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.
Chapos going the full circle and denying that it is actually even worse there.
Could you provide a few examples? I have never ever seen some one post this. Obviously the material conditions in third world countries are worse than in the first world.
I've also heard statements saying that if it wasn't for the U.S barebones building code regulations, we'd have Brazilian style favelas across the country.
This particular statement has some truth to it though. Think of poor black areas of Arkansas and Alabama then picture an urban center without regulation.
In the U.S. folks are outraged about high concentrations of lead coming out of the taps in poor neighborhoods.
A Limeño once bragged to me that the city had recently built stairs to some of the hillside slums, making it easier for residents to carry their water uphill, and preventing children from sliding off the cliffs to their deaths when it rained.
We can be angry about both these things while also recognizing that they are different in degree.
I thought this was self explanatory since you guys mainline a lot of starving African kids in your mainstream med
I think that most of this contrarianism is push back against the widespread idea that the image of starving children is universally representative of the experience of all 3rd world countries. It is important to dispel this image as it is a barrier in getting people in the 1st world to empathize with the 3rd world instead of merely sympathizing . Obviously denying material reality is bad but I personally haven't really seen anyone on chapo engaging in this strain of denialism myself.
Thread by glimmer_twin descended into this. I don't understand why their needs to be pushback, why can't you empathise with imagining, I'm skipping breakfast to save money, while people in global south eat salt with flatbread most of the year.
Yes, I agree very much with this. Regardless of the depth of the poverty experienced, it is experienced and felt everyday in much the same way. It's just that it is materially worse – which is why its easy to make impact and because they are so many people in this kind of poverty it acquires a shade of urgency
One of the things that finally prompted me to leave reddit was arguing with someone on a "leftist" sub who insisted that it was justifiable for a poor American to join the US military for a better life.
When I asked them how it was okay for said American to go off to kill an Afghan working for a dollar a day when the Yank could make several times an hour even at the worst minimum wage, they just started talking about purchasing power.
They're not wrong about purchasing power, it's massively different. You can get a veggie McDonald's burger for a third of a dollar in India. The funny thing is that McDonald's is considered upper class food, because Indian workers are also paid those low wages. Unfortunately the reason for this is that labour is incredibly cheap, it works more hours in worse conditions in every part of the supply chain, and things many people take for granted in the states, like a local official to petition, a FDA that works 70 percent of the time, unemployment benefits (just don't exist in my country), food banks, charity they are incredibly poorly resourced and difficult to access.
The burger will also be made with food containing pesticides or mercury that are either illegal or too high in the west.
I posted a version of this in another thread, but 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.
Can you talk a little more about the economic structure? That is, who is in charge of the companies, are they local, global, both? Why and how is government absent?
This is from a place of severe lack of knowledge on my part, and I really want to understand
The companies are technically local but they are usually subcontractorss to many global conglomerates.
Government is absent because government is poor. Many of these states just don't have any capital base to raise taxes from. Even if they do in general, there is no value governing many poor areas, they generate neither income, nor own enough land worth taxing. Ceding control the local landowner is cost effective. Think of it being basically feudal. Running a federal government costs money.
In some of these countries, their vote is also not worth courting because voter suppression or their candidates get offed because pissing off the people who bring in the jobs makes no sense. Who will create the jobs if not the global conglomerates subcontractors. That's why they're not taxed too much or given any scrutiny.
Follow up question that I've been asked before that I just am not sure about:
"Why don't the locals just build their own businesses and make their own jobs?"
To me the answer is lack of local capital, but is this right? And can you provide a bit more detail?
yeah, the flow of capital to these places is severely restricted. and like everywhere else, even when there is capital, it's in the hands of the wealthiest, not accessible to poor workers. and then, even if you surmount those hurdles and start a business, who's going to pay you when no one has any money? this is what keeps regional capital out.
They can't compete with the capital flooding into the west, dollars are stronger than most of these countries currencies. A lot of developing countries succeed when they shut the west out actually.
What does "strong Currency" mean and why does that lead to capital flight, as opposed to direct violence and intimidation or government policy?
Or are these all pieces of the whole picture?
Pieces of the whole picture. Strong Currency means that the absolute value of your dollar is worth more than the other currencies, as a result of being propped up through subsidies, tarriffs and powerful central banks. Everybody wants to trade in dollars because they're what the world's economic systems are plugged to.
southern globalist
I'm picturing someone dressed like Colonel Sanders sitting at a round table in Davos.
Participation in the economy allows you to dictate your own material conditions. It is the same if you're poor in a rich country or poor in a poor country - if you are unable to dictate the way the economy facilitates your needs through your relationship with it then ultimately you'll be deprived of necessary fulfillment.
This is clearly quite a romantic way of looking at capitalism and is an analysis made at face value. It is apparently the only standard that puts the allocation of resources under capitalism above the allocation of resources under any other system.
