Spring forward.
To delete this message, click the X at top right.

The Third Worlding of the First World?

Post Reply
User avatar
keith
Posts: 3704
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:23 pm
Location: The Swamp in Victorian Oz
Occupation: Retired Computer Systems Analyst Project Manager Super Coder
Verified: ✅lunatic

The Third Worlding of the First World?

#1

Post by keith »

A recent blog post from Greg Laden (Greg Laden's Blog) is a pretty good read discussing how thin the veneer of 'first world supply chain logistics' is and are the 'third world supply chain' circumstances really what the oligarchs want?
One day I returned home and realized I had forgotten the shampoo. It was a devastating revelation.

You are probably thinking, “First World problem,” right? Well, it wasn’t because at the time I was living in the actual co-called “Third World.”
...
Laden's forgotten shampoo problem was solved by a circuitous route of his host (where he left his shampoo) handing it off to some random passer by who didn't know Laden or where he was staying (500 miles away in a remote research station), who passed it on to someone else, and someone else, and someone else, till it eventually ended up in the hands of a cattleman who happened to be driving his cattle through the area where the research station was.
In sum: First world problem and third world solution.

The thing is, this was not an unusual event. It was normal.

Well, it was a somewhat extreme and amusing, story-generating version of normal. Normal is more like I go to a guy’s store and say I want to exchange money, and he says he can’t but he knows someone who can, and it turns out that is also the guy I’m hoping to get a rebuilt fuel injector from, and he is the sibling of a person who is offering bags of ground cassava for pretty cheap, but they all live in different places but are visiting relatives, and somebody needs a ride across town. Three people, actually, with stops along the way. So, after three hours of driving around with people and stuff, three hours of meeting and greeting, counting out giant piles of near worthless local currency, goods and services being exchanged, a couple cups of tea and a chupa of beer or two, and at the end of the day, I end up completing an important bank transaction in the land without banks, my truck will get fixed, and we can eat for a month, all stuff I would have done in the US in less than 45 minutes, but here, it is a series of social events bound together with a ToDo list, and a full day’s activity.
...
...But what they hit on, accidentally, is the point I’m making here. Two points, really. 1) Third World life is just under the surface, and 2) If you get your expectations in order, this change we are having has some serious benefits; it isn’t all down side.

There is a third point. This is all Trump’s fault. And the Republicans. By ripping apart as many systems as they could, and by encouraging rather than fighting the Covid pandemic, they damaged or broke all the things that matter to most of the people, while leaving the rich intact. We are now more like Zaire/Congo than we ever were. (Like our postal system, on the verge of collapse. Many countries don’t even have a postal system. They just have this guy who happens to be walking down the street, or a muzungu with a working vehicle who happens to be going across town…) The Republican goal is to turn the US into a sea of Third World humanity with the supply chain ever broken, with a small wealthy and somewhat larger and less wealthy ex-patriot-esque community living behind walls in some serious priv. That is what Republicans always wanted, that is what they are finally getting.
The specific post: The Third Worlding
Has everybody heard about the bird?
Post Reply

Return to “Economy”