I thought this was self explanatory since you guys mainline a lot of starving African kids in your mainstream media atleast, but apparently contrarianism has meant Chapos going the full circle and denying that it is actually even worse there.

Sincerely, someone in the global south. If you disagree, post below, I have a lot of time to explain.

Adding an edit to copy paste a comment where I replied in terms of what I mean

The amount of precariousness someone poor in the first world might face is not really comparable to what poverty in the south looks like. Rule of law is absent, the government is also absent, so while the social security net may be failing or too small in the first world– it’s entirely absent in the third. There aren’t enough teachers or doctors even for the people who can afford them. Children are born into indentured labour, by which I mean they are born to work off their parents debt, usually working from the age of 4 onwards. While we are all comrades, under the same boot of the bourgeoisie, remember that the workers of the third world may view the way that first world workers live in poverty as basically the good life.

  • grylarski [they/them]
    8·
    4 years ago

    You can benefit from things that you are neither complicit nor responsible for.

    In your article:

    Roland left the reservation for the first time in his life in April, when he was airlifted to a hospital in Rapid City for an emergency surgery after he slipped in the snow and shattered his hip while chopping firewood

    This... is not possible as an option. This is what I mean by the absence of governance, of a social security net that will save you, even if it's leaving you indebted here. There are enough doctors to do surgeries.

    To make matters worse, teachers like Cheryl often struggle with underfunding and a lack of school supplies, turning to nonprofit organisations for help.

    There's a public school? It has a teacher? Non profit organisations have the resources to help.

    This is how poverty is wildly different. Recognising this is important, to prevent imperialism for the sake of erasing American poverty, and the urgency of helping comrades in the south.

    Response to EDIT: Denying the costs of imperialism in the past prevents us as leftists from being honest. Hiding and obscuring reality don't create real unity. There is no solidarity when all you say to the people in third world who consider your standard of life enviable, that you're the same. You cannot just pretend or wish away that there are no differences when you fight for 15 dollar hour wage when they live below 1 dollar a day. Solidarity doesn't come by telling people that they're ruining the anti bougie vibe.

      • grylarski [they/them]
        2·
        4 years ago

        This is a wild misunderstanding of what I said... It's one line, that non profits have resources to help. What I mean is that non profits in the developing world are terribly underresourced because more people need them and less people are capable of donating to them. There's significantly more capacity in the non profit sector in the developed world because the industry is large, robust and has significant capital.

        Unsure why receiving charity from a developed nation makes you an exploiter. I've always held that the American working class is not "responsible" for the ills of the developing world. They still benefit from it.

        White working people are not responsible for racist policy, they still benefit from it.