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A comment on The Grapes of Wrath was banned in the USSR because showed poor people had cars. Parent comment

Re:The Grapes of Wrath was banned in the USSR because showed... by cmrdporcupine on Thursday January 19, 2023 @11:12PM (#34449158)
Fair enough, but in a way it's more false comparisons; investing billions into a tribal-agrarian society in the midst of civil and religious war is qualitatively different from investing it into an already industrialized society. And it's not like the absolute $$ investment was the sum total of what the US was doing in Germany and Japan. It came along with a whole package of political-economic moves to restructure investment and regulation, taking advantage of American hegemony in those regions.
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Re:The Grapes of Wrath was banned in the USSR because showed... by xyzzyz on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:44AM (#34449666)
> Fair enough, but in a way it's more false comparisons; investing billions into a tribal-agrarian society in the midst of civil and religious war is qualitatively different from investing it into an already industrialized society.

Not necessarily. If you ignore the (in reality rather important) "ongoing war" aspect, investing in more backward region should give you better return on investment, not worse. That's because investment, like anything else, suffers from diminishing returns. In backward regions, there are a lot of low-hanging fruits to pick, and small amount of money can go very long way. That's why all the NGOs are talking about microlending etc: even trivial amounts of capital make a huge difference.

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Re:The Grapes of Wrath was banned in the USSR because showed... by woodruffw on Friday January 20, 2023 @01:32AM (#34449864)
Low floor, low ceiling: microlending can set someone up to put their children through school, but it can't turn subsistence farmers into lawmakers and engineers (at least not overnight).
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