The collapse of the American empire would benefit almost every other country. I am starting to feel that since I live in America I should want to accelerate the collapse (or make sure one happens if things start to go back to business as usual). Can someone tell me why this is a bad idea so that I don’t make a mistake here.
Because you are purposefully being vague and assuming (you seem to have answered yes) I am answering questions when I have no idea what you were originally talking about or proposing.
I thought you were saying that there are other methods of imperial exploitation other than simply the benefits that are offered at home to other proles that encourage their division, to which I did say yes. I didn’t realize I’m in a college class and this was an open-ended question. Do you typically do this with people and get surprised when some have no idea what you’re talking about? Hate this shit because smug lib redditors would do it constantly and I always get confused by it because I heavily rely on context.
Because of our domination of the ME and Saudi puppet-states (who gladly work with us). Part of the reason we have so much presence in the Middle-East is to enforce our will and doctrine of capital there as colluding with the vassal states of the gulf can keep the dollar linked to petro. To me, it’s more related to the fact that since it is linked to petro and the U.S dominates the main source of petro globally it has more power in being the de-facto established currency most of the world uses. Anyone who tries breaking away from that is bludgeoned economically by the IMF or just straight up invaded.
Should add in an edit it’s more than just “petrodollar” too. We have entire “schools” of colonizer thought in multiple countries encouraging rampant neoliberalism that shapes the economies of the nations to be more willing to be exploited. Argentina is an example.
I’d imagine when most of the world trades in the dollar. That part I’m not as aware of, though.
“Group A can afford X goods, while Group B cannot” does not self-evidently equate to “Group A is exploiting Group B”. I was asking you to trace the logic of this. If you’re so confident of it, it shouldn’t be hard.
You gave a response that ambiguously could have referenced multiple things, then said I was being vague.
A proletarian making minimum wage in the US is not the same as “the stochastic quality of life options for any given American”. From the beginning I was talking about the working class, the lifetime net debtors, the precarious class. How does it figure that the exploitation of the proletariat of the global South is being done by the American precarious class, instead of the American owning class?
That’s because you’re assuming (multiple times now) and I wasn’t saying that proles from the West are directly exploiting those in the periphery. I said, in my original post, that despite growing up in some of the shittiest conditions that I still don’t recognize my struggles over people in the periphery because of the wide variety of options a prole can have in America compared to those in the periphery. Even the poorest one. That was my original point.
Petrodollar was something I’m already aware of, I gave an example of how colonizer schools influence economics and local-regional politics in these nations to adopt neoliberal economics. The flow of goods and deals the exploited in those nations make for the Imperial Core has plenty of collaborators from those schools of thought, hence why I cited Argentina.
I never directly said “Western proles exploit those on the periphery”. Benefit from the exploitation of the periphery by the ruling class of the core? Yes. All though, I suppose if you want an example; there are plenty of local agri-businesses in many parts of the country that literally rely on ripping people’s Visas from them by advertising good jobs and benefits and then turning on them when they get here. That’s a global thing, however and even other colonized countries do it to less developed countries (Saudi Arabia, Philippines for example.). But that’s not the “working class”, kulaks, petty-bougie, etc…What the core working class benefits from is the cheap fruit, labor and vegetables while they are free to pursue the class ladder as a U.S citizen. Entire stratified sections of the economy filled by lumpenprole along the lines of class and race. I think that’s a pretty solid example.
You could also read J. Sakai, where they talk about it a bit. Do I spam quotes now to prove I read it or more mental olympics? My tolerance for nonsense has been low lately, so I encourage saying something absurd so I can block you and be done with it.
That’s a deeply valid point and I must have just misunderstood the wording the first time.