Are we really "FREE" ?

In 1945, Bung Karno said that we have our independent. But, is that a real independence now? I don’t think so. As a peripheral state like Immanuel Wallerstein stated in his Modern World System Theory, we are dominated by the core states. They buy our raw material as cheap as possible and then process it into commodities that we need and sell to us in an expensive price.(Balaam & Dillman, 2014) Do you realize that, that is the actual colonization.

But maybe, we couldn’t run away from the reality that we need them because we don’t have any sufficient technology to process all that raw material. Why we as the peripheral states feel being exploited by them while we still need help from the superpower states? Yes, we still need them but I think, there are many people out there who enrich themselves so we are exploited not just by the core states but also buy our people too.

There is also another reason, why we couldn’t avoid them. We live in liberalism world now which we need to depend in others because we can’t fulfill our needs by ourselves. Besides, core states are fewer than the peripheral. So, we don’t have any flexibility in choosing because when we don’t want to give our resources, they could choose other states.

Besides our raw material, do you realize that our culture also being exploited now? Tell me, how many of your friends know the name of traditional house or clothes? All we know is LV, Guess, Esprit and others branded things. Do you know that Nike’s shoes are made in Indonesian with cheap budget and how much do you spend your money just to buy those shoes. Many of Indonesian products also have high quality why don’t we try to buy that? Do you still wanna be a prisoner ?  

Source : Balaam, D. N., & Dillman, B. (2014). Wealth and Power: The Mercantilist Perspective. In Introduction to International Political Economy (pp. 120-122). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

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