First-world wealth does not causally depend on third-world poverty

Evidence

All Bauer’s writings aimed to demolish the premise that the wealth of the colonial powers was a consequence of the poverty of the colonised – and vice versa. The prosperity of the United States and Japan, he insisted, has nothing to do with the poverty of Chad, Mali and Nepal. The development economist therefore rejected the very category of the ‘Third World’, arguing that it conflated ‘a vast and diverse collection of societies differing widely in religion, culture, social institutions, personal characteristics and motivations’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 405

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated focus on market ethics and inequality debates; Bauer’s rejection of the Third World category speaks to how economists frame global causality. — connects to: Third World countries depend on East or West for primitive capital accumulation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2602; Western wealth depends on the active construction of global underdevelopment — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 293; Poverty is inherent to developed capitalism, not a Global South condition — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 88 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the core neoliberal-developmental premise later critiqued by humanitarian-egalitarian positions elsewhere in the book.
• SEED: Could be an essay angle: how economists’ categories (Third World, developing vs developed) silently encode causal claims about who is responsible for global poverty.

Broader Connections

• Western wealth depends on the active construction of global underdevelopment #contradicts (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 293
• Poverty is inherent to developed capitalism, not a Global South condition #complicates (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 88