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As someone who visits Indonesia regularly, the article has some points but the development is so radically unequal and division of the people's are so strongly

As someone who visits Indonesia regularly, the article has some points but the development is so radically unequal and division of the people's are so strongly held that "development" in this sense is those in power choosing winners. Huge swaths of the population is held in poverty because they are not of the right village or island. There is literally no mobility between economic and social classes in this country. Skill, desire with a touch of luck is not enough to move you ahead in Indonesia like it is in other places. If you are a poor village person you will be that forever. Your only option is to marry in to a better social/economic class but even that's difficult because poor village people aren't desirable there, except to westerners who well... You know why. I'll believe it's an amazing development story when stop seeing 15yo girls shipped in to the cities where their only job they can get is giving out favors for less than a cost of a meal at a mid priced restaurant in that same city. Because if you're not able to get those people from the village to participate in your developing society in a meaningful way that doesn't include exploiting them there is no amazing story here.

immigrantheart 4y ago
That seems like majority of 3rd world country. It isn’t unique to Indonesia.
the_gipsy 4y ago
Doesn't Indonesia have a fascist past? That would explain the strong classism and immobility.
- baybal2 4y ago
- jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  How would that explain it? Past authoritarianism seems a poor predictor of social mobility in the modern world.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Why?
    - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
      Because if you look at the countries that have high social mobility many of them have had authoritarian governments in the past/present. Japan, China, and Germany are the most obvious examples.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  Germany had a fascist past as well.
- yunohn 4y ago
  Indonesia was colonised by Europe for centuries (1). If anything, that would explain the poverty and difficulty in eradicating inequality, than a few years of “fascism”. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia
SimpJee 4y ago
Lived and worked in Indonesia, and am married to an Indonesian. "Huge swaths of the population" living in villages is not true, the majority of the population works and lives in the major cities. I saw very diverse mix of Indonesians originally from those small villages working in the big cities in a variety of jobs in a variety of sectors and positions. Every year after Ramadan when the mass migration happened back to their home towns it was great hearing where co-workers were all going to. I even joined one year and went to a smaller town/village with family and friends, and it never struck me as poverty - but rather a farming town like we get in the middle of America. I'm sure you are right though about the situation of some people living in remote villages, or islands today, and I also saw poor (many) but what I don't agree with is your wording that make it sound like more than half the country or something is in that situation.
- Jabbles 4y ago
  > the majority of the population works and lives in the major cities Technically true at 57%, but your wording makes it seem like you think it is much higher. Or perhaps you have a different definition? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=ID https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat...
BurningFrog 4y ago
I don't think any country has transformed from our natural dirt poor state to modern industrial prosperity in an evenly distributed way.
- aikinai 4y ago
  Japan did it. South Korea as well, maybe slightly less equally distributed.
  - rootsudo 4y ago
    No, Japan still has not done it. The major metropolitan cities may reflect it, but there are tons of cities where that is not the case across Japan.
    - aikinai 4y ago
      It sounds like you’re just arguing that no country in the world has wealth distributed equally enough? Japan is some where around #15 in global equality rankings, well above other nations that have been rich for far longer.
bogomipz 4y ago
>"As someone who visits Indonesia ..." I was curious, do you visit for work or just recreational travel? I would love to see more of it. Any recommendations outside of the usual Bali or very touristy places?
- brnt 4y ago
  That's like asking what the best place to visit in the US is, besides the Grand Canyon. There are so many!
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    And yet people ask for travel recommendations for the US all the time and people are happy to give them, often for the specific region of the country that they are from or familiar with. You realize there's an entire travel industry that runs on this very premise right?
    - brnt 4y ago
      True, there's good money to be made off googling for people.
- zakki 4y ago
  Here are some places: - Lombok (east of Bali) - Raja Ampat (West Papua) - Mentawai (northern part of Sumatra) - Yogyakarta (has its own autonomy, kingdom based province). From here you can visit Borobudur. 8th century Buddhist temple, largest in the world - Bunaken a small island in North Sulawesi Find more information in internet.
- neurostimulant 4y ago
  Outside of Bali, you won't have too much problem visiting major cities in java without knowing the language. Yogyakarta is a nice place to visit. The city strongly preserve their culture (compared to other city in Indonesia), the people are friendly, and cost of living is cheap (compared to other big cities in java). Outside of Java, other comments mentioned Raja Ampat in West Papua which is really beautiful, but please remember that West Papua is one of the least developed part of Indonesia with ongoing armed conflicts, so there is always risk (however small it is) when exploring that region.
Gimpei 4y ago
The gini of Indonesia, at ~37, isn't low, but it isn't particularly high either. Below Malaysia, China, and the Philippines, but above Thailand. Mobility is hard to track at Indonesia's level of development. All I could find was this study, which suggests relatively high educational mobility in the Jakarta "slums" [1] and this study that suggests that Indonesia is an outlier in terms of having high mobility relative to its level of inequality [2]. [1] https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/488961/adr-vol36no1-1-intergenerational-mobility-indonesia.pdf https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/488961/a... [2] https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2022-12-whose-intergenerational-mobility-estimates-Indonesia-gender-geography-generation.pdf https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/W...
rayiner 4y ago
As someone from one of the countries on Noah’s chart, I hate this attitude. It epitomizes allowing perfect to be the enemy of good. Indonesia’s development isn’t just those in power “choosing winners.” Indonesia’s under 5 mortality rate has dropped from 400 in 1,000 in 1950 to 23 per 1,000 today. You can’t achieve that just from top-down redistribution. For the same reason, it’s an “amazing development story” even if there’s still lots of desperately poor people in villages. My dad’s village in Bangladesh is still poor, but the school has walls now, unlike when he was a kid when it was just a roof. He was complaining the other day that “kids these days don’t know what it’s like to take a boat to school during monsoon” because drainage projects addressed annual flooding. For developing countries, it’s so incredibly hard to get a system in place that merely makes progress. 99% of approaches to making progress simply don’t work. Shitting all over a system that is making progress, however unequal and flawed, is bad. Do you need a quasi dictator to enable development, like in Chile, Singapore, and Korea? Do you need growing inequality, like America’s own industrial revolution? All that is fine! Millions of kids’ lives will be saved from that in the long run.
- refurb 4y ago
  That seems to be a common theme among the ever pessimistic crowd online. Progress is never perfect and course corrections need to be made constantly. But the improvement in the QOL among many SE Asian countries is truly remarkable. People have gone from subsistence living where starvation is a real threat to a low income life where basic medical care, housing and food is a given for most of the population.
  - neurostimulant 4y ago
    I grew up with no electricity and telegram being the fastest way to communicate with families living on other islands. Now my village has fiber-optics internet (my parents still live there), and the city where I live now will have a high speed rails soon.
neurostimulant 4y ago
That's not true. Indonesia is a country where education can still give you an opportunity to lift yourself out of poverty. If you talk to people working in the city, you'll find many of them actually grew up in a village and climbed their way up into middle class through hard work and education. Yes, not everyone is lucky, but you can't dismiss it entirely given the proportion of middle class in Indonesia is going up steadily (around 12% per year according to some sources).

