How Fucked is the Third World, Really?

[Dawdler]

There's only first world.
Anything else is an uncivilized cesspit.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

It really depends on what part of the third world you mean. Even in Africa, things range from pretty livable even by first world standards to places a soft American or west European would die before leaving the airport. One of the things I noticed on the taxi ride from the airport to the city I was staying in in Africa was nearly every village that looked like slums or even some rubble with people living in it had several satellite dishes that looked a bit like those DirectTV or Dish Network receivers. That was probably the only bill anyone in those villages had to pay. Even in a lot of the major cities, there are parts of the city where there is no rent to pay and property tax is unheard of. People who have a net worth of ~$100 and no job can take up residence in an unoccupied building, usually in the really nice historic old quarter of the city and it's just theirs. In one city I visited, an Irish family got a place in the Casbah, an old fortress, by throwing some ridiculously small amount of money (I think it was the equivalent of $10,000) at the family who lived there previously.
There are a few things you might have to compromise on if you live there, rich or poor, but when you spend time there, you do end up thinking about how back home, everything is designed to squeeze the maximum amount of productivity out of you. A big part of those compromises does involve the ability to consoom, but you may also be compromising on things like education and healthcare, which are often free for very basic stuff (and probably funded in part by some NGO that is getting axed soon) but expensive if you want premium private education or healthcare. For a European, this would probably be a very bad deal, but maybe not so much for an American. Things also run very slow, and people often show up or do things hours after the time they agreed to.
The above applies mostly to the nicer parts of the world that could still be considered third world, Morocco and Ghana being the two I'm most familiar with. There are other parts of the third world I would not set foot in, much less live, rich or poor. Those are basket cases like the Congo or Central African Republic, and North Korea tier dictatorships like Eritrea. This is where you find your fifty-faction civil wars, AIDS, rape, slavery, and tuberculosis

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

Perhaps not quite what you had in mind, but I dated a girl years back who was from an 'emerging economy' Asian country. She was, by local standards, very well off, if not rich. Solidly middle class my the standards of my first world nation.

It was wild seeing literal slum apartments and people living in virtually poverty, where she lived in a gated apartment complex with 24/7 security, all that.

This is a complex question however, as her country is generally very safe, where many of these prosperous, first world nations will openly allow their citizens to be harassed in the streets by niggers, crackheads, and sundry homeless.

 

[Dawdler]

when you spend time there, you do end up thinking about how back home, everything is designed to squeeze the maximum amount of productivity out of you.

That's because it is. Cities are made to extract value from people. Farms are made to extract value from land and so on.

It was wild seeing literal slum apartments and people living in virtually poverty, where she lived in a gated apartment complex with 24/7 security, all that.

Europe and US was a gated community but someone opened the gates.

 

[BiggestKai]

You really just "survive" and cope/hope things don't get any worse, and if you're really optimistic you cope/hope that things get better, or at least get better at a rate that can outpace the rate of things getting worse and keeping the hope alive that things will truly turn later.

The big problem is that there's no true safety net for anything good because third world countries are third world countries because of a nasty mix of

• rampant corruption means very little improves and it's almost always never done right because someone has to get their pockets lined(public projects feeling like a scam because why else would this road get completely repaved once every three months or why did this thing get built and who actually benefits from a mega opulent presidential palace in this economy) or sneak in an edge for them(genuinely good constitutional changes being bundled with "I will remain in power and gain more power and fuck you if you think otherwise")
• Leading to people treating each other poorly, and the cope is that "actually my neighbours/neighbourhood are good" when it's the exception and is subject to change to the tiniest of external factors(In my apartment building there's an escalating legal battle that stemmed from something as little as someone being rude to someone else when the first party was installing some cameras and the second was requesting it be angled slightly down for privacy reasons) and everyone else outside of the circle of "actually good" needing you to constantly remain 100% on guard because your trust in the law and in others is limited and will be abused if you just assume good in everyone else.
• Leading to everyone just being dicks all the time because things are fucked and I don't get rewarded for being good, which mutates until this line of selfish only winner has to be me, win-win is a fantasy is applied to everything.
  
  Trash in the streets and the alleyways? I don't live there and I'm not the one cleaning them up and I'm too lazy busy to go look for a trash can.
  Apply this to public transport, I'm not paying for it(directly) so I don't care if I stuck gum to the bottom of the seat, or ruined the upholstery, or broke a window brawling with someone else over some insignificant shit.
  
