7 ms·
Samstave, Just a bit of nitpick to save you some trouble in the future. Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nat
by soapdog 10y ago
Samstave,
Just a bit of nitpick to save you some trouble in the future. Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal.
Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word. There are much better, non-pejorative terms to be used.
Brazil is a part of the BRICS or the world emerging countries. Right now it is in a huge political crisis and on the verge of a coup but it is not a poor-3rd-world-nation, it is a the world seventh economy and also dictating tendency for many emerging countries and a continental power in the south.
That being said, you are completely correct that Brazilians love technology. Our smartphone revolution and expansion is awesome and we're keen to adopt new tech. Still more than half of the country doesn't have access to net infrastructure at their home and depends on cybercafes.
If you want some real data on the technology adoption and usage in the country you can use the metrics and indicators from CETIC[0] which is the Brazilian Institute for the study of information technology usage and adoption. Their reports are awesome and will give you a much greater insight on internet usage in the country.
[0]: http://cetic.br/ http://cetic.br/
PS: Sorry for the long rant, I work with digital inclusion and web literacy programs here in Brazil, unlocking new digital skills in low-income neighborhoods so I've been immersed in this type of thing for too long.
- kawera 10y agoNot a "coup", you know that.
- meira 10y agoGreat response! (Y) Nice to see people like you here.
- aerovistae 10y agoYour analogy between the terms 1st/3rd world country and that particular racial epithet is beyond absurd. To confirm this just try saying one or the other at work to test the reactions you get.
- soapdog 10y agoI am saying this because people do take offense on the 3rd world monicker. In many fields that term is considered offensive when used in public discourse. This is not a joke. What a group perceives as normal speech may be a term that in other circles is considered bad and better terms and classifications might be in place
- philovivero 10y agoI think only citizens of third-world countries are offended by the third-world monicker. It is englightening to note that a false insult is usually shrugged off, and a true insult usually taken to heart. The trick is to notice when the insult is true and modify your behaviour so that the insult is no longer applicable.
- powera 10y agoYou can't just declare a common word to be offensive and get offended when people use it in a normal context and expect to have a reasonable conversation.
- umanwizard 10y agoYou don't know many 21st century identity-politics leftists, I guess. Try visiting Seattle :)
- dosgonlogs 10y agoI think it will be very hard for Brazil and India to shake being labeled as third world countries, with the amount of citizens below the poverty line, and the poor infrastructure of the areas those citizens inhabit. The United States itself is labeled as a third world country when talking about areas of Detroit for example, and the wealth inequality starting to resemble that of Brazil and India. You might take exception to the term "Third World Country" because it is primarily used pejoratively in public discourse, but I think it is fully warranted, since Brazil, India, and the United States have a lot they can be criticized about. The elite of these countries are not afraid of practicing unbridled greed, unbridled because they removed the bridle through corrupt practices, using their wealth to accumulate power over government. I say all of this as an American.
- soapdog 10y agoOf course countries can be criticized. There are so many wrong things here that I wouldn't even learn where to begin prioritizing the list of criticisms. Things are getting better, we've managed to get ourselves out of the U.N. Hunger and Misery map. This is a victory, and not a small one. The past 12 years it has been the very first time in 500 years where there are no people starving to death. Still, the problem of Brazil is not that "it is a poor country" or "it has poor areas" like others portray in a simplistic view. As you said, it brews out of a self-perpetuating wealth inequality where the gap keeps enlarging as rich get richer. We'll always find things to criticize and still advances are made by focusing efforts on solving the very problems we surface with our criticisms.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lanna 10y agothere is no coup in place in brazil, stop spreading fud
- coliveira 10y agoThe only people that say there is no coup going on are people supporting the coup. Please get informed about this discussion.
- lanna 10y agoAsk the supreme court then: http://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/ministros-do-stf-dizem-que-impeachment-de-dilma-na-camara-nao-foi-golpe-19134087 http://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/ministros-do-stf-dizem-que-im...
