Poverty is neither "developing" nor "third world".

I'm filming this video now on a bright
sunny day and the mountains of central Taiwan to look around behind me this is a country with basically zero poverty zero really you can you can look at the statistics it's remarkable how successful someone is as an industrial country it's remarkable or successful it is economically educationally in terms of government services health care blah blah blah but you know what on this street in particular is a whole lot of rusting corrugated iron that will make you think you were living in a third-world country and it's in this sense not out of the usual white Western fixation with political correctness wanted to make a quick video saying hey can we just stop can we stop using the terms third-world and developing country the helping nations developing economies all that stuff could we just drop it could we just let that mean die here are people drying their laundry on rusting you know rusting cyclone fences as we call that nation a cyclone fence real real third world in its aesthetics this particular this particular ally of the two terms developing country and the the more offensive really is developing developing nation developing gonzo what do you think finders rust and corrugated iron people-people attempting to grow vegetables I can't even say in their front yard in front of this garage abandoned garage all right I say again Taiwan it's not the Taiwan is the wealthiest country in the world Taiwan has remarkably close to zero poverty there is less poverty in Taiwan than there is in Japan less poverty in Taiwan than almost any country in Europe that I've done a comparative analysis with well okay not if you get into some of the freakishly wealthy countries in Europe like Luxembourg but you know really I've looked at the statistics the achievement of Taiwan economically is remarkable but nevertheless um a lot of people misunderstand the origin and meaning of third-world as a concept it does not refer to the contrast between the Soviet Union in the United States it does not refer to the contrast between communism and capitalism the origin of the term third-world relates the idea that Europe was the first world and then the settlement of North America and second of South America that that was the second world so that the first world was what people used to call the old world and then the second world was what formerly was known as the new world in colonial terms the settlement of the new world the colonization of the new world this is now out of fashion and then the idea was that the third world was the whole remainder of planet Earth where the seeing technologies the same mode of production much taken for granted in Europe the United States and Canada that that would now now meaning after World War two basically but that would now spread increasingly throughout the so-called third world so you know where does Saudi Arabia fit into that concept you know Saudi Arabia's not the only example but I mean you know obviously this is applied in a certain way in a certain sense you know to a kind of stereotypical poverty-stricken Africa you know a continent of Africa imagined to be passively waiting for you know salvation to arrive in the form of European and American development assistance charity of one kind or another it's another plot of vegetables being grown here behind me you heard it was just next to a busy street with some industry on it those palm trees there those are not decorative those also produce a cash crop of sorts this actually looks a bit abandoned to this vegetable fly maybe maybe somebody was farming this for vegetables a few years ago and then at some point they lost interest or keep up the effort but those palm trees above actually produce a legal addictive drug not illegal but legal that's sold here and those are banana trees those palms down there now I've lived in Cambodia I've lived in Laos I have lived in so-called third world developing poverty-stricken countries they look a lot like this they look a lot like where I'm standing right now in every way the palm trees the banana trees the small plot gardening the rust but here we are amidst the the wealth and splendor of a very affluent city in Taiwan this city I believe there is one homeless person here and with no offense to him I think he chooses to be homeless I think it's a lifestyle choice I don't think it's that he has no better alternatives haven't talked to the guy in depth but that's the impression I get yeah I think we have exactly one homeless person in this city and again almost zero measurable poverty ah the problem with the concept of developing country the reason why it's even worse than this notion of first world second or third world is precisely that it presumes it imagines it argues that there is one destination that the rest of the world is tending towards that there is one endpoint or goal that there is one purpose economic development democracy cultural development cetera exists for and nothing could be further from the truth this presumption also feeds into a very strange way of looking at of understanding what's happening here and now in poverty-stricken countries places like Laos Cambodia you know there are neighborhoods in Laos where I'm sorry I fed there's enough 10 years ago 15 years ago many years ago when I was living there in Laos people just presumed Oh all this will be bulldozed in no time look we're building this part of the city now but in just a few years there's gonna be development it's gonna be you know so-called developing country there's gonna be economic development that then brushes all this aside all this is going to disappear it's all gonna be replaced by something better I think some of those people imagined that the future of the capital city of Laos would look like Hong Kong and maybe some of them imagined that the future of Laos would look like Shanghai in China and when none of them imagined is what they've got today which is that after a very very brief period of so-called development the country stagnated and you can look at Google Maps today I can look at images on the internet today and see there's been absolutely no progress at all since I left the country in that way that in the contra which you bet is regress what you've got is a lot of rust you know that there was this sense that the future was bright that anything was possible that Laos was gonna quote unquote catch up with developed countries and that's built into this notion of a developing country right like first world second world third world as if there's some inevitable progress like the falling of dominoes that leads from one to the next and the truth is the capital city of Laos is never going to resemble Hong Kong it's never gonna resemble Shanghai it's never gonna resemble New York or London or anything in Europe and in the contrary that that country bankrupted itself imitating a model of economic development that was never suited to it so what what would I propose if we were actually to take this serious if we're going to stop speaking in terms of the third world in terms of the developing world who we're going to get rid of those terms if we're gonna start using you know language that doesn't have this built-in sense of teleology this built-in sense of a foregone conclusion or destination that economic development of these countries is ten towards my answer is we should use the words rich and poor we should simply talk about poor countries poverty-stricken countries and we should talk about rich countries the idea that development has a destination is a delusion the idea that the first world that and the second world represents an end point that the third world is progressing awards is propaganda that's not just to be discarded now it ceased to be clearance it cease to be meaningful Danny the people it's been preached to