Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Blaming Montmorency for not understanding your argument is a distraction since you could have made a good argument anyway.
Indeed, it's just that it doesn't affect my life particularly negatively if Montmorency does not follow my line of argument; so I lack the incentive to put a great deal of effort into it.

Did you consider that a lot of regions in Africa etc. had functioning societies before colonialization?
So?

And that e.g. former French colonies are still under a "pretty heavy" influence from France?
In other countries the local economies are destroyed by cheap imports from western mass production that they cannot compete without without buying really expensive technology from the west for which they have to take really heavy loans from the west and so on.
And then fisher boats take away all their fish because hey, we gotta look out for our profits.
But of course this is the fault of Africans for not having invented the nuke first and not having nuked the Europeans away when it was still socially acceptable.
The governments have armies. If there are foreign agents you think are exploiting your country, expel them - by force if necessary. Put policies in place to become as self-reliant as possible and import only from friendly countries as far as possible. Unite with other countries with similar problems in order to force opposing elements to take you even more seriously.

But I expect you are retelling common myths, anyway - or can you produce evidence that this is the fundamental cause for poverty in all or most poor African countries?