I’m really not sure how to phrase this, but I understand that the first world enjoys a high level of material abundance, comfort, convenience, and privilege (“treats”) off of the backs of third world, sweatshop, child labour. From children mining for minerals that go into computer chips in the congo, to bengali women labouring in designer clothing sweatshops for pennies. What I don’t really have are books about that go indepth about this phenomenon and how it developed (and by this phenomenon I mean imperialism in the modern day)
I’ve only taken a cursorary glance through it but I think “A brief history of neoliberalism” by David Harvey might fit what I’m looking for
i highly recommend the divide by jason hickel as a very easy to read introduction to modern financial neo-imperialism (and the regular old imperialism that preceded it) and the unequal exchange and exploitation that defines the continuation of modern inequality. and correctly nails the major culprits as being the imf/world bank/wto as major drivers of how the west carries this out
he libs out a bit at the end, and he doesnt really tackle the systemic racism that underpins all of this, but its a really solid intro (and very appropriate to give to curious libs as well)
if you want to go a bit further in depth into the material history of how a lot of this exploitation developed and why, open veins of latin america is an excellent read that, as the name suggests, focuses exclusively on western exploitation of latin america. it was written in the 70s so its not really up to date on a lot of the newer stuff of how imperialism functions in the current neoliberal context, but its an incredibly solid background on how a continent has been pillaged for treats for centuries