I've seen a fair bit of poverty in my travels around Africa and elsewhere, but I'm still rather astonished by how utterly and totally low-tech and unorganized t

I've seen a fair bit of poverty in my travels around Africa and elsewhere, but I'm still rather astonished by how utterly and totally low-tech and unorganized this is: it's literally just a bunch of people scrabbling about heaps of garbage on an open field, only that garbage has been carted in from the other side of the world! For example, you'd think it would be worth it for somebody to set up some sort of smelter where you could bring your cables to get the plastic melted off, but when labor is essentially free and the competition is Darwinian, it's unlikely any scavenger would pay for such a service when they could just sit around an open flame instead. And for an even more Dantean version of this, Glawegger's Workingman's Death covers a Nigerian slaughterfield in Port Harcourt. (And yes, the footage is pretty damn disturbing.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukSAfBulphU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukSAfBulphU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Death