Yeah...as someone who recently relocated from a third-world country (South Africa) to a first-world country (Canada) I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that while the costs of living and property in third-world countries sound great there are a lot of negatives that don't make up for it.
Not being able to afford a home is definitely a first world problem. In the third world you have to regularly bribe police, hope no one visits your family in the middle of the night, don't have access to clean food or water...
Even life at the lowest rungs of US culture have it way better than most in a third world country. We have law and order and pretty good public infrastructure.
This is something that I can't get first world people to understand. It costs more to live in a third-world country. And I mean that literally. It is cheaper to vacation in third-world but try running a business there.
Here is an example:
- Imported products have high tariffs. Electronics and Cars are usually more expensive than the US.
- No Good Transportation Hubs/Companies like DHL to move things around. Broken and corrupt customs.
- No trained professionals to repair electronics.
So What gives? I had to pay around $200 to fix a Wifi issue on a Macbook; and the worst part? Wait for 3 months until the replacement was shipped.
Let's not then get to the other issues: Health, Public Transports, Schools, Taxes, etc...
A nice example from California, a little bit north of LA (where I've lived for three months at the expense of one of my customers) there is an area with lots of really really fancy houses. They must be worth upwards of several million $ a piece.
The driveways are absolutely immaculate, the road they empty out on is worse than some of the roads in Northern Canada. I've seen the exact same thing in countries that literally qualify as third world.
In case you don't know what is meant by the term, but Colombia and Panama definitely qualify. By 'modern' standards some parts of Romania and eastern Poland do too, but I've been to plenty of other places that would count, either by that map or because of the local conditions. And I'm not talking package holidays here but stays of at least several months.
I'm using these roads as an example because at the time it struck me as indicative of what might be wrong there.
If your country is 'the richest in the world' by some measurements then that wealth should be translated to an increased higher standard of living for the poorest, and an increase in infrastructural spending that will benefit everyone, not just the rich.
If you can't manage that, in other words if your poor are still not provided health care, proper housing and education and if you have an underclass that basically has very few choices of making parity with those born into richer families (and hey, isn't that what that famous American dream is all about) as well as an enormous criminal problem then maybe we should propose redrawing that wikipedia map along more objective criteria.
And quite possibly, we'll find that California has much more in common with third world countries than with the first, no matter how rich the rich, and no matter how much the GDP.
Northern Canada is a good comparison because it probably has the lowest GDP per surface unit of any country in the world, but they also have one of the best health care systems, and their work on roads is nothing short of amazing, especially if you take in to account the effect of the climate on the roads there.
If everybody in California (including corporations) would be paying taxes relative compared to other 'first world' countries then such things would be taken for granted.
Until it is solved through taxation everybody, VCs included (who really are only in the game to turn a ton of money in to even more money) has a responsibility to look after their neighbours.
One positive thing about being born in a third-world country is that if you can manage to train yourself to become a good software developer (which I admit is probably much harder to achieve than in a first-world country), you can find remote work for a foreign (first-world) company and then you can live like a rich person in your own country (buy houses, etc...); this seems relatively attainable if you put your mind to it.
When you're from a first-world country, becoming rich is essentially unattainable; you wish you could move to a third-world country to live a better quality of life, but that's not really an option; often, the law of these countries forbid foreigners from owning property; also, you don't know the language or culture so you might end up getting ripped off when doing large transactions.
I'm a first worlder and I've been seeing the difference for over a decade now. I'm close to convinced that first world is the worst place to be as the chances of survival are the worst due to the country being almost entirely dependent on importations for its needs and has outsourced most and lost its ability to sustain itself while lacking reserves.
I think first worlders will be among those hit the harder because they will lose almost everything they're used to and left with the inability to live as the grand parents did for they have forgotten this knowledge.
Anyone in the rich first world is welcome to try a morally and ecologically superior way of life by moving to a poor third world country and making a living there. I’m not sure small corrections in our lush lifestyles will cut it or deserve bragging rights...
I live in Ecuador so I can't really say too much about other countries. However, a luxury rental in Ecuador isn't really a luxury rental at all. There is no noise proofing, random holes in the walls, and the house isn't vented properly. The people that built it just had no idea what they were doing.
I don't really think you can compare third world accommodations to first world. It's not comparable. The quality isn't there.
My wife is also from a so-called third-world country. A stunningly beautiful one at that. Every time I visit I dream of moving there.
Once I found a Swiss guy, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, who had started a small farm and an operation dealing in a very specific kind of beef cattle, and esp. breeding. He even had an awesome little restaurant serving schnitzel and beer. I think he moved there for a woman, and had to figure out how to make a buck. He was living the dream!
A couple years later he was out on his ass, because as soon as his business was successful, local folks stole his cattle. I found a lawsuit he filed in which he explained that he could actually see the stolen cattle from his land. But the proper palms had been greased, and he was completely up shit creek. He made a pretty big stink, right up to the point where he'd be risking life and limb to go any further. But nothing was done, nobody was arrested, and he never got his cattle back.
And therein lies the rub: nobody feels safe enough to endure success.
> You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world
I like the sentiment, but in many countries, corruption and safety issues won't even begin to be addressed as long as the business of making/selling drugs for Americans is as lucrative as it is.
Honestly, "you can live this way because people in a third-world hellhole live this way" is a disingenuous argument. People in first-world countries generally enjoy having a higher standard of living than third-world countries.
You might as well say "Think you can't live with civil war and genocide? Consider this: Rwanda did it".
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