It's hard to tell because the World Bank is so young in the history of nations. Certainly in the short term things are less painful, but having your country's natural wealth siphoned off by other countries (or in many cases absurdly wealthy individuals/companies) has the potential to create real and systematic harms.
We could imagine, for example, a United States that became and remained very poor after having all its natural wealth siphoned off by European firms under predatory terms during the Great Depression. It's hard to tell if the world would've been a better or worse place (maybe the profits would've been reinvested into stabilizing Germany's internal politics), but certainly US citizens would be much worse off today.
On the other hand, could a World Bank have saved Germany from Nazism and ended the world wars after episode I? Probably. Who really knows.
We could imagine, for example, a United States that became and remained very poor after having all its natural wealth siphoned off by European firms under predatory terms during the Great Depression. It's hard to tell if the world would've been a better or worse place (maybe the profits would've been reinvested into stabilizing Germany's internal politics), but certainly US citizens would be much worse off today.
On the other hand, could a World Bank have saved Germany from Nazism and ended the world wars after episode I? Probably. Who really knows.