Third worldization of first world?

[RadioRaheem84]

Noticing that as the third world "develops" and the first world under develops, the two are sort of resembling one another. The poor in first world nations are looking a lot like the working poor in the third world. Not the most destitute but certainly the poor working class. Some areas in the States alone look third worldish. How is there even an argument anymore that our system is way better than the third world? Obviously the life is still better in the States but it's not miles apart for the poor, especially now. How is this element largely marginalized? I've been to Latin America several times and in Chile at least the re wasn't this miles apart difference between the working poor.

[Nolan]

Noticing that as the third world "develops" and the first world under develops, the two are sort of resembling one another. The poor in first world nations are looking a lot like the working poor in the third world. Not the most destitute but certainly the poor working class. Some areas in the States alone look third worldish. How is there even an argument anymore that our system is way better than the third world? Obviously the life is still better in the States but it's not miles apart for the poor, especially now. How is this element largely marginalized? I've been to Latin America several times and in Chile at least the re wasn't this miles apart difference between the working poor.

Southern South America (Chile, Argentina, and to some extents Uruguay and Brazil) tends to be better off than the rest of Latin America. Places like Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, parts of Brazil, and Mexico still have extremely large numbers of the working poor living in absolute destitution, something that's almost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_poverty) unheard of in the imperialist "first world."

[Dimentio]

Well, it resembles traditional trade theory a little bit, that living standards tend to converge. I don't think there will ever be the same living standard in the entire world under capitalism, not even if the entire world was unified under one government - because some regions tend to exploit other regions.

[tellyontellyon]

Maybe the capitalists are destroying peoples lives in the west so that they will have a pool of desperate poor workers somewhere around the world so they can keep capitalism going in some form?
They can just keep moving their capital around and moving poverty around too.

[Dimentio]

Maybe the capitalists are destroying peoples lives in the west so that they will have a pool of desperate poor workers somewhere around the world so they can keep capitalism going in some form?
They can just keep moving their capital around and moving poverty around too.

I think its an emergent rather than an intentional process. Automatisation and outsorcing is leading to a deterioration of "unskilled" labour. In the 90's I remember it was a popular thing to try to reeducate everyone to become web designers, since we otherwise would get a two-third society where two thirds continued to get higher life standards, while a third would be thrown into perpetual unemployment and lower status jobs.

Idiotic thing to assume that web designers somehow could replace productive labour :lol:

[tellyontellyon]

Yeh, few capitalists would have much idea of why capitalism actually fails to have that much foresight... They put the latest collapse down to 'greedy public sector workers', with a 'few bad apples' in the city etc... or an act of god!

I'm sure they mostly believe in a mythical sort of capitalism that works... with no more boom and bust.

I'm so fed up of capitalism :(

[ComradeOm]

Some areas in the States alone look third worldishThis is not new. The concept of a First/Third World divide does not account for poverty within the developed nations. In fairness, it doesn't attempt to do so because its not particularly relevant

[RadioRaheem84]

I think its an emergent rather than an intentional process. Automatisation and outsorcing is leading to a deterioration of "unskilled" labour. In the 90's I remember it was a popular thing to try to reeducate everyone to become web designers, since we otherwise would get a two-third society where two thirds continued to get higher life standards, while a third would be thrown into perpetual unemployment and lower status jobs.

Idiotic thing to assume that web designers somehow could replace productive labour :lol:


When capitalists love to call our ideas about the economy, "planned", aren't they playing semantics here as their economies are "planned" by the dictates of the market? The example cited above is just one of many attempts by planners to foresee trends in the market and act on them.

[Dimentio]

When capitalists love to call our ideas about the economy, "planned", aren't they playing semantics here as their economies are "planned" by the dictates of the market? The example cited above is just one of many attempts by planners to foresee trends in the market and act on them.

Their forecasts are about as relevant as most weather forecasts. They could merely guess. But the market truly is an emergent process which is hard to predict. Emergence is characterised by input from a lot of sources which equate a result not intentional or foreseen.