The economy of most of the developed countries are dependent on their export. I am wondering how developed countries can survive if they cannot export their products in comparatively less developed countries.EG. A poor farmer who sells his product below market value and he is compelled to purchase industrialised product at a highly inflated price! How can we imagine the development of a Garment worker in bangladesh who works at $20 a month to make a shirt for the people of the country whose per capita income is more than $20,000 a year.
It is a design of currently prevailing Market economy or capitalism in which capitalists gets most of the advantages whether that ia a capitalist country or an individual. EG. If you have money you can make more money and increase in volume of money gives more chances to get more benefits. ..In contrast labour in this system by design has disadvantageous.... It is not compensated for its depreciation like capital, ... labour can never have the compensations that capital have in currently prevailing system...
That´s a very good question, with lots of connections. Your examples are very good. I would like to focus on history´s development. I´m saying: one country is in one good or bad economic situation in part because his development´s history. Well, some countries had a development faster than others, related to: political concerns, educational background, availability of raw materials, and others factors related to geographical and climatic conditions.
I´m considering that everybody can know these factors, and what happened to make some countries had faster development than others.
But the question is about relation between development and underdevelopment. Now I´m returning to the beginning: there's no country with possibilities to develop quickly, breaking all the fruits of his history: in economy, education, culture, politics, and social concerns.
I repeat that I'm just focusing in one point of view the problem - a big one, as I said.
@ Roberto you are right that " political concerns, educational background, availability of raw materials, and others factors related to geographical and climatic conditions" matter for development of a country. But the matter discussed in question is also linked with inequality which is a built-in fault of Capitalism...
developed countries survice selling each other their high value products and selling them to the elite in the underdeveloped countries. They are not much concerned with low income people there.
On the other hand development in underdeveloped countries follow a peculiar pattern that some eonomists point as "compressed development", that represents vividly what is happening in the world to day; so dont expect they follow the historical pattern of the now developed economies. They trajectory will probably be more unbalanced, with great diparities etc etc.
As a reference I like
http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/08-005.pdf
@Giuseppe Tattara...you rightly pointed out...the current invisible economic and financial imperialism is more severe than the colonialism of twentieth century..
Dear Prakash,
It also depends on how you define and measure both terms. You would be surprised to observe that in some aspects the "developing countries" are doing comparatively better.
Regards,
Sylvia
Dear Prakash Jee: By definition it is hard to define between development and underdevelopment because the process and system for defining countries have been changing since the beginning. Refer World Development Report. World Bank, IMF and UNDP, all these have some sort of definitions. Per Capita income is an indicator. While for UNDP, education, income and longevity are indicators included in HDI. Poverty is another indicator used for defining countries. A person borned in say Japan has the higher average age than one being born in Nepal. Again it does not mean that there are no problems in Japan. Therefore, relations between developed/underdeveloped has to be looked from the levels of development, and measuring development could include both economic and social indicators.
It is not only export that counts for survival . Developed countries do have imports necessary for generating economy and exports. Oil is one example. If Middle East countries stop exporting oil to countries, it will create a great problem to importing countries.
One argument could be that, those countries rich in natural resources could in the long term be prosperous. Again , Nepal and Brazil where both countries have huge potential for hydropower, poverty is there. This argument could roll on as the process of development rolls on.
Taking an example from Sylvia, social distortion is less in developing countries compared to developed countries. and this could be a plus point for social development. For me, how to reduce the disparity and inequality? I think World leaders have to spend some time addressing this important issue.
Hope to get more thoughts on this topic. cheers
Following up on the arguments by Binod, two other key issues worth consideration include chronic diseases and obesity as well as human capital projections (resulting from demographic trends). While Asia and other places are unfortunately catching up with the West in terms of the nutritional transition, many countries have great potential linked to their young populations.
Yes Sylvia, at the moment, especially South Asia has the highest youth population, largest working population and the large number of middle class consumers which will be shaping the world economy.