  Apply this to day to day dealings with people. Being rude to someone, or trying to cheat them if in a transaction? Fuck them, I don't know them. Say, I wonder why business and the economy in the country isn't the best, why are foreign investors leaving and why are factories shutting down, why are skilled labor and the educated leaving? And why are immigrants of the country often looked at poorly? Fuck them they're strangers, I got mine and they're gonna be rude and try to cheat me if I don't do so first.
  
  And so on.
  
  
• Which leads to anyone getting into a position of power for whatever reason(hard word, nepotism, luck, any combination of the three) having a very high likelyhood of being a man with poor character and a history of grudges just waiting to be inflicted on people and desires waiting to be fulfilled and now the power to make them happen, or someone broken and just happy to be there so they toe the line and not change the status quo
• Which leads to point 1, repeat cycle

Brain drain, poor morals and ethics, poor quality of life, it's all one big mega cycle and anyone in any possible position to change it has either been corrupted and has no reason to do so, has a better opportunity elsewhere and has given up the cause before even taking it up, is holding on to whatever wealth material or otherwise and won't risk losing it for a chance at the better and then there's everyone else with no actual prospects being an unwitting accomplice towards making things worse because they were never raised to be better and have no reason to.

There is tiny amounts of hope here and there, and realistically there has to be an inflection point where things will get better. My approach is if the world around you is going to shit then you need to improve yourself, influence what little you can for the better when you can and do your best not to add to the bad. Its cope yes, but eventually the silver lining will be bigger and it will always be there and at the very least if you didn't benefit from not being a fuckhead then someone else benefited from you not being a fuckhead and will in turn not be a fuckhead to someone else.

 

[Mystery Spy]

As others have said, most third-world nations aren't as bad as they're often portrayed and can offer a first-world experience – sometimes even a superior one – assuming you have money, are wealthy, or are part of the elite, of course. For example, while clean, safe streets might be the norm in Japan or Germany, in a third-world country, only the upper class typically has access to such amenities.

Let me tell you a "secret" :Third world countries often do have all the life animeties you love. The catch is the the vast majority of the natives don't enjoy then. That's reserved for the upper class, and tourists. Plebs do live in shitholes. No need to sugarcoat it.

Many people move to Mexico because they get more bang for their buck. Even a middle-class family income can afford a small taste of luxury now and then. People love to retire there for a reason. However, if you visit the poverty-stricken areas of a third-world country, they are often as bad as you might imagine: streets filled with garbage, high crime rates, over population. and hospitals that can barely keep up. It's all true.

Visiting a third-world country with money versus without money is like experiencing a whole different world. And it's important to remember that if you stay isolated within an expat bubble, you're likely only seeing a carefully curated, version of their country and not even notice how bad things really are for everyone that doesn't have both money and an american passport.

 

[Male Idiot]

Third world is just a cold war term. First world Nato, second world Warsaw, third Neutral.

This means the third world isn't a monolithic block. You can get more civilised places like Singapour, China, or utter shitholes like Congo or Somalia.

They can get really bad.

 

[The Connected Nose]

If you don't know any better, look after yourself and your family, and try to avoid trouble, yeah, I can see someone being perfectly happy in a third-world country. It's all they know, so they don't really have aspirations to change it.

Being poor in a first world country can be largely the same, given a similar attitude.

The difference, however, comes when you have to rely on anyone but yourself. In a first world country, there are often tons of services, charities, government programs, etc. to help if you fall on hard times. You can go to any hospital and be treated, and if you can't pay, it just gets written off (or the collectors hound you impotently). As much as people bitch and moan about cops, they generally treat people with dignity, and do their best to do a fair, professional job.

In a third world country? You fucking die. Either you starve, some criminal enterprise kills you, etc. If you get sick or injured and can't pay? Good fucking luck. They probably won't even let you in the door (and that's assuming the "hospital" is something more than a glorified gradeschool infirmary). And if you have run-ins with the cops? Be prepared to be extorted at best, or tortured then thrown in with the worst filth (both conditions and other inmates) imaginable.

So yeah, being poor in a first world country is vastly superior because while it may suck, it's still mostly SAFE.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

You vastly underestimate the misery of the third world and how deeply hidden it is behind thousand layers of cope about community, authenticity and SOUL. The first world really is happier if you look past the baseline kvetching about egg prices and muh mentals. The graph/table is more correct than you think.

