13 Aug Externalities vs Potentialities

When I was 12 years old in school in America, one day in class the geography teacher explained that many countries today are categorized as “underdeveloped” but years earlier were referred to as “backward” which is more pejorative. Then, one of the girls in the classroom blurted out: “Those countries are strange, I’d rather be called backward than underdeveloped.”

To some in the developed world, externalities are more important than potentialities.