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   XPost: soc.culture.baltics, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.russian   
   From: ddfr@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com   
      
   In article   
   ,   
    holman@mappi.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:   
      
   > The Finns imported cheap oil, natural   
   > gas, cotton, wood, and industrial chemicals from the USSR and used them to   
   > produce consumer goods that they sold back to the Soviets at many times   
   > the price. That is the classic model of economic colonialism.   
      
   Your "at many times the price" argument seems, if I understand you, to   
   assume that the only important cost in making consumer goods is the cost   
   of the raw materials that go into them--that the labor and capital   
   needed to transform raw materials into finished goods somehow don't   
   count.   
      
   Without that assumption, the observation that $10 worth of raw materials   
   are converted into finished goods that sell for $30 dollars tells you   
   nothing at all about who is exploiting whom, or whether any one, in any   
   meaningful sense, is being exploited.   
      
   --   
    http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/   
    Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.   
    Published by Baen, in bookstores now   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)