Rule of thumb is anybody in the first world talking about Muh Community would be the first fuckers to be put on an actual community's shitlist and slowly driven out of said community.

 

[C. G. B. Spender]

Even in Africa, things range from pretty livable even by first world standards to places a soft American or west European would die before leaving the airport.

Its a miracle how some youtubers have managed to survive in places like South Sudan, balochistan area in India/Pakistan or Mogadishu. You'd think they would get robbed instantly or get kidnapped as soon as they get off that plane.

 

[オプセック]

Unless you believe in my philosophy, being that there is always a deeper level of hell you just haven't found yet.

In concrete terms: When boku haram or the khemer rouge turn up, you found that next level to your everyday thirdie hell.

 

[オプセック]

One of the things I noticed on the taxi ride from the airport to the city I was staying in in Africa was nearly every village that looked like slums or even some rubble with people living in it had several satellite dishes that looked a bit like those DirectTV or Dish Network receivers. That was probably the only bill anyone in those villages had to pay.

LoL, Americans baffled at the concept of free satellite TV - love it.

 

[Tonty]

Think of it like this, a dog turd in a white clean lab stands out and is immediately noticeable. Several dog turds in a rundown shit smeared bathroom don't stand out as much and can easily be missed by observers.

What kind of bathrooms are you hanging out in, where "several dog turds" can "easily be missed"???

 

[Chilson]

What kind of bathrooms are you hanging out in, where "several dog turds" can "easily be missed"???

What happens in a McDonalds bathroom stays in a McDonalds bathroom.

 

[Vibromatic Heart Bed]

I think the mental image of thirdies frolicking in the jungles/farms and singing kumbaya is 100% a white ppl fantasy. It's how 1st worlders cope with knowing that 84% of the world lives in poverty, hungry, with no access to clean water and sanitation.

There's a hobo who sleeps on the steam grates on the sidewalk around the corner from me. At any time, he can walk into a mall and take a shit in the bathroom and drink some tap water. He can hop on a subway for warmth. He can scrounge for food and he won't die of cholera. He can go to the hospital and receive medical care at a high standard.

If you have a medical emergency or catch one of the many rampant diseases in a 3rd world country you're fucked, especially if you're far away from an actual city. Hospitals have no supplies/resources, they're lucky if they have xrays or CT scanners, and most "doctors" and "nurses" have no idea wtf they're doing. Education is not a thing. God help you if you step on a shard of glass, or get burned, or have to give birth. Malaria, TB, typhoid, ebola, all that shit is practically unheard of outside of 3rd world countries. The lifespan is shorter and people suffer.

So overall I'd say pretty fucked

 

[Celestial Peace]

Sure, I live in Uruguay

Motherfucker you live in the best Latin American country and you're complaining? Uruguay is the closest to a first world nation in South America. If only Brazil was in the same level as Uruguay we wouldn't suck as a country and I would hate it less than I do.

 

[>tfw no Asian gf]

Motherfucker you live in the best Latin American country and you're complaining? Uruguay is the closest to a first world nation in South America. If only Brazil was in the same level as Uruguay we wouldn't suck as a country and I would hate it less than I do.

Hey now, being the best in Latin America is like being the smartest kid on the short bus but to be fair, we suck a lot less than everyone else in the region, that is true, however the problems I mentioned, mainly the economic ones have caused us to become stagnant in nearly every possible aspect.

 

[cybertoaster]

It may seem minor but the near ubiquitousness of relatively clean fresh water is really undersold as first world glory

Lots of parts in the third world have clean water, not every third world country is Mexico or some forgotten shithole in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Meanwhile water in Flint MI has lead, basically every area near a fracking zone has polluted water not fit for human condition and the entire southwest is getting drier every year.

 

[seri0us]

This reminds me of Mexicans saying how they don't take Internet privacy very seriously, because they could just end up killed by a cartel without warning anyway.

And even if you get their real legal name you'll never be able to sift through the thousands of Facebook profiles...

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

Lots of parts in the third world have clean water, not every third world country is Mexico or some forgotten shithole in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Meanwhile water in Flint MI has lead, basically every area near a fracking zone has polluted water not fit for human condition and the entire southwest is getting drier every year.

Clean tap water is an exclusively West European, East Asian and Israeli phenomenon. I genuinely cannot think of a third world shithole with tap water that is safe to drink unless you count some parts of the US.