Posted on 01/13/2015 3:43:21 PM PST by MNDude
Maybe this is a rant as much as it is a question, but I often find myself astonished by third (and 2nd) world culture from what I've seen of it.
Mexico: OK, this is probably more 2nd world than 3rd world. They do many things like USA. I have inlaws in Mexico, so I've spent some time there. One thing that seems to be consistent, whether you are visiting someone's home or a gas station, is that the toilets are rarely completely functional! So often they'll have a large bucket outside or in the bathroom that you have fill up with water and then use it to flush the toilet. WHY? It's pretty rare in USA that I've found a toilet that way. How is it that everyone's freaking toilet breaks...and there's never anyone there to fix it! If it is working, then there's a great chance that the toilet will be missing the toilet seat. Are they content to sit without a seat? Can't be poverty, because many of these homes I've seen like this are filled with X-box games.
India: Now we are down to 3rd world. I've spent several in India. I have often looked at awe in the lack of inefficiency and the way they do things.
Constructing a building: A person on the bottom fills a bucket with cement, who then hands it off to a person standing on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands the bucket to a person on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands it to a person above them (about 4 or 5 platforms high, I can't remember). Have they never heard of the pulley?
Sweeping the floor: I remember at my hotel, every morning about 5 people would come out to the plaza with a handful of thin sticks, that I guess kind of was supposed to resemble a broom. These workers began scratching their sticks back and forth on the ground swiftly, raising a little dust, but mostly just scratching the ground. A few hours later they were done. Have they never heard of a push broom?
Scrubbing the floor: Always on hands and knees with a scrubber. Never heard of the Mop?
I remember I asked an India guy at the hotel why they work this way. He replied "Oh, this way they can employ a lot more people!" I answered "Why don't they just hire them to fix the broken doors, the holes in the ground, and pick up the garbage lying around outside?"
Africa: Last, and YES LEAST. Is there such thing as 4th world? I was in Africa, and one day I was with a tour and we went to visit the tribe where the people worked. These people herded cattle. At nighttime, the corralled all the cows into the center of their village made of mud huts to keep them safe. Of course the cows pooped like crazy in the center of the village and the area was just swarming with flies! The kids had flies crawling all over their faces. I remember as a kid seeing a picture of a starving kid from Africa covered with flies. I asked my mom why they don't shoo away the flies and she answered "They are so hungry they can't even think of brushing away the flies." Nope...these kids weren't starving, they don't shoo away the flies because they don't. In any case, why does it never occur to these people to build a corral outside their village?
While I was in there, I visited a city with the population of probably 50,000, although it's really tough to tell. Guess what the people used for their bathroom. Modern plumbing? Nope. Port-a-Potty? Nope. Outhouse? Nope. Dig a hole and poop in it and cover it up? Nope. These guys had NO bathroom facilities and would just go out and poop in whatever area with no attempt to cover it. I mean seriously!! When I was in Jr. High I went on a camping trip with class, and first thing the teacher told us was what to do with the little shovel. Family of Laura Ingalls arrives by oxcart to Walnut grove in 1877, and first thing Charles builds is an outhouse! Have these people never heard of a hole before?
Anyhow, that's my rant. Anyone else had any experience in 3rd world countries? Any insights?
An engineer I worked with had been in China building a coal fired power plant. When he left, the coal delivery system was set up to operate automatically.
Two years later he returned to do some more work there. All that automatic coal delivery system had been replaced by coolies and coal carts.
and factions and villages fight over the wells. Everyone was happy to see Southern Somalia get independence but their government is still as corrupt as can be and no developing is taking place. You still have UN programs to dig wells that will go unrepaired soon enough.
“does anyone here really think these countries are doing much developing?”
It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is happening quickly.
When you double the income of those tribesman you saw covered with flies in their mud (probably really cow patty) huts, they will still seem to be living in squalor. But they are doubling pretty quickly. The fastest percentage rise in income is among Earth’s poorest, just because it takes so little to do it.
People are leaving their crops and herds and heading into the city by the droves around the world. The movement from the country to the city in China over the last couple of decades is believed to be the biggest human migration ever in raw numbers. Chinese wages have gone up so much, that many Chinese manufacturers have set up overseas, notably in Ethiopia.
Remember when Ethiopia was in the news for mass starvation? Well that was the effect of the Marxist policies of the Derg Government there, and their use of famine to eliminate opponents, rather than inherent backwardness. Ethiopia (Africa’s second most populous country) has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world for some time now, maintaining 7-10% growth in GDP, since throwing off the Derg and exiling Mengistu to Zimbabwe.
You can still see some people in the South living in mud huts like something out of National Geographic, but they probably now have a cell phone. Chinese factories and construction projects are very visible, and it takes much less time to get around the country than it did just a few years ago. The rich have gotten a lot richer of course, but the rise of the overall standard of living is (though frustrating to many) is rapid compared to historical or global averages.
Many factors contribute, but the biggest are probably technology and better Government economic policies. The former Commies are now out to make as much money as they can, and except for Zimbabwe, are doing so in ways that is growing the overall economy. The African Union is harmonizing regulations across countries to ease trade, based on best practices that they are spoon-fed from the International community. So local bureaucrats are not just swinging in the dark pulling policy out of their butts, they are generally getting and implementing much better advice.
