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Four Global Development Myths that Need to Disappear

With more climate disasters coming, we all need to quit buying the propaganda from events like COP26

Mitchell Peterson
9 min readNov 6, 2021

Ever wonder why, with so many NGOs and billionaire-backed foundations, some countries are still so poor? Why, despite today’s immense technological might and sky-high wealth, we have yet to eliminate hunger and suffering? How come, even after sixty, seventy, or over one hundred years of independence, so many nations have yet to move up the development ladder?

Not that long ago, I had the myopic view that poor countries were just too corrupt. I thought “we” helped “them” so much. If only they could copy our economies and how we run our countries. Surely they’d be rich like us in no time!

I now see how condescending and backward my thoughts were, how I was so deep in the “western supremacy” propaganda, and how we’re all swimming in those false narratives and kept from the truth.

I’m not saying it’s an easy fix, that I know how to solve global poverty, or that if everyone could see the situation truthfully all of the geopolitical problems would magically disappear.

But citizens of wealthy nations need to educate themselves a bit on how economics and geopolitics really work. They need to see…

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Mitchell Peterson
Mitchell Peterson

Written by Mitchell Peterson

Freelance writer in his tenth year outside the US. Currently in rural Spain writing the Substack bestseller and soon-to-be book, 18 Uncles.

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