immigrantheart 4y ago

That seems like majority of 3rd world country. It isn’t unique to Indonesia.

the_gipsy 4y ago

Doesn't Indonesia have a fascist past? That would explain the strong classism and immobility.

baybal2 4y ago
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
How would that explain it? Past authoritarianism seems a poor predictor of social mobility in the modern world.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  Why?
  - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
    Because if you look at the countries that have high social mobility many of them have had authoritarian governments in the past/present. Japan, China, and Germany are the most obvious examples.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
Germany had a fascist past as well.
yunohn 4y ago
Indonesia was colonised by Europe for centuries (1). If anything, that would explain the poverty and difficulty in eradicating inequality, than a few years of “fascism”. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia

SimpJee 4y ago

Lived and worked in Indonesia, and am married to an Indonesian. "Huge swaths of the population" living in villages is not true, the majority of the population works and lives in the major cities. I saw very diverse mix of Indonesians originally from those small villages working in the big cities in a variety of jobs in a variety of sectors and positions. Every year after Ramadan when the mass migration happened back to their home towns it was great hearing where co-workers were all going to. I even joined one year and went to a smaller town/village with family and friends, and it never struck me as poverty - but rather a farming town like we get in the middle of America. I'm sure you are right though about the situation of some people living in remote villages, or islands today, and I also saw poor (many) but what I don't agree with is your wording that make it sound like more than half the country or something is in that situation.

Jabbles 4y ago
> the majority of the population works and lives in the major cities Technically true at 57%, but your wording makes it seem like you think it is much higher. Or perhaps you have a different definition? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=ID https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat...

