Think about it...

The developing world has been similarity transformed from colonies into independent states. Many people there are still desperately poor and oppressed, and we still get the natural resources we need. But we now pay native rulers and “elites” for such imports and therefore are – or at least feel – morally disconnected from the misery of locals.

So a suspicion, […], is that the celebrated historic transformation of our moral norms has mostly produced cosmetic rearrangements. Imagine some visionary European statesman, in 1830 say, posing the question of how the advanced states of Europe and North America can preserve and, if possible, expand their economic and political dominance over the rest of the world even while bringing themselves into compliance with the core norms of Enlightenment morality. Find the best solution to this task you can think of and then compare it to the world today. Could the West have done any better? (Pogge, 5)

Pogge, Thomas (2002) _World Poverty and Human Rights_. Cabridge: Polity.