Developed countries do not alyawas depend on exporting to so called underdeveloped countries. It has always been commodity specific. Canada exports power, forestry and fisheries products to the US because of the geographical proximity of the market. The US has always had negative trade balance with the EU. On the other hand, China is far away from these two continents but is still the prime exporters of almost all consumer goods to Europe and the US and Canada. The point is in the context of the new wave of globablization, the theories of underdevelopment of Frank and Alavi need to be repositioned. New internal political disorder rather than order should also be held responsible for the uneven relatiohsip between them and the developed countries. The workers of Bangladesh could have benefitted more had its government had mechanisms in place to protect them rather than the the industry owners. Neither the factory owners nor the government are willing to negotiate the prices of their products with exporters. While terms of trade is important, it is how much the government invest the export earnings in improving human and physical capitals of its own country. Countries like Bangladesh has not shown the political willingness to do that probably because its politicians likes its so called underdeveloped status for a variety of political economic reasons. How developed countries will survive if they have to depend on exports? They will exploit what Adam Smith called the absolute advantage.
Ok , I also think that most of the countries are dependent on their import and export. My main concern is that - It seems that poor countries are exporting goods which are highly undervalued whereas, developed countries are exporting things to poorer countries which are highly overvalued if not at least are not undervalued. In this context if we dont look at the few emerging economies, the DEVELOPMENT and UNDERDEVELOPMENT are coming closer or drifting more apart?
Economic development does not necessarily brings equality in the country. If the fruits of the economic growth is not distributed properly, then the rich segment of the society will become richer and the poor more poorer. Therefore, with the failure of trickle down theory, new thoughts of inclusive growth have emerged lately in the last decade. Now for a sustainable growth and the well being of the society at large, inclusive growth is necessary; whereby income generating opportunities, infrastructual development and education have to reach to all parts of the country.
Development depends upon the national policy, the natural resources and the commitment and determination of the people to uplift the country from one stage of development to another higher stage. Export and import are to facilitate the growth. Countries with higher export could be leading towards prosperity. Market is very competitive. Price is more determined by the competition.
My argument would be DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT is more an issue of national policies on economic development, industrial growth, social development not just an issue guided by import and export phenomenon.
Whilst development refers to the progression from the simple stage to complex stage, underdevelopment refers to the decline from the highest stage to lowest stage, from competitive to uncompetitive, from able to unable, from stability to instability and from goal focussing to less focusing (Bornschier, 1992). This puts the two concepts at two opposite ends.
One way of identifying the relationship between development and underdevelopment has been through theories such as the dependence and modernisation theories. From dependence theories, the cause of underdevelopment is the dependence on industrialised countries while internal factors of developing countries are considered irrelevant or seen as symptoms and consequences of dependence; the development of industrialised countries and the underdevelopment of developing countries are therefore parts of one historical process (Kuhnen, 1986). And per modernisation theories, internal factors in the countries, such as illiteracy, traditional agrarian structure, the traditional attitude of the population, the low division of labour, the lack of communication and infrastructure, etc., are responsible for underdevelopment. Differences in structure and historical origin are considered of little importance; international dependencies are not considered. Consequently, a change of these endogenous factors is the strategy for development (Kuhnen, 1986). For more information on the relationships from theories, please see http://www2.fiu.edu/~ereserve/010029280-1.pdf which, without aiming at completeness, attempts an introduction to the most important theoretical explanations of underdevelopment and development. You might also find the under listed article and link useful.
Both concepts of development and underdevelopment reflect a broad range of conditions/phenomena as defined and critiqued by theorists. Due to this broad nature, I have a hunch that whilst an underdeveloped country can progress to a developed one, it might be difficult for a developed country to decline to an underdeveloped one as at the developed stage, most structures would have been developed to ensure, at least, a bit of stability necessary for sustenance. But it is very possible for a condition to downgrade from developed to underdeveloped.
I hope this helps.
http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/opsa/pdf/OPSA_01_09.pdf
http://myfreeschooltanzania.blogspot.com/2014/09/characteristics-of-underdevelopment.html
theories of dependent development would claim that development and underdevelopment are the result of the same process: colonialism and neo-colonialism. underdevelopment is the result of exploitation, which leads to development of the exploiters.....
modernization would claim that developed and developing countries are just at different stage from traditional to modern societies.