developing countries don’t have enough infrastructure to benefit from wealth
It’s even worse: they only have the infrastructure to allow us to profit from their wealth. Colonial powers made sure the railroad between the mines and the ports are top notch, so their mineral riches can be carted off efficiently to the metropole.
China and other advanced nations prove that an export based economy can work though.
I will say that export driven economies are very difficult though. See Taiwan and their export of chips. It only works because Taiwan is basically modern Vulkans / Wizards who have chip technology that no one else in the world has.
A system of top level universities to build that kind of knowledge and infrastructure is difficult and outside the reach of most countries.
The machines are Dutch and the designs are made by the customer. The Taiwanese advantage is their government subsidised chip manufacturing. They aren’t wizards.
Global Foundries up in Buffalo, New York had the same exact Dutch equipment as them and couldn’t get past 12nm.
Taiwan / TSMC is hitting 3nm today (a feat that even Intel and Samsung cannot accomplish yet), and is well on its way to 2nm designs.
They’re fucking wizards who are 5+ years ahead of USA. Thank god they’re allies of us. But they’re severely kicking our ass in terms of yields, production, and even technology, using the same machines to ink smaller-and-smaller transistors to a degree impossible to us in the USA today.
The problem is by the time we figure out 3nm, TSMC will be at 2nm or better. They just consistently lead and are superior over us for the last 20 years or so.
You can see this in painful clarity watching the Argentinian railroads. Created and operated by the UK originally, it has a clear shape of a funnel from all over the country towards the main port city, Buenos Aires.
