The "West" has donated 100s of millions of vaccine doses to other countries. The US alone has donated 176M doses. Hardly my definition of "hyper selfish".
The U.S. blocked the export of substances needed for the production of vaccines.
A question, if I donate after I have had enough am I being selfish?
If I donate food after I have eaten my fill, am I being noble or selfish?
A question in response to your question: is putting on your own air mask first when the plane cabin loses pressure, and then helping others with their masks noble or selfish?
Giving someone something you have no obligation to give them for free is literally the definition of generous. It is the opposite of selfish.
This doesn't change if you take care of yourself first.
You can't simply compare a single person with nations.
And you aren't only putting your mask on first, you are preventing others from getting theirs.
And if the west if obligated to help the poorer countries is a different discussion, especially of you consider how it takes care of them when it comes to their natural resources.
Exploiting with the left and giving with the right, doesn't make you generous.
> AstraZeneca is one of the shining stars of the pandemic. Not only did it produce a vaccine where other big players failed, the UK-Swedish company has pledged to sell it at cost until it is able to declare the pandemic over.
If countries still can't afford it they are being given away
That's one vaccine and one country, and you're not arguing against my point, but shifting the discussion back to donations. The number of vaccines being donated are not even close to sufficient to protect the countries without the means to produce the vaccines.
Many countries could produce these vaccines, but are not legally allowed to because we're protecting the patents, so that companies can make profit on them. Without patent protection, they wouldn't be the only companies manufacturing them.
It's also strange to say it's entirely false, while giving one example in which the vaccines are being given at cost. Many of the vaccines are not. In some cases the companies are not profiting, in other cases they are.
Why don’t countries with no vaccines develop and produce their own? Ah, that’s right, because they don’t have cutting edge pharmaceutical industry. Now, isn’t it an interesting coincidence that cutting edge pharmaceutical industry exists precisely in those places where most profit is to be made on drugs?
The west basically "developed" by exploiting/colonizing resources from the 3rd world countries. The west basically pulled the ladder once it climbed up. Now you are wondering why the 3rd world countries can't develop their own vaccines.
Here's a few articles about them exploiting Asian migrant workers. They're both from this year, I can't imagine that the conditions have gotten better over 80 years. Not to mention that with the current state of market globalization, one could argue that simply by participating in international commerce your benefiting from some group being exploited somewhere in the global supply chain.
And as an aside, modern capitalism as it stands right now almost necessitates some group be exploited in order to produce cheap labor/goods for consumption for another wealthier group, and the exploited group is most often a poorer country and the goods/labor are then imported. You're not gonna get very far paying your workforce a living wage to produce things that people making that same living wage need to buy, not with the percentage of profit modern owners/shareholders take right off the top.
One group being wealthier than another group does not automatically make interactions between those two groups "exploitation" / if that is the definition of exploitation that you're using it is practically meaningless.
Yours is a strawman argument. I was talking specifically and also have mentioned the west as colonizers.
Moreover if we are talking about South korea, they have benefited from US backing.
"International relations between South Korea and the United States commenced in 1950, when the United States helped establish the modern state of South Korea, also known as the Republic of Korea, and fought on its UN-sponsored side in the Korean war" [0]
Of course they are fully developed now and may not depend on US backing. Even Japan after WW2 was helped by the US in reconstruction [1]
So in essence unless one of the "developed" countries helps you get a head start, you either develop slowly or not at all. Since all the tech and trade agreements are controlled by the established dominant players
The "3rd world countries" resources were plundered and utilized for the development of the colonizers. The "3rd world countries" if left with their resources would have traded what they had and become "developed"
No, colonialism very much happened, it’s just the impact of colonialism on colonizers was much smaller than on the colonized.
All of the colonizer countries were much wealthier and technologically advanced before they started colonizing. The disparities were already enormous in 1500, before much of colonization happened. English, Dutch and Spanish became colonizers because they were more developed, not the other way around.
The “plunderers” had way more resources than the “plundered”: look at the trade volumes between England and its Indian colonies, and compare them with the volumes of domestic production in England: the latter has always been orders magnitude bigger than the former. It’s even more lopsided with African colonies.
Next, the little that the colonizers got out of the colonies were not “treasures” that were “plundered”, hindering development by victims of colonization. Spanish got a lot of silver from Argentina, but the silver was basically worthless to the natives, and had they kept all of it, they could’ve made more plates and jewelry, which in no way could have made them richer and more developed. In fact, metal oriented policy of Spain probably was detrimental to them too. But, if not the Spanish, the indigenous would not have worked Potosi mines anyway, so it’s moot. Most of physical resources that colonizers removed from colonies were like that: of what value are minerals in the ground, if the natives cannot extract them or make use of them?
Most of the actual use of colonies was cultivation of land and exploitation of human labor, often forced. These were overwhelmingly seriously underutilized by the natives. It should not need to be said, but knowing how obstinate some people are here, I’ll say it anyway: this underutilization in no way justifies colonization. Rather, the point is that the colonizers did not “plunder” land from colonies (because you can’t carry it away), and the amount of labor exploited was in almost all cases very small relative to the total workforce of the natives.
Finally, there are many countries that successfully developed without serious colonization effort. Consider Germany: it had some colonies, but only got them in late 1800s, and only keep them for three decades. It would be ridiculous to argue that Germany is now rich and developed thanks to these three crucial decades 1890-1920, when they held some colonies in Africa. In fact, they not only did not get wealthy by exploiting these, but most likely it was a net loss to them, considering the expense required to set them up.
All of this is not meant to excuse or justify colonization. Clearly, conquering and subjugating other nations by military force is wrong, according to our today’s moral standards. The point here is that the idea that it was the colonies that allowed some nations to become wealthy and developed, is simply wrong, and betrays lack of familiarity with economic history of the world.
It exploited the "we have nice capitalism"-wall build against socialism. Basically all along the border, there was a gradient to be exploited for starting up. I assume alot of players near china are waiting for the same sort of ladder to climb up on, once the 2nd cold war starts.
Yes, people really need to read history. The statement upthread, "Why can't they build vaccines of their own?" sounds akin to "Whey can't they eat cake, if they can't have bread".
Even if they build vaccines, it is not held to the same standard, for ex: India's covaxin was not being accepted for travel to western countries. The dominant players set all the rules.
Unless we understand why/how we are in this situation, we will keep on making the same mistakes again and again
My understanding is that Israel paid well above market to go to the front of the line, Japan is definitely paying for doses... do you have links to authoritative primary sources on this (e.g., not a news organization or activist group)?
What does Israel paying above market rate to "go to the front of the line" or Japan "paying for doses" have to do with whether other countries are donating doses to impoverished nations?
> do you have links to authoritative original sources on this (e.g., not a news organization
When has ethics meant anything in international affairs? Sorry to burst your bubble, but every nation is out for its own best interests, which sometimes align with other nations' interests.
Rich countries (e.g. US, Israel, Japan) paid extra to get doses first, then once they had enough, the US (and probably other countries) paid for doses for poorer countries.
>The United States continues to make great strides in its efforts to distribute safe and effective vaccines globally. We are happy to announce our donation of 1,182,870 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Angola on August 24 with our partners GAVI and the African Union.
It's an odd kind of donation though... Many of those countries are perfectly able to afford their own doses... But are blocked from doing so in favour of being given donated doses, that normally come with political strings attached.
Some would say it's a way for the west to buy influence rather cheaply.
What do you mean by blocked? They don't want to pay because they want to get them for free? Or is there some supply problem where sellers refuse to sell to them?
I think he means thing like the governments forcing producers to fulfill their contracts with them before exporting and fulfilling contracts elsewhere.