BurningFrog 4y ago

I don't think any country has transformed from our natural dirt poor state to modern industrial prosperity in an evenly distributed way.

aikinai 4y ago
Japan did it. South Korea as well, maybe slightly less equally distributed.
- rootsudo 4y ago
  No, Japan still has not done it. The major metropolitan cities may reflect it, but there are tons of cities where that is not the case across Japan.
  - aikinai 4y ago
    It sounds like you’re just arguing that no country in the world has wealth distributed equally enough? Japan is some where around #15 in global equality rankings, well above other nations that have been rich for far longer.

bogomipz 4y ago

>"As someone who visits Indonesia ..." I was curious, do you visit for work or just recreational travel? I would love to see more of it. Any recommendations outside of the usual Bali or very touristy places?

brnt 4y ago
That's like asking what the best place to visit in the US is, besides the Grand Canyon. There are so many!
- bogomipz 4y ago
  And yet people ask for travel recommendations for the US all the time and people are happy to give them, often for the specific region of the country that they are from or familiar with. You realize there's an entire travel industry that runs on this very premise right?
  - brnt 4y ago
    True, there's good money to be made off googling for people.
zakki 4y ago
Here are some places: - Lombok (east of Bali) - Raja Ampat (West Papua) - Mentawai (northern part of Sumatra) - Yogyakarta (has its own autonomy, kingdom based province). From here you can visit Borobudur. 8th century Buddhist temple, largest in the world - Bunaken a small island in North Sulawesi Find more information in internet.
neurostimulant 4y ago
Outside of Bali, you won't have too much problem visiting major cities in java without knowing the language. Yogyakarta is a nice place to visit. The city strongly preserve their culture (compared to other city in Indonesia), the people are friendly, and cost of living is cheap (compared to other big cities in java). Outside of Java, other comments mentioned Raja Ampat in West Papua which is really beautiful, but please remember that West Papua is one of the least developed part of Indonesia with ongoing armed conflicts, so there is always risk (however small it is) when exploring that region.

Gimpei 4y ago

The gini of Indonesia, at ~37, isn't low, but it isn't particularly high either. Below Malaysia, China, and the Philippines, but above Thailand. Mobility is hard to track at Indonesia's level of development. All I could find was this study, which suggests relatively high educational mobility in the Jakarta "slums" [1] and this study that suggests that Indonesia is an outlier in terms of having high mobility relative to its level of inequality [2]. [1] https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/488961/adr-vol36no1-1-intergenerational-mobility-indonesia.pdf https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/488961/a... [2] https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2022-12-whose-intergenerational-mobility-estimates-Indonesia-gender-geography-generation.pdf https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/W...

rayiner 4y ago

As someone from one of the countries on Noah’s chart, I hate this attitude. It epitomizes allowing perfect to be the enemy of good. Indonesia’s development isn’t just those in power “choosing winners.” Indonesia’s under 5 mortality rate has dropped from 400 in 1,000 in 1950 to 23 per 1,000 today. You can’t achieve that just from top-down redistribution. For the same reason, it’s an “amazing development story” even if there’s still lots of desperately poor people in villages. My dad’s village in Bangladesh is still poor, but the school has walls now, unlike when he was a kid when it was just a roof. He was complaining the other day that “kids these days don’t know what it’s like to take a boat to school during monsoon” because drainage projects addressed annual flooding. For developing countries, it’s so incredibly hard to get a system in place that merely makes progress. 99% of approaches to making progress simply don’t work. Shitting all over a system that is making progress, however unequal and flawed, is bad. Do you need a quasi dictator to enable development, like in Chile, Singapore, and Korea? Do you need growing inequality, like America’s own industrial revolution? All that is fine! Millions of kids’ lives will be saved from that in the long run.

refurb 4y ago
That seems to be a common theme among the ever pessimistic crowd online. Progress is never perfect and course corrections need to be made constantly. But the improvement in the QOL among many SE Asian countries is truly remarkable. People have gone from subsistence living where starvation is a real threat to a low income life where basic medical care, housing and food is a given for most of the population.
- neurostimulant 4y ago
  I grew up with no electricity and telegram being the fastest way to communicate with families living on other islands. Now my village has fiber-optics internet (my parents still live there), and the city where I live now will have a high speed rails soon.

neurostimulant 4y ago

That's not true. Indonesia is a country where education can still give you an opportunity to lift yourself out of poverty. If you talk to people working in the city, you'll find many of them actually grew up in a village and climbed their way up into middle class through hard work and education. Yes, not everyone is lucky, but you can't dismiss it entirely given the proportion of middle class in Indonesia is going up steadily (around 12% per year according to some sources).