I vaguely remember a user debunking this claim but I cannot find that comment and I don’t remember what post it was on.
Name me 2 deindustrialised feudal States that have transitioned to become world superpowers without imperialism and colonisation. uSSR and China.
The USSR went from a semi-feudal backwater that lost WWI and a ton of European territory to winning WWII and putting the first humans in space
Inside of one generation
And then it collapsed due to corruption, central planning and budget deficits.
And were the people of the former USSR better off?
Male life expectancy at birth in Russia fell by six years between 1991 and 1994, from an already-low 63.4 years to 57.4 years over that period, an almost unprecedented decrease in life expectancy in three years.Footnote1 Female life expectancy followed a similar but less extreme pattern, falling from 74.2 to 71.1 years from 1991 to 1994
If your government is better than what came before it and better than what came after it…