First World Problems and Why I'm a Self-Centred Arsehole

While lolling in bed again this morning as I’m wont to do on the weekend, reading the paper I came across the Philosophers’ Mail Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Are Rich- a Film

and I watched it. Sure, why not? Why are the suckers stuck at work on the weekend because they never have a weekend, much less have ever experienced a holiday, stuck being poor while I ingest more food in a day than they have in a week and need only probably one third of that in calorific expenditure, hence the lolling and limited ability to expend much of anything other than moving my eyeballs.

Why is it so? Why is it so unbearably unfair? I do think that many of us have the attitude that if you really want a job, to get on in life, you just have to exert yourself a bit and really, it’s not that hard. I have seen people accosting beggars on the street and telling them to “…get a job! Australia’s a welfare state, it’s not like you don’t get enough money to eat on the dole so quit trying to con me into paying for your drug habit and actually get off your arse.”

There’s something in it and there’s also something heartless in it too. A few months ago I wrote about the poverty cycle that is exacerbated by a number of challenges that face the poor not least of having a lowered IQ due to higher stress levels than those who live within their means and if they don’t, have access to boundless credit.

Let’s face it, we aren’t too good at walking in another’s shoes and it is so easy to pass judgement on others, particularly if we feel we’ve been hard done by, yet pulled through by our own good, honest hard work. Luck is not really seen as a contributory factor nor a necessary one.

I too have been constantly employed when I wished to be, and have ensured I raise the stakes and retrained myself, creating new job opportunities with new qualifications and experiences. But are we being reasonable in our expectations of others when generational poverty is so hard to emerge from? Perhaps one could equate it with trying to do the mamba in a vat of treacle.

I also wrote about the Capitalist myth that has everyone running on the hamster wheel of the economy believing that they can ‘make it’; that the dream can be theirs too; that they have more than a regurgitated hairball’s chance of representing ‘Long-haired Best in Breed’ at Crufts.

The gargantuan profits of the hamster wheel enterprises that span the globe actually goes to the 1% of the population who ensure you have very little stake in the those profits; these 1% elites  “earning” more money per day than some nations’ annual GDP.

This kind of thinking is called ‘whingeing’ by the successful few who have worked hard, have made some prudent business decisions and have been availed of the ethereal bounty of Our Lady of Fortune who smiles on but a few.

The film, less than ten minutes long, packs a whole bunch of information into that time, but makes it accessible, particularly to the comprehensionally challenged. (I am a life long member).

Of the 196 countries in the world, 25 countries have an average wealth of over $100,000 per annum. In the 20 severely poor countries in the world, the average earning is less than $3 per day. Of course the cost of living is lower there, but then the market is not somewhere you could do much spending if you did have more than a slug’s fart to spare.  Zimbabwe for example, at its current growth rate will be considered a rich country in 2,722 years. I don’t know if I was Abayome Okeke, a goat farmer, I could wait that long frankly.

Why is it so? The School of Life film suggests there are three reasons why countries are rich or poor; firstly the country’s institutions- they are fundamental to a well functioning and wealthy society. Because the poorest countries are the most corrupt, they cannot garner sufficient funds to build the necessary institutions. Half of the wealth of these countries is shunted into offshore accounts that total between $10 and $20 billion a year.

In addition, the poorer countries are still adhering to ‘clan based thinking’ or nepotism which of course while keeping your extended family happy, is extremely short sighted and leaving the country bereft of the innovation that comes from ‘shaking it up’ and hiring new blood with new ideas, chosen because of their invaluable merit rather than familial connections. This of course also leads to grudges and wars and eventual genocide when the disparities reach astronomical proportions and someone’s had enough. (I added that last bit about warfare).

The second, to me astounding thing, is culture and religious beliefs. There is a direct correlation with poverty and religious faith.  The less people believe, the more money they collect- except for the USA. The poorest nations are all almost without exception,  believers, and think that their reward is due to them in the next life (in my humble that’s just Capitalism’s way of keeping the prols in their place as slaves to the economic monolith of the 1%- Marx's "opiate for the masses") and that there’s pretty much sod all they can do in this life and so, accepting of their crappy fate, they carry on with literally no agency and do nothing to help themselves.

Americans of course are anomalous. The Protestant American God (from whence derives that great groomed beasty, the WASP or White, Anglo Saxon Protestant- particularly the manly man version of the species) was terribly clever and brought the  materialism of Capitalism into the mix of duty as a Christian, living in a democracy and as an American. It is the very definition of being American and to be anything other is to be un-American which is analogous with being a profane pagan. Possibly even a Communist. [see Joseph McCarthy and uneducated redneck].

Finally and most dramatically destructively, is geography. All the poor nations are in tropical regions where the weather is harsh and the living conditions cruel.

The first problem is with agriculture; the soil is poor and the plants offer little nutrition as absurdly the heat interferes with photosynthesis. Their wealth lay mostly with large herds of domesticated animals but these are constantly decimated by the ubiquitous tsetse fly which arrests their ability to amass any lasting wealth and with it, the agency to emerge from the mire. In addition the human population can be severely decimated with up to five horrendous tropical diseases at a time. (Do I need to say Ebola?).

There is also a ‘magical temperature’ which is the foundation stone of rich countries; 16 degrees Celsius. This ensures a fertile and rich land. Well bugger.

Then there is the issue of transport. All these nations are landlocked and nowhere near the coastal ports and often without access to rivers. In Africa for example, there is only one major waterway and the Nile only runs through a narrow valley, albeit the course of most of the country’s length, leaving 15 landlocked nations.

Now luckily natural resources are abundant in these nations. But conversely, unluckily, because of the pre existing conditions already mentioned, it actually becomes a burden as they don’t have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of this windfall. These resources are then raped and pillaged instead, by the rich nations that can afford to come in and grab the goods and go, while dancing a little jig, with some backsheesh thrown nonchalantly to the Head of State and His Cronies who then fly to the Costa Brava for the sun and surf. This cycle corrupts every level of society.

So the upshot; the reality is that a nation’s fortune is down to some fairly simple rules. 50% of a country’s wealth is due to its institutions, 20% owing to cultural factors and 10% each to connectivity and geological good fortune.

In other words, be eternally grateful this weekend that you are born in Australia or America or Sweden or Canada and not some landlocked, tsetse ridden shithole that might have been nice but the Mble tribe took over and Harry Mble hires only his useless cousins who don’t know the first thing about establishing infrastructure let alone be able to spell it.  Sometimes it seems, it’s just down to luck.

Some people have the right mixture of climate, geology and a healthy legacy of wealth to be getting on with a pretty successful society and some have fuckall and are stuck with a clusterfuck for a government.

So next time you want to tell me about how you can’t afford that European holiday or the new BMW Gee I’m Rich series or how expensive massages are, can you believe it?, just put a sock in it. It’s a First World Problem and we’re actually living in a world with other sad dimensions that can do with if not our help, then at least our sympathy. Thanks School of Life for this little reality check.