Bauer rejects this assertion, concluding that “contact with the West has been the prime agent of material progress in the Third World” (Bauer 1984, 57). The prima facie evidence for this causal argument is the observation that those Third World countries with close historical ties to the First World are better off than other developing countries whose exposure to the West has been less extensive.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1770