Stop Blaming Rich Countries

By: Bikal Dhungel 

It is not uncommon to hear poor countries blaming the rich countries of Europe and North America for their evils. Former colonies blame the colonialists for stealing their resources and dividing their nations without regarding the ethnic boundaries which is one of the main reasons of ethnic tensions today. However, we should also take note that, what was taken from colonies was only a tiny fraction of their economies. This is true that it was still not a good thing to do. But when we flip the coin and see things from other sides, we have to agree that without rich countries, the poor countries would be in a miserable situation today.

Take medicine/aspirin as an example. Aspirin was discovered by Felix Hoffmann in Germany. If rich countries had said that ' it was discovered at our place, so it will also remain at our place ', people in poor countries would continue to die at early age as they did in history. For most part of human history, humans lived between 20-30 years. Imagine the world without a Polio Vaccine, without Measles vaccine, without Antibiotics, without Anesthesia, without any treatment methods which were all discovered in western world and were transferred to the whole world. Jonas Salk, the guy who discovered Polio Vaccine decided not to patent it so that the most needy people especially in developing countries can afford it. By this way he saved millions of lives.

Take things like food production technology. Without this, people would starve to death. This level of population growth is not sustainable. Without Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution, much more people would die today due to hunger. Take education, without the education systems and materials like copies, pencils, large parts of developing world would have remained uneducated. Take Roads, without building technologies, one could never build a highway from Cairo to Cape Town. Take governance, without the good governing schemes that originated in the west, we would have more countries with conflicts. Without economical systems that took off after the book written by Adam Smith, ' Wealth of Nations' we would not have seen economic growth and prosperity.

And now think about iphones that make your life impossible without it these days. Be it of printing press, be it television, Radio, Washing Machine, Computer, Chemical Processing, Electricity, Smart Grid, Heating and Cooling Technology, Artificial Engineering, Information Technology, Nano Technology and 1000 others to name. They were all invented or discovered in "Western Countries". Being so dependent on their technologies and blaming them at the same time is self-contradictory. It however does not mean that developing countries have not contributed anything. But less. Still, when we talk about one side of the coin, it will be biased to end the story there. We should look the second part. A country or region cannot be fully good or fully bad, there are both good and bad people in the both side. 

Lets make it short, most of the discoveries that we have seen today was discovered in western countries in Europe, North America and East Asia. These discoveries have made our life easier and helped us in other forms. The western countries continue to be the innovators which is helping the whole world. So, the blame by developing countries that they are poor because the other is rich is baseless and false. Prosperity is not a zero-sum game which means one grows rich only by making other person poor. This is not true. You can become rich without making others poor. This view was only held by the communists. In communism, as everybody are kept equal, one can only grow rich by making other person poor. In other forms of governance it is not true. Everybody can become rich. Why some countries are rich and why some are poor is dealt in Development Economics but the aim of this article is to say that rich countries became rich due to their own hard work and ideas in the last few hundred years and their creativity has helped the whole world hence, poor countries should stop blaming rich countries for their misfortunes.