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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: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday May 18 2020, @05:09PM (7 children)
I have chickens. I give away my extra eggs to friends. Sometimes they offer to pay but I always decline, or they'll slip a few bucks into the returned egg cartons and I'll roll my eyes and say nothing. My eggs cost me roughly $8-10/dozen between feed, facilities, vermin control, and so forth. None of those cost calculation includes labor. Some of those costs are the same whether you have 10 chickens or 100, some scale with the flock, but the idea that you get free eggs from chickens is not correct. You get really excellent eggs that put any supermarket egg to shame, but you don't get free eggs. The friends of chicken owners do -- if what you want is free eggs, see if you can manipulate a friend into getting chickens -- of course that would just make you an asshole more than a friend, but that's the only way you get free eggs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday May 18 2020, @05:11PM
I forgot to add -- the reason I don't take money for my eggs is that unless I'm getting $10/dozen, I'm losing money. I'd rather give a gift and lose nothing (because it's a gift and the compensation is the warm fuzzies), than sell eggs for a loss.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Monday May 18 2020, @11:20PM (3 children)
Even before governments existed to shake down societal non-contributors (taxation, what a crime against humanity and God!) a tribe would either club such people with stone axes until they contributed or banish them. Without that a society degrades into a prisoners dilemma that either progressively collapses at every crisis bigger than one persons ability to fix, or else gets rolled by the next tribe/society to come along.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Tuesday May 19 2020, @01:05AM (1 child)
Definitely one of the most interesting and insightful and pithy things I've read in a while...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @05:33AM
Thanks, though it was a "collaborative" process in a manner of speaking. Continually dealing with right wing libertarians just boiled the pot dry, and rendered out the essentials.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday May 19 2020, @05:39AM
Usually started with shunning. Heard a blog about a small group of hunter gatherers (15?) where one guy was taking more then his share (as judged by the rest of the tribe). A bit of shunning straightened him up and made him realize he was dependent on the rest of the tribe.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday May 19 2020, @03:58AM
This is actually why I don't keep chickens and produce my own eggs... the eggs might be 'free' but keeping the chickens is not (unless you just turn 'em loose, which isn't very efficient for eggs, but delights the foxes), and cost/benefit isn't very good at that small scale, especially not when I can get the same quality of eggs from the Hutterites for $2/dozen.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday May 19 2020, @05:19PM
Fair point. I thought I addressed it, but it was clearly too abstract; "waste products of other production" is supposed to mean that if you're running any other agriculture, you shouldn't have to pay for chicken feed. At least, that's how I imagine it worked in the past.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?