In the course of a (civil) Facebook conversation, I found occasion to look up the definition of "Third World" as applied to nations. What I found was not what I expected; rather than being about economic well-being or having a stable, free society, the Three Worlds were political alignments: the West as First, the Soviet Block as Second and the non-aligned countries were Third.
This meaning has shifted rather a lot and my sources had different ideas about why and what the terms mean now. But "Third World" is still not a synonym for "failed state" or "banana republic."
In the course of the discussion at Wikipedia, a pair of charts showing "economic density" in 1970 and 2015 were presented. This is a measure of how well people are doing, population charted vertically, income horizontally, color-coded by continent, and it shows a positive shift:
1970 has a distinct "double-hump" shape: over at one hump, well below the extreme poverty line, are the poor, mostly living in Asia and not living well; the other hump is the rich, mostly in the developed nations, doing very well indeed.
2015 has no such structure. There's one big hump, centered well above the extreme poverty line. There are more people in the world of 2015 -- but far fewer of them are desperately poor. (Sadly, most are in Africa, which does not appear to have made much progress since 1970). Yes, the world still has plenty of hunger, but we have made progress, Significant progress.
Some people are richer than others. Some are a great deal richer. But humanity is increasingly not sorting itself into one bunch sleeping on silk and enjoying fresh-peeled grapes while another bunch longs for a discarded grape skin. More people are getting enough to get by; more people are earning enough to move up, buy land, get educations, start small businesses -- and that's a good thing.
Oh, it's a tall, tall hump on the 2015 chart and the people at the top of it enjoy luxury no Roman Emperor ever had. But far more people than ever before finish their day with a full belly and a roof over their head. There's doom and gloom on the mass media all day. There are certainly things to worry about. But humanity isn't quite as bad as we sometimes think. Our vector sum is pointing in the right direction. Let's keep moving that way!
Update
3 days ago
5 comments:
If you begin defining words and using facts, you will severely limit the number of folks who will discuss things with you.
That's a good thing.
I pointed out on some place I can't remember just the other day that our world has gotten much better at feeding it's poorest. I think it is due to the fact that big agriculture has become so efficient at growing crops on less and less land, using better techniques and more effective seeds and nutrients sprayed on soils, making the amount harvested from each acre tremendously greater than that of one hundred years ago. We are able to feed even more people than we have in the world right now, if need be.
I remember the days of our world having around 4 billion people, and now I think we have over 7 billion. And in my school days, we were looking at ZPG, or zero population growth, as a necessity to keep from destroying the planet and having most of the world living in such poverty and starving that we could not even imagine it.
Now, even the most impoverished of Americans own a car, usually 2, and they have not just a flatscreen television, but often one for every person in the house.
Heck, people use an 800$ smartphone to sign up for foods stamps. I stole that from some other place, but it is true. Our nation does suffer from an embarrassment of riches. We do have people who are extremely poor, and in desperate need of help, of course. But we have more people simply living on the edge of poverty, who need occasional help, but are the working poor. And we do a poor job of providing that help.
During the Reagan administration, Peggy Noonan (speechwriter, famous ones the Challenger tragedy announcement and the WW II Normandy beach invasion anniversary "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who ..." had the chance to talk to an African White House visitor there to meet with president.
Noonan asked asked the man what made the biggest impression on him about his first visit to America. Her replied, with wonderment, "Even your poor are fat."
We truly don't know how good we have in America...
Maybe coincidentally, Sketchplanations also had something along this line up earlier this week.
Yea, Africa. *sigh* Lots of looting the public treasury, lots of blamestorming. Also, in some places, lots of foreign aid, and you know what that gets you.
One problem is that having many children is a viable survival strategy. But it's just survival, and of the genes not the people, and that gives you more poor people...
Yet my wife can travel from Las Vegas to the far end of Africa in fewer hops than it took Tamara from Las Vegas to Indianapolis (that surprised me :-) and for not a lot of money (How shall we translate it? In exchange terms, less than $1500 return. The same money buys me around 90 flats of pretty good beer, maybe that's a better comparison). So some of us are immensely fortunate I think.
But yes, it's a good time to be alive.
" We are able to feed even more people than we have in the world right now, if need be."
Not for much longer, if the expected mini-ice age materializes. The Maunder Minimum says were are in for a cold climate, that will last longer than the readers. Shorter growing seasons, and shifted farther away from the poles than they are currently able to grow crops. There will be no food surplus for export to Africa.
Recent findings on the appearance of ice fields shows this can happen remarkably fast. So, the temperature crash could be faster than people imagined, and broadly intrusive in our world. Fun times ahead!
Makes me wonder how the political scene will react to such a changing environment.
I also wonder if oil extraction will be effected.
I would think Russia will be hardest hit in food production, which has always been a problem for them. They went into Poland in ww2 for that reason, along with the Germans. The Germans crossed the border in '41 to take the rest of that area, a week before the Soviets had scheduled their own cross-border maneuver for the same reason. Whoops!
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