt the back pain and the hurt our rural farmer go through when it comes to looking after the cheap commodities like cocoa and coffee, my Autonomous Region of Bougainville one of the highest producers of cocoa this is the reality.
Between 2016 and 2019, the monthly price of cocoa worldwide peaked in mid-2016 at about 3,122 U.S. dollars per metric ton.
This roughly estimates to K10, 000 per ton of cocoa not that much considering its hard work to look after and harvest the cocoa.
On average Papua New Guinea’s combined export is 40,000 tons K380 million a year that’s 100 million USD really hard to contribute much into the economy may be for smallholder farmers it’s a plus.
So there you have it the reality we are still controlled by the west neo colonized what have we got to say for ourselves.
Well it’s not like we have a choice. Wait a cotton-picking moment!
We can change like South Korea who from the post-Korean War was the biggest receiver of aid to aid givers, and a technologically advanced country.
Samsung like my phone the A50 is South Korean made, that’s right they have a transnational corporation which is second only to Apple in the mobile phone market and second to Sony in the sale of flat-screen TV’s. Hey what the hey! I know right it seems too good to be true.
When America was rejecting ideas from its citizens South Korea was buying them and improving them what a way to prove the dependency theory wrong.
Anyway that’s about it, for now, I will be discussing the Modernization theory in my next write up
