Comment by squirmy_wormy@lemmy.world on Banana Republic isnt a good thing.

My main point was this isn’t imperialism. Words mean things, man.

Of course it is. How do these foreign companies own such large amounts of land in these countries? (Hint: US-sponsored coups). Why are these countries producing large amounts of a single crop via monoculture practices instead of solving for the nutritional needs of their own population?

Because the autonomous countries are unable to make those choices for themselves? What about places that produce bananas that didn’t have banana republics?

If you live anywhere where a banana cannot grow and get them cheaply, you’re benefitting from imperialism regardless of where the banana you actually eat is grown because it’s the cheap bananas from those banana republics that determined the market value.

Or you’re benefiting from trade agreements and/or cutthroat capitalism.

Mix in a bit of slavery, I too think it’s a form of imperialism

Nope, not what that word means.

Can you name some examples of banana-growing exporters that weren’t undermined by the US to the point of banana republic

What a wonderful “technically correct” answer.

…trade agreements?

At the barrel of a gun? I think that is considered to be under duress.

And again, ONE country set up banana republics, which were then overthrown. Anyone who isn’t them and can also buy cheap bananas separately. There are also places that were not ever banana republics who export bananas.

This post takes a very complicated issue and distills it down to a neat little thing by misusing words and then everyone else can be like “oh I feel smart too cause that seems clever”. It’s bullshit and makes everything worse.

Sure, ONE country did it, while about 100 cheered., And queued up for deliveries.

Everyone loves to shit on America, without acknowledging their home country’s very happy entanglement with them

Got any proof for them claims?

Or maybe it is a reminder that these complicated legacies are still with us? Would you prefer only essays written on imperialism?

And I have no idea how just one county setting up banana Republics has anything to do with it. Would other countries still not benefit from being able to buy artificially low cost products. At the expense of the county being exploited?

See, I’m on board with your point there, and I would love to see how much truth there is to it. Those countries have renegotiated many agreements and some now have socialist governments which are doing quite well, despite the fuckery the US put them through.

The post doesn’t leave room for ambiguity or nuance. It says “x is true”. That’s why it’s dumb and arguably a net bad. Quick little feel good statements for such a complicated issue just help people on the Internet feel better by liking or up voting while harming any actual progress. So fuck the person who wrote the original thing and fuck OP for spreading it.

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