- coliveira 10y agoWhenever they're not making official rulings, what judges of the STF say is just a matter of personal opinion. To validate the impeachment these judges need to rule on the validity of the charges raised against president Rousseff.
- necessity 10y agoAnd they will rule in favor when it comes to the senate, just as they expressed in the link that they would. Saying "there's a coup!" is cheap government propaganda. The impeachment is proceeding according to the law and the charges are serious.
- coliveira 10y agoBy force of law, judges are not allowed to pre-judge, i.e., to express to the public what they will decide on the bench. Suggesting the opposite is the exact definition of propaganda. This impeachment will only be legal if the supreme decides so, and that can only happen when they sit to judge this issue. Until then, the whole process is proceeding in judicial limbo. It can quite rightfully be termed as a coup.
- unlinker 10y ago>Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal. GDP per capita is what matters here. And GDP per capita in Brazil is a joke. I think a country full of poor people can be called a poor country.
- hkmurakami 10y agoThe 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country, even though it has quite a global influence in industries such as consumer electronics, automotive, semiconductors, and steel. edit: Apologies, looks like I was completely wrong since the source online I looked at incorrectly defined SK as economically undeveloped (I looked further and SK is in the G20, which would clearly make it a developed nation), and I was unaware of the Cold War era designation that commenters have pointed out to me. I was always confused why SK would be considered a 3rd world country when my own impression from its industrial strength was that it should be a 1st world country, so I'm glad that I've been corrected.
- stepanhruda 10y agoSK is absolutely first world
- umanwizard 10y agoHe's probably using the technical term from international relations, according to which "third world" meant neither aligned with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Not only is that wrong (the Republic of Korea was and is about as closely aligned with the U.S. as a country can possibly be), but it's confusing, since what was clearly meant in the context of this thread was the different, colloquial meaning of "1st world" meaning "developed" and "3rd world" meaning poor. Regardless, SK is unambiguously 1st world according to either definition.
- corybrown 10y agoSouth Korea isn't, but Switzerland and Sweden, by virtue of being neutral is a third world country in the original defintion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
- ryanlol 10y ago> division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today > Its akin to saying the N-word I'm sorry, what? How can you even compare these two things, I can't imagine anyone finding "3rd world" offensive (After all, you don't use it to refer to people... do you?) . Especially when it's objectively true.
- soapdog 10y agoIn many political science contexts and academies the "3rd world" monicker is considered offensive and obsolete. I am not joking, people do take offense on this term and classification scheme...
- Freak_NL 10y ago'Third world country' is an ambiguous term and a bit of a misnomer, because it originally meant 'a country aligned with neither West or East' (during the Cold War). Its use has become conflated with that of 'developing country', because the two meanings overlapped in practice. It is also considered derogatory due to its ambiguity and general connotation of colonial superiority. It helps to be aware of those connotations if you choose to use a term like that (which can be a conscious choice to express your position). Although I agree that comparing it with racial slurs like 'nigger' is not really appropriate, there is some similarity in that these are words that are slowly moving out of the modern vocabulary appropriate for civilised discourse. Just use 'developing country'.
- rlander 10y ago>> on the verge of a coup I was with you up until this line.
- samstave 10y agoThank you very much for the information. I stated something without the whole picture, and a lot of people replied. I will stand by my comment that Brazil is rather technologically advanced with respect to how net-savvy their population is. I wrongly stated that Brazil is 3rd-world... And as another user points out, Brazil "meerly" suffers from deep corruption. However, in my defense, I shall contend that the simple existence of "favelas" in Brazil is perceived to be a very 3rd world to me, an isolated, white American.
- edko 10y agoIf "favelas" are sign of being 3rd world, what about homeless people, or does your "isolation" prevent you from seeing them?