The conditions of poverty will be different dependent on the environment from which the needs of the individual have been derived, but there are needs that are universal like food. Somebody starving in one country is no worse than somebody starving in another country. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that statement... but other aspects of poverty are more complex because of these different environmental factors.
Poverty as a function of economic conflict between the individual and their physical environment will lead to a variety of negative outcomes that can't be compared. I personally don't believe in comparing negatives because it's' an attempt to create a hierarchy of human suffering. That might be philosophically productive to some people somewhere given the right frame of reference and the right intent, but for most people it's just negative-oneupmanship in order to position your self as more worthy of intervention.
Are workers who are worse off not deserving of more intervention (?) Actually mostly the south would like to be left alone, free from western capital destroying it, interfering in it's elections and starting wars.
You've answered your own question. Why would you want intervention when it just sets the stage for somebody else to take ownership of your land and your people?
What? I never said I wanted capitalist intervention. I meant to say the global south needs solidarity and support. Are you against Socialist States helping the South? Cuban doctors in Africa? Chinese funds for railway?
I'm not against that as I don't know enough about it to make a judgement either way.
Because the global south was constantly exploited for all the wealth you had in the 50s and 60s. Our leaders were toppled to build this wealth. Do not go on the path of restoring your poor people's dignity by thieving from ours.
They benefit more than they are harmed, as illustrated by the fact that the absolute standard of living and social security net in the west is significantly higher than that in the south. The talking point is brought up to prevent imperialism. It is brought up to prevent leftist populism turning into national chauvinism.
Honestly, your talking point is stupid, because it is akin to claiming that racist american policies (slavery included) doesn't benefit white people because the underpaid black people compete with poor whites and drove down the price of labor. White people benefited from slavery driving down the purchasing power of goods. They do so now by exporting it.
It's not just divisive, it's practically one step away from right wing concern trolling about how since people in the developing nations have it so much worse - proles in the developed nations should consider themselves lucky, shut up and enjoy getting exploited further.
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.
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.
Quick story.
During the time of the shelter in place order in California, my DSA chapter did a mutual aid project to keep people fed who either couldn't go out, or couldn't afford food or what have you. I was mostly in charge of making sure we made enough food for a given day, that the cooks had supplies, etc., but occasionally I would make a delivery myself.
I took a bunch of food out to the middle of nowhere. It took forever to find the place, which turned out to be off of an unmarked dirt road behind a pomegranate juice bottling facility. There was a busted up house, like completely dilapidated, and behind it a shack assembled from a tarp and spare parts, with a little chimney and a propane stove inside - I didn't go in, but she'd requested propane, so I think that's a safe bet.
Anyway, some guy came out, high on whatever, said excuse me a bunch of times, told me to have a great day over and over, and left. The lady came out, probably around 30, with a bunch of well-done, colorful tattoos. She was obviously on something as well, but I gave her the food, said goodbye etc. It was a strange experience- I'd never seen that variety of poverty in the US before. I've been to Cambodia, though, and seen those sorts of shacks up and down the road, all over Siem Riep, just outside the Angkor Wot complex. It kind of fucked me up for a while. We had done a bit of work with the city's homeless population at that point, so I was familiar with that, but this was a new thing that kind of weirded me out.
Anyway -I've never figured out what this story MEANS per se, but the similarities between that and qhat I'd seen in one of the poorest countries in the world sticks out in my mind, and seems somehow relevant.
Sorry about the novel/effort post.
to you thats a deeply unique experience, for a huge chunk of mexico that's just life, especially places like ecatepec or just rural parts of the country
Yeah, I compeletely believe you. Maybe that was part of what made it so unsettling- seeing this piece of the overexploited world brought home like that, and my dumb ass couldn't figure out how to process it.
apparently contrarianism has meant Chapos going the full circle and denying that it is actually even worse there.
that's just proof Mao was right and we need third worldism
Dude how do they even get there, like food insecurity means eating shitty food for Americans, not dying of starvation. This is an obvious indicator of how poverty is very different.
Getting to the point during a pandemic is massively different from being a reality regardless of a pandemic.
I'm trying explain how degrees of precariousness are different and devastating. When the pandemic hit and the govt enforces a lockdown, millions of people have no option to go home from cities to their villages to people who could support them as there are no such things as unemployment benefits. Because they're poor, they have to walk or cycle the hundreds of miles back home, because they'd just lost their jobs they couldn't buy food, and they starved to death on the roads. This will not happen at the scale it did in America right now because infrastructure to support people is better. Absolute poverty is just wildly different. Claiming it will in the near future really ignores the precariousness of comrades RIGHT NOW in the global south.
Agreed. I think it's bad in the west from the perspective that nobody really needs to live in the kind of poverty that people do, their immediate environments are easily capable of providing the support they need but choose not to.
Trust me, people did say this kind of thing.
Not to sound like a pedant, but there is definitely malnutrition and starvation in the US. Maybe not to famine levels, but food insecurity in the US definitely reaches the level of severely affecting people's health.
