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Zimbabwe is not a developed country and does not have a functioning economy. Deflation devastated the most advanced economies in the world.
Just a reminder. There was hyperinflation in Germany in the early 1920's. After it was over, the Nazi Party won the whopping 3% of the popular vote in December 1924. Then there was deflation in Germany in 1930 - 1932. In January 1933 Hitler became chancellor, and the rest is history.
For many people around the world, cash is no different.
There are currencies out there more vulnerable and exploitable, locally, than the USD.
Soros taught me all about that.
Market value is subjective.
If a group of people find value in pocket lint and trade it amongst each other beneficially, fine.
If they can establish a link to the common market where those outside of the lint trading can observe it, and decide for themselves whether it is worthy of their participation, great.
That is actually more benign than most currency dynamics that are no more transparent than your perception of an allegedly obfuscated crypto market.
Once again, crypto has no inherent value whatsoever. Gold is actually useful for electronics and jewelry. Paintings are pleasing to look at. Horses can be ridden. You can't do anything with crypto. Other than selling it to somebody who agrees to buy it. And it does not generate any income. Yes, people can trade pocket lint for a while. But that will always end the same way as the tulip craze, except that tulips at least have some inherent value.
Once again, crypto has no inherent value to you.
Me neither as it happens. Nor lint, or tulips.
In the middle of a desert, precious metals, and gemstones have no inherent value to me either.
Like so many things off the page, value is relative to circumstance, and not inherent at all.
No. Commodities are useful. Not necessarily in any place, but precious metals can be easily transported elsewhere. Crypto has no inherent value, period. You can't use it for anything. It has value only as long as somebody else agrees to buy it. Even if a country goes out of business, its old and now worthless currency (in the paper form) at least can be used to light a cigar. What on Earth can use crypto for?! I mean, you can't even use it as a decoration. Or for target practice. It's just an abstraction on some hard drive.
"It has value as long as somebody else agrees to buy it." You just described every fiat currency in existence. When it comes to what is most easy to transport, precious metals or bits and bytes, I think everybody knows the answer. By the way, if you send enough data through any heat-conducting metal, you could not only light a cigar but cook an entire four-course dinner on it.
The problem is that crypto does not include any hardware. And yes, fiat currency has no inherent value. That's how it should be, according to Adam Smith. But you don't buy real currency. Also, it's a legal tender. And most importantly, it's backed by a state.
Legality can change and fast. And being backed by a state means nothing if the state is for example Zimbabwe, or for that matter the confederacy during the civil war. As far as I know the confederacy dollars were used for decades after the war had ended as a scam currency.
It was not a developed country. Decent agriculture is not enough.
I wouldn't disregard their platinum mining industry so lightly. Also, their diamond mines are quite impressive, and the largest find of exploitable diamond fields predates the hyperinflation. So, yes, it was developed before Mugabe. But somehow it deteriorated, I wonder why.
Yep, If you need anything, just ask.
Marxist-Leninist informed class warfare where the class element is now replaced by ethnicity.
Every African nation with a white minority element is eating itself alive one way or another by exclusively preying upon the socioeconomic disposition of their white populations.
If you are an American, you may have noticed shades of this playing out in our identity politics.
A never ending faux crusade for justice and equality masking a perpetual grievance politic with no clear cut endpoint that subverts equality with equity, turning tables in place of leveling playing fields, all to establish and/or maintain political dominance.
Now imagine you are a nation where your population demographic is reversed and you are now blessedly no longer the political minority, but have the ideological muscle to flex your numerical superiority.
Unfortunately the ideology that informs your notion of social justice is not one of peace and justice.
It is in the worst way yet conceived by humans, a mechanism of institutionalized vengeance, like every other form of state authority.
In my time in Africa during the years between retiring from the field and trying to come home, I watched this dynamic play in several countries, but for a time there was one ray of hope.
Out of all of the leading Marxist personalities on the continent, Nelson Mandela did not ascribe to that vindictive aspect in his communist ideal, and for a time kept South Africa from sliding down that dark hillside of racial vendetta.
Then he died, and his peers who hated him for his lack of it, have since put South Africa in that lane of the road that is going to keep that continent tearing itself apart for the time being.
Circling back to the point, and not subscribing to or promoting communism, but trying to explain how its influence has played a part in keeping the "dark" continent dark, and how it corrupts the work of those who otherwise have a superior spirit of benevolence in dealing with their fellow man.
Snorlaxia and Dennock
I would. Mining industry is not really "industry". Resource extraction does not tell us anything about whether the country is developed or not.
They are not wrong.
We embrace a notion of charity like no other creature.
I volunteered to stand where the metal meets the meat, and as I look my meat in the eye every day, I embrace science and law that cares for, and protects animals just as well as it does ourselves.
Millions in many places cursing in many languages run into fires to save their neighbor's children, advance knowledge and artifice for the benefit of ingrates everywhere, or any of a variety of seemingly selfless and/or self-destructive acts wholly for another's benefit.
What Marxism actually assumes is that we all wish to prosper honestly and that we are all entitled to do so.
Sadly this not so.
Many of us choose to be villains, and happenstance in its mad chaos rewards the motivated and the unmotivated alike.
Snorlaxia and Dennock
So what is "industry"? Actually, you just proven you have no knowledge whatsoever of national economics.
Manufacturing can mean a lot of things. Developed (or developing) means that you are in control of natural resources and have the will and technoiogy to extract them combined with the will and ability to make a profit from said extraction. How much you refine them is a relative subject, and this is why neither Zimbabwe nor Venezuela are on the UN list of "least developed countries". But, please, humour me - how do you define "industialization"?
Good. So, then, how do you define "manufacturing"?
Not quite. Raw materials does NOT have to be manufactured into finished goods in one step. Let me give you examples, if you have a forest, then the trees can be cut down and turned into planks. If you have a mineral rich area then those minerals can be extracted from the earth - if you are lucky enough to find a gold vein, then that gold may be extracted and turned into gold bars. Neither the planks nor the bars are finished products, but now you may have a choice. If you have the technology and the will to do so you can turn the gold bars into jewlery or coins. These are the final products. But you may also turn the extracted items into trading chips, without developing them further. And, yes, you need tools, human labour and possibly even machinery to actually get to this first stage.
Even Nation States regard "Mining" as an industry. Simply because it is. You do not necessarily have to go all the way to a finished product for it to be profitable, it all depends on what a prospective buyer prefers. With your definition, the industrial revolution wouldn't have started until early 19th century, instead of mid 18th century as most scholars agree upon. See the difference?
You don't have to have any industry to be profitable. You can have very profitable agriculture - and there's nothing wrong with it being an important part of your economy. Or you don't even need to have undergone the Agricultural Revolution - a hunter-gatherer economy can theoretically be very profitable. If, say, you were lucky enough to live in the only place on the planet where mammoths sill lived, you could just hunt them with Stone Age weapons and sell their hides, tusks etc. very profitably. For that matter, you don't even any successful hunting "industry" - you can have a profitable prostitution "industry" for which you literally don't need even Stone Age tools, as you already have all the "equipment" you need (you don't even need any clothes! :-)
But I'm talking about the development level. In a nutshell, a developed country is not one with mining industry, but one capable of manufacturing modern equipment for mining (whether it actually does so or prefers to produce something else and import mining equipment).
So we agree upon that your entire argument depends on "development level". That is where I actually began this discussion, development level is a relative subject, and we shouldn't rely upon our current western situation to judge what constitutes a developed country and what does not. I said it before, but I will repeat it, this is why neither Venezuela nor Zimbabwe, is on the UN List of least developed countries.
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