- soapdog 10y agoFavelas are a world fenomenon. We call them by various names, chantytowns, slums, whenever there is a long-term concentration of low-income classes without access to infrastructure but requiring living quarters near middle and upper income classes due to work reasons these tend to appear. Check out recent documentaries on Favelas, it will probably surprise you in both positive notes and also on horrible notes as well. Favelas are a cultural part of Rio in a way that most slums elsewhere are not. Favelas are intertwined with higher-income classes in the urban areas where they occupy the many hill areas of Rio. They dictate music and trends for millions of people and are a huge part of what makes Rio into Rio. Still our corrupt governments, crimelords, militias, and consumerist culture makes those places prone to crime and violence. Talking to you and taking you as an "isolated white american", pick some violence-prone neighborhood in your state and imagine if you could break it up into small areas and sprinkle that on top of your most prized real state area. This is Rio, where poor and rich live couple streets away from each other. In many places in the U.S. such neighborhoods occur away from higher-income regions in suburbs or far away districts, here, it is all mixed and that leads to a lot of confusion for foreigners. Favelas are also a sympton of the lack of infrastructure. Mass transit in Rio is a joke and living/real state is very expensive. Favelas are the only solution for millions that need to work in the city but can't afford to live anywhere better. It is a self-perpetuating problem where people are born to these neighborhood and lack the access to education and opportunities that would enable life changing events that would move them and their families into better conditions. Long story short: our governments (federal, state and city) sucks. People keep electing corrupt people. No one knows a way out of this mess.
- criley2 10y ago" if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal." This is a weird attitude. China is the #2 world economy but indisputably has a top 5 ranking for most impoverished people with hundreds of millions of impoverished people.
- soapdog 10y agoIt is a great deal because it shows that the money is there and the problem lies elsewhere in society. A poor country with poor GDP and HDI is in a very hard situation. A country with high GDP and poor HDI has a chance of solving its problems and rising up if it can solve its wealth inequality. Brazil in the past decade made huge advances in that. We are a recent democracy, we've been a military dictatorship for a long time. In our couple decades as a democratic country we've managed to get lots of good things done but of course there are millions impoverished and we're not even close to solving anything. Still the new social programs, the fact that millions moved our of the misery level, this is great. If we could solve wealth distribution and opportunity, this could be a really great place. Our problem is not the lack of money but the concentration of it and the concentration of access to infrastructure and opportunities as well.
- umanwizard 10y agoYou are continuing to confuse GDP and GDP per capita
- marcosdumay 10y agoWhy would anybody pretend Brazil isn't poor? Ok, we are not terribly poor people are starving around the streets, but salaries are very low, prices are very hard, wealth is very concentrated, and a huge share of the people live from government handouts. That is not being rich.
- mc32 10y agoWell, that way there is nothing to confront or solve because they are not poor and by inference there is no injustice. It's like us saying, no, there is no racism in the US (or practically any place).
- umanwizard 10y agoTotal GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not. HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GDP. Brazil's HDI is 0.755, just below Mexico (0.756)[1]. That's good by global standards, but still "poor" by U.S. standards. Its GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, so being kind to Brazil) is $15,615. The U.S.'s is $55,805[2] [1]: http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- soapdog 10y agoI completely agree with you. HDI is a much better index and measurement. This is actually what we use in social programs here. The GDP comment I made is that this is not a "poor country", it is instead a country full of wealth inequality and self-perpetuating bad distribution of opportunities where poor people are being kept poor due to having no access to infrastructure and opportunities. It is a very complex situation and all expressions such as "poor-3rd-world" or "seventh gdp economy" are all reductionist and shallow compared to what is really happening.
- cplanas 10y agoI agree with your comment, particularly with the fact that HDI is a good index for monitoring the "richness" of a country. However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.
- honua 10y ago> Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word. Thank you.
- 77pt77 10y ago> Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy In terms of GDP per capita Brazil is 76th, bellow the world average. Also bellow places like Uruguay, Argentina and say Botswana. It's a poor country.
- necessity 10y agoThere's no coup, stop spreading misinformation.