What we support and defend

[Fuchs]

Dayuhan, the last quote isn't mine.

It would be interesting to see actual figures on how much was earned from the whole system on the public and private sides, both with and without the opium trade, an enormously profitable enterprise that would tend to skew the overall picture.

The easiest way to look at it is to look at the goods trade balance of the UK in the late 19th century.
The human capital export was no doubt considerable, but that human capital was -once exported- sustained (fed) by foreigners, so this could be treated like migration.


Germany - which only colonised the poor countries which were left by the late 19th century save for Abyssinia - had a clearly negative cost/benefit result. The colonies costed many times as much as they generated income.
We got rid of at least some assholes, though.