Even the security situation is improving over the long term. Hard to believe with high profile problems like Boko Haram or the Central American/ Mexican gangs, but there has also been a gradual improvement in overall safety and stability (except for the Arab Spring areas, which have markedly degraded in recent years).
I remember a story in the Business section of the Dallas Morning News about a US company establishing a lettuce (or something) farm just over the border in Mexico.
The American bosses were stunned to see their new employees pooping in the field where the harvesting was taking place. So they brought in port-a-potties.... had to teach them how to use it... and the toilet paper too!!!
[ It’s an attitude problem.
That, and a culture that values blame-fixing over problem solving.
Slums are just the physical manifestation of something going on (or not going on) in people’s heads. ]
That and a “Nobody owns anything so why bother” culture as well as a culture that is steeped with a deep “envy problem”.
Should someone attempt to “own” something and better it, their fellow citizens would get green eyed with envy and attack them for having it too good. seriously.
They need an infusion of “Property ownership” and a good dose of “don;t covet thy neighbor’s stuff they worked hard for”.
Cousin worked for a major oil company in Indonesia.
They had a golf course inside their fenced compound.
Every morning 100 guys would be out there with weed whackers "mowing" the fairways, each getting a buck or so a day.
Same with maid service. Maids did everything, got a couple bucks a week. Pay more than that and you get in trouble, 'cause it makes everybody jealous, etc.
Friedman was right. If the best man could afford an excavator, pretty soon he'd have a crew, his crew would start to have crews, the country progresses...
Though I do not agree with your prediction about technology and progress spreading, enriching, emancipating. If you have lived for a few generations under dependency and shiftlessness then THAT becomes your ethos....maybe one out of ten ever escape.
“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
“I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day. . .”
“Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”
From Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS
Mexico, Latin America, and much of the third world in our hemisphere don’t have anything that works because the Caudillo thugs take it. And Haiti...Well, political correctness prevents me from commenting on that dump. There was a story that they are still “waiting” for someone to rebuild their nation. They are WAITING!!! How many able bodied people are in Haiti just waiting around for someone else to do something for them?
All third world dumps have one thing in common. ZERO property rights. Why even bother pretending to care about your property when thugs will take it. If you have something nice you lose it.
India, I have a little bit of perspective when I did some contract work in Chandigarh, which is ‘modern’ compared to the rest of India. The reason things are so inefficiently done is because you have to keep a billion people busy doing something. Anything, doesn’t matter. I was doing an installation of a large ‘sculpture’ at a new building. Rather than have a forklift they had 100 men come out and carry the sculpture. If you need a ditch, why hire a back hoe that can dig the ditch in 2 hours when you can have an army of men that can dig it in two week for half the cost?. It makes sense to have all those men doing something for a little bit of cash rather then have them sitting around doing nothing.
Well, my father always said, “never crap where you eat and live.” I guess they never learn that over htere.
i read a destription where the women in a village walked 6 miles to get water daily. My question is, “ Why don’t the men dig a well?” When my neighbor needed water for his barn he duy a well. Not drilled -dug. And so it goes.
“The problem with 3rd world countries is that they were not founded on Judeo-Christian values. This is important because our culture is unique in that we uphold honest and decent behavior as the key to mutual prosperity.”
This is true even with ostensibly “Catholic” Mexico. One of my latino coworkers with close family in Mexico once described the prevailing attitude of his homeland as “do unto others before they do unto you”. And he wasn’t trying to insult Mexico he simply was making a comment about how it operates.
Not that there isn’t a generous side to Mexican culture as well because there is. But the habit of taking advantage of others is deeply embedded in their civic culture and that’s a big reason why Mexico is corrupt and poor.
You’ll appreciate this ChinaSmack poster’s impression of India:
http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/filthy-india-photos-chinese-netizen-reactions.html
Common practice for sewer systems using septic tanks, rather than a secondary wastewater treatment plant. Same practice is used in much of rural US.
American and Western men are considered true prizes to women world-wide.
American and Western men are considered true prizes to women world-wide.
“- from an online review of P.T.Bauer’s book ‘Equality, the Third World, And Economic Delusion’”
Good catch. That’s a classic work.
Sounds like what I saw happen to my part of SoCal.
We pulled into port in the Republic of Georgia. Two little Gypsy kids, a boy and a girl begging for money. The boy was sitting in a decrepit, broken, rusted wheelchair and the girl was standing next to him. After a while, I saw the boy stand up, push the decrepit wheelchair to the next block and now it was the girl's turn to sit in it.
Clever kids.
I want to puke! I was at that exact spot on the Ganges river. I saw a lot of cremations on the shore but I didn’t see any of those floating corpses. I remember thinking as I breathed in that burning flesh smelling air (you know how burnt hair or fingernails smell?) I was thinking “AAAARRGH! I am inhaling human molecules!”
Ukraine. Not quite a third world country but pretty damn close. A public restroom in Ukraine will be staffed by three women. One sells you entrance, the second sells you toilet paper and the third mops the floor. I figured this was a hold-over from the "100% employment" of the Soviet days.
Why not just stock the commodes with toilet paper? Simple. People will steal it. Same reason they have lightbulb testers in the stores. They test your lightbulb in front of you before you pay for it. This prevents you from bringing back your old burned-out bulb and trying to claim it was the one you just purchased.
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