That's kind of the thing I had in mind when I made my original comment. Something like:

1. Suckistan has vast swathes of granola reserves
2. Suckistan elites trade all the granola to California and make mad profits
3. from this trade, the elites get super rich
4. using their newfound wealth, Suckistan elites do an even better job securing the granola trade and oppressing the rest of the populace

Based on this scenario, a reasonably intelligent person might defensibly say any of these things:

• trade worked out great for the market participants
• the fact that Suckistan is rife with corruption is their own political issue
• at least they got to trade granola, some of them having capital is better than nothing
• if Suckistan doesn't use its granola profits to modernize, that's on them

That seems basically true, but also incomplete. If I was a Suckistan peasant, I don't know that I'd view the granola export industry as a great deal for my future prospects. If I banned together with my fellow countrymen and overthrew the elites, I'm not sure what I'd want our next move to be, either.

I mean, having all of us become enlightened and wise and producing great institutions out of the ashes, and making an equitable division of our nation's granola resources before unleashing flourishing trade would be nice, but again, that's generally not the world we find ourselves in.

Anyway, I've hijacked your post. But that's the context behind my question.