Are RICH countries only rich because they exploit the POOR countries?

Question:Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, are rich because they control extremely valuable natural resources. Unless they are cheated or give their oil away, they will be rich. While they could be more generous, as Venezuela is, with poor countries or people I don't think simply selling a valuable resource should be termed exploitation.

Assuming for the sake of argument that China is rich, it is rich due to a great deal of hard work. Doing a lot of hard work, then selling what you make cheaply is not exploitation.

Imperialism, however, was often exploitive. If one nation seizes control of another, enslaves its people in say, cocoa plantations, that is certainly exploitation.

There is a lot of middle ground, ambiguous situations that are somewhat exploitive. Perhaps the worst of these in the modern world are nations with vast resources who sell those resources for high prices to the developed world, but little or none of the money ends up being used for the common welfare in the resource rich country. Angola and Nigeria seem to fall in this category to varying degrees. It is hard to assign responsibility in such cases or see how to remedy the situation.

Generally, today, rich countries either sell something valuable or do a great deal of work producing valuable goods and services, so, in general, the answer is no.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, are rich because they control extremely valuable natural resources. Unless they are cheated or give their oil away, they will be rich. While they could be more generous, as Venezuela is, with poor countries or people I don't think simply selling a valuable resource should be termed exploitation.

Assuming for the sake of argument that China is rich, it is rich due to a great deal of hard work. Doing a lot of hard work, then selling what you make cheaply is not exploitation.

Imperialism, however, was often exploitive. If one nation seizes control of another, enslaves its people in say, cocoa plantations, that is certainly exploitation.

There is a lot of middle ground, ambiguous situations that are somewhat exploitive. Perhaps the worst of these in the modern world are nations with vast resources who sell those resources for high prices to the developed world, but little or none of the money ends up being used for the common welfare in the resource rich country. Angola and Nigeria seem to fall in this category to varying degrees. It is hard to assign responsibility in such cases or see how to remedy the situation.

Generally, today, rich countries either sell something valuable or do a great deal of work producing valuable goods and services, so, in general, the answer is no.

it sure seems like it

Are poor countries only poor because they let rich countries exploit them?

if the rich involves in charity for the poor countries, they will learn to be more understanding of how these people live. philosophy and principles of how individual pursues.

To some degree this is true, to some degree it's not true, and to some degree it's a correlation vs. causation problem.

Rich countries do gain and maintain their wealth through exploitation of poor countries. Look at the slave trade triangle between the US, UK and Africa in the 1700's, for example. African countries certainly got the short end of that stick. Another example is the exploitation of native american nations as the US expanded west.

Rich countries don't only exploit poor countries, they also help them. (Often they try to help, but fail and make things worse.) Microlending is a good example. Wealthy countries contribute large sums of money (a lot less than they should, of course) to lend out to small businesses in poor countries. People are able to start fruit stands and irregate crops and sell crafts and rise up out of poverty. These loans are often done with little or no credit and virtually no enforcement to get the loans paid back. People pay the loan back largely out of pride and there is a surprisingly good return rate on those loans, which then funds new loans to more people.

Then you must also consider that the countries in the best position to exploit are the rich countries and the ones most likely to be exploited are the poor countries, so it may just be that the rich countries exploit the poor countries, but that's not a full explanation of why they are rich.

Ultimately, the wealth of nations has a lot to do with natural resources and intelligent use of them, as well as proper investment in infrastructure and education.

Not necessarily. Some countries have industrial resources that guarantee them a good life especially when these resources are well used.

This ones a no brainer. Yes

Availability of Natural Resources. If you gottem or if you don't.

No. They are rich because they have made good use of their resources including labor and materials.

That is true to an extent. Take England for example. They had colonies in the Caribbean and were exploiting these islands for their oil and natural gas.

However, I don't think this is the reason why they are rich.

It's because of hard work and sacrifice and the willingness of the entire population to work together to achieve a higher status. Authorities who have the power to exploit other poorer countries cannot make an entire country rich.