> But because the leaders of a country like Venezuela know that, they may well try to avoid developing their country into such a weak state in the first place. Sure, bribery and corruption are fun, but only if you live long enough to use it; it’s not worth ruining the economy if the only consequence is being killed when Brazil, Colombia or the United States invades.
Interesting read but the above point is moot. History features many selfish leaders letting their kingdom, fief, colony, what have you fall into exactly that state of affairs. And when they were occupied, as often as not, the leadership was left intact so long as the tribute did flow. This is true from the ancient world up to through the 20th century.
> This is why, I’d argue, you see the proliferation of failed states globally: in the past it would be actively profitable for non-failed states to take advantage of them
Sure, there may be more independently standing "failed states" but occupation by a "more competent" power was rarely a corrective. These largely just became failed vassals. The little bit of bureaucratic support imposed by the occupier usually had the effect of depriving locals of the experience of self development and coordination and thus deepening and prolonging the crises within.
> I should note I find this version of the argument, based on incentives and interests more compelling than Steven Pinker’s version of the argument based on changing cultural mores.
> The value of the oil and other resources would be less than the cost of maintaining control of the country.
The reasons that managing such a country would be too costly now vs in the past are almost purely cultural. Treating an occupied place like a colony has diplomatic and internal consequences for the occupier (not enough in my opinion but much more than in the past). And much more importantly, the cultural inventions of nationalism and total insurgent warfare have made it much harder to maintain an occupation. Yes, there were insurgencies in the past but the cultural expectation that hundreds of thousands or even millions of people will live in craters, subsist on worms and rats, forgoe medicine, endure exposure, hunger, pain and trauma for years or decades or even generations to guarantee self rule.
The cultural invention of nationalistic mass resistance depends on technological innovations. You need modern small arms and explosives to make every cell of 20 or so fighters a threat which can't be ignored by an occupier. You need modern communication to coordinate these cells.
And of course the value of this cultural invention is in its ubiquity. So you need an era of sentimental propaganda that depends on modern mass media to disseminate it.
Ultimately technology and culture are not separate things. They shape each other as they develop and sometimes they are one in the same.