The saving grace for the non-western world might be that there are no longer sufficient planetary resources to allow for this kind of 'development'. As long as the elites don't take away the ability to choose an alternative route to navigate the era of decline (or should I say, ascent, following the above suggestion) then they might fare better than us in the hyper-alienated, completely de-skilled & dependent populations of the 'relatively civilised' west.
IMHO of course...
cheers,
I
PS: there's no such thing as 'wealth creation'. After the photosynthesising plants it's all redistribution - and they're only repackaging the wealth of energy provided by the sun. Western colonial powers redistributed their wealth (putting it euphemistically) from the exploited colonies and the wild places destroyed and replaced by domesticated monocultures, or outright strip-mined. Later on they tapped into the vast stores of wealth - ancient sunlight - stored underground in the form of coal, oil & gas. But industrial capitalism didn't create this abundance, merely appropriated and repurposed it. And once it's gone, it's gone, and people will realise again that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously
http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
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