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COVID-19 Has Blown Away the Myth About 'First' and 'Third' World Competence:
One of the planet's – and Africa's – deepest prejudices is being demolished by the way countries handle COVID-19.
For as long as any of us remember, everyone "knew" that "First World" countries – in effect, Western Europe and North America – were much better at providing their citizens with a good life than the poor and incapable states of the "Third World". "First World" has become shorthand for competence, sophistication and the highest political and economic standards.
[...] So we should have expected the state-of-the-art health systems of the "First World", spurred on by their aware and empowered citizens, to handle COVID-19 with relative ease, leaving the rest of the planet to endure the horror of buckling health systems and mass graves.
We have seen precisely the opposite.
[...] [Britain and the US] have ignored the threat. When they were forced to act, they sent mixed signals to citizens which encouraged many to act in ways which spread the infection. Neither did anything like the testing needed to control the virus. Both failed to equip their hospitals and health workers with the equipment they needed, triggering many avoidable deaths.
The failure was political. The US is the only rich country with no national health system. An attempt by former president Barack Obama to extend affordable care was watered down by right-wing resistance, then further gutted by the current president and his party. Britain's much-loved National Health Service has been weakened by spending cuts. Both governments failed to fight the virus in time because they had other priorities.
And yet, in Britain, the government's popularity ratings are sky high and it is expected to win the next election comfortably. The US president is behind in the polls but the contest is close enough to make his re-election a real possibility. Can there be anything more typically "Third World" than citizens supporting a government whose actions cost thousands of lives?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 18 2020, @01:56PM (2 children)
True capitalism is never achieved in the same way that true communism never is. It's much easier for the powerful to rig the system so they're the only ones to gain. There's always a tension. That said, a free market system, pure or not, is demonstrably better at delivering material wealth to more people than communism is. We're not even sure that social democracy works as well as its proponents insist, because for the past 70 years European social democracies have been essentially subsidized by the United States, which is not a social democracy but has been footing the massive military bills.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @02:29PM
Yawn, true capitalism has existed but its failures get blamed on others. Typical capitalism gaslighting.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @01:22AM
Wha? A market is neither capitalist or communist... those ideologies only speak to who owns the means of production. Worker owned CoOPs in the USA are by definition communist! A command economy is where most nations go during wartime or some other existential national emergency. The bolsheviks loved that shit, so they kept it... but it's hardly by definition communist. The whole point of not having a democracy, and a government controlled command economy was because the bolsheviks argued Russia wasn't ready for true communism. For sure, the bolsheviks sucked and were utterly authoritarian... but so were all the capitalist dictators (Chiang Ki Shek, Pinochet, Marcos, the Greek military junta etc... etc... etc...), but a significant percentage of the rest of the world look at Americans like they've grown extra eyestalks when they say communism is by definition authoritarian. Most Western Europeans have had communists in power (yes, in coalition, but that's how multi-party systems ie. actually functioning democracies work). They played a part in Israeli politics (at least before the right took over completely). Communism still plays a part in Indian politics etc... etc... Those communists who wanted to avoid having to combat US propaganda in popular culture rebranded themselves "democratic socialists" to avoid the association with bolshevik socialists who were portrayed as the sole representatives of true communism, though to be fair the bolsheviks loved self-assigning themselves that mantle also. The "democratic socialist" rebranding was a mistake in my humble opinion, and it has become wishy washy and these days is even worn by neoliberal state intervention minimalists simply wanting to manage societal decline.