Thread: Which Third World Nation(s) do these characteristics best describe?

Shirley not any top tier Western nations...right?


h/t to Charles Hugh Smith:
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The USA Is Now a 3rd World Nation

Here are the core characteristics of dysfunctional but stable states that benefit the entrenched few at the expense of the many, i.e. 3rd World nations:

1. Ownership of stocks and other assets is highly concentrated in entrenched elites. The average household is disconnected from the stock market and other measures of wealth; only a thin sliver of households own enough financial/speculative wealth to make an actual difference in their lives.

2. The infrastructure of the nation used by the many is poorly maintained and costly to operate as entrenched elites plunder the funding to pad their payrolls, pensions and sweetheart/insider contracts.

3. The financial/political elites have exclusive access to parallel systems of transport, healthcare, education, etc. The elites avoid trains, subways, lenders, coach-class air transport, standard healthcare and the rest of the decaying, dysfunctional systems they own that extract wealth from the debt-serfs.
They fly on private aircraft, have their own healthcare and legal services, use their privileges to get their offspring into elite universities and institutions and have access to elite banking and lending services that are unavailable to their technocrat lackeys and enforcers.

4. The elites fund lavish monuments to their own glory disguised as "civic or national pride." These monuments take the form of stadiums, palatial art museums, immense government buildings, etc. Meanwhile the rest of the day-to-day infrastructure decays in various states of dysfunction.

5. There are two classes that only interact in strictly controlled ways: the wealthy, who live in gated, guarded communities and who rule all the institutions, public and private, and the debt-serfs, who are divided into well-paid factotums, technocrat lackeys and enforcers who serve the interests of the entrenched elites and rest of the populace who own virtually nothing and have zero power. The elites make a PR show of being a commoner only to burnish the absurd illusion that debt-serf votes actually matter. (They don't.)

6. Cartels and quasi-monopolies are parasitically extracting the wealth of the nation for their elite owners and managers. Google: quasi-monopoly. Facebook: quasi-monopoly. Healthcare: cartel. Banking: cartel. National defense: cartel. National Security: cartel. Corporate mainstream media: cartel. Higher education: cartel. Student loans: cartel. I think you get the point: every key institution or function is controlled by cartels or quasi-monopolies that serve the interests of the few via parasitic exploitation of the powerless.

7. The elites use the extreme violence and repressive powers of the government to suppress, marginalize and/or destroy any dissent. There are two systems of "law": one for the elites ($10 million penalties for ripping off the public for $10 billion, no personal liability for outright fraud) and one for the unprotected-unprivileged: "tenners" (10-year prison sentences) for minor drug infractions, renditions or assassinations (all "legal," of course) and institutional forces of violence (bust down your door on the rumor you've got drugs, confiscate your car because we caught you with cash, so you must be a drug dealer, and so on, in sickening profusion).

8. Dysfunctional institutions with unlimited power to extract money via junk fees, licensing fees, parking tickets, penalties, late fees, etc., all without recourse.D Mess with the extractive, parasitic bureaucracy and you'll regret it: there's no recourse other than another layer of well-paid self-serving functionaries that would make Kafka weep.

9. The well-paid factotums, bureaucrats, technocrat lackeys and enforcers who fatten their own skims and pensions at the expense of the public and slavishly serve the interests of the entrenched elites embrace the delusion that they're "wealthy" and "the system is working great." These deluded servants of the elites will defend the dysfunctional system because it serves their interests to do so.

Seems like the glove fits quite well to this commoner.

Anyone disagree?

But ameristan cannot be a third world country it has a free press, low taxes, minimal business legislation and access to venture capital.

^ and free debt...

Originally Posted by OhOh

But ameristan cannot be a third world country it has a free press, low taxes, minimal business legislation and access to venture capital.

First best laugh of today. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Klondyke

^ and free debt...

Second best laugh of today. Thanks.

and a biggly boss man - though with small hands

what are the bets for when he starts making statues of himself ? with big hands ?

Originally Posted by baldrick

what are the bets for when he starts making statues of himself ?

So far he has some balloons...across the pond.



Well, it's a start.

Originally Posted by baldrick

and a biggly boss man - though with small hands

what are the bets for when he starts making statues of himself ? with big hands ?

After a dignified paws

The balloon has really pissed of the right wing short bus riders here in Blighty. The aboslute window lickers want people arrested for it yet keep braying "Free Tomeh, it's a disk race against free speech". Quite looking forward to jetting away from Little England

Appropriate here I think...

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

What's a Third World​?

Originally Posted by HuangLao

What's a Third World​?

All of it...now.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

which would be considered ludicrous for the elite to do

Is it? Maybe elsewhere, but not here.

Originally Posted by SKkin

Is it? Maybe elsewhere, but not here.

I was talking of Thailand. All the points in the OP apply to Thailand except that one.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

All the points in the OP apply to Thailand. . .

I think it applies to a lot of places...

Originally Posted by SKkin

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

So much relevant today.

Available in print here:

https://archive.org/details/BRAVENEWWORLD1932ByAldousHuxleyDownloadPDFAudioBoo kReadByAldousHuxley

and audio book here:

Originally Posted by SKkin

Appropriate here I think...

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited