It’s all about birthrights.

By the end of twentieth century, one would have thought that such a statement would be considered false. Life in first world countries greatly defies the idea that your rank at birth really matters; for example, President Clinton was born to a lower-middle class family, and yet managed to go to Yale and finally become president of the United States.

First world societies attempt to give people in under-privileged conditions everything they need to survive and prosper; however, in the “third world” countries, people are still living in poverty, are still living in slums and under oppressive governments; are still living in conditions that those of us lucky enough to live in first world countries would think unbearable.

To realize why such a tremendous gap exists, one would have to consider the fact that the world economy at the present time is based on capitalism, and capitalism demands a pool of unemployed laborers. The first world is basically using the whole third world as that pool of unemployed laborers.

For example, the ‘Nike’ or ‘Reebok’ shoes that we all so enjoy are made on an assembly line in China (Edwards 16). The reason that those people happily flock to work for pennies a day, making shoes, is that the standard of living there is much lower then in the first world, the rural mean wage being about $30 per month (Edwards 17).

There is a huge gap between first and third world countries; in the year 1998, National Geographic showed that 4% of the world’s population controls 89% of the world’s wealth (Swerdlow, n.p.). This is certainly not an even distribution. Note that where the 4% of the population lives is the first world countries, so one would only have a chance of being in the lucky 4% if one were born in a first world country, or at the top of a third world country’s hierarchy.

The gap of wealth distribution between the two worlds seems to stream heavily from education and technology. Consider the following situation: a country does not have the technology of first world countries, it therefore has to attempt to buy this technology from the first world if it wants to be able to compete in the market on their level. This country often times does not have the education necessary to keep this technology in working order, since the country did not develop the technology itself. So as a net result, the country is still not on a competitive level with the first world, plus it is also deep in debt for the technology it bought, so it cannot keep functioning. The third world this way becomes stranded in a constant loop against first world countries, being able to provide only the brute work force, and not the technology.

The general ignorance of dealing with new technologies can be seen in other fields as well, for instance, medicine. Typical third world countries have very poor medical technologies. When new advancements such as antibiotics or vaccines are brought in from first world countries in an effort to help, they are often times misused. That is, the average family continues to have 6 to 8 children, and where as some of the children would die with out medical help, all of them survive childhood. Since there is only a limited supply of food available, larger families mean less food portions per person, and less food portions per person mean a lower quality of life for all the people.

This main problem streams from the fact that, although the people readily accept the privileges of a well-developed society, such as good medical treatment, and an extremely low infant mortality rate, they are not as inclined to accept the responsibilities that these privileges bring with them, such as birth control. So in a sense, living conditions could decrease for third world countries by accepting aid and not being willing to take the responsibility for its people.

This illustrates how the third world is kept under the first world’s control. Not as much by the efforts of the first world, but by the ignorance of the third world. Just as with the medicine and the technology, the third world tends to accept aspects of the first world which they are not yet developed enough to handle. Nonetheless, the majority of the world’s population resides in third world countries, and they provide the brute labor on which the world’s economy really stands. By utilizing this labor force, the first world greatly increases the standard of living for itself.

The same parallel can be made in the first world; the people that are actually doing the work, people like laborers and farmers, are not making as much as the selected few with a college degree, who are really not doing any of the work at all. In a sense then, the first world can be viewed as the selected few with a college degree, the selected few picked from the pool of rich capitalists, and not the pool of unemployed labor, the selected few who were lucky enough to be born where they were, and not in the slums of Rio de Janeiro or Mexico City.

This uneven distribution of wealth is increasingly an emerging problem. At no time before in history has the world been so connected, and the markets so dependent on each other. With the dependability, the more advanced nations have taken the role of ‘capitalist’ and the less developed nations have gotten stuck with the role of ‘laborer’. At no time in history has the difference of the standard to living from one country to the next been so great. In the past, the ‘third world’ countries were inhibited with natives who were often quite satisfied to live off the land, but that option now seems less appealing compared to the opportunities of the big cities. Unfortunately, alongside opportunities come famine, disease, slums, and generally sub-human conditions that no one in the first world would subject themselves to.

What then, ought to first world countries do? Can we really gloat about the fact that we happened to be born high and others happened to be born low? Can we truly look the other way, and can we really consider ourselves human if we do? On the other hand, how can we give them the privileges of a well-developed society, without them enforcing itheir responsibilities?

The answer to these questions that our society gives to us seems to be that we ought to do nothing. It appears to be to the first world’s advantage to keep the pool of unemployed labor alive by tossing them the table scraps. As long as the third world continues to prove useful to the first world, the citation will not change, the standard of living will continue to increase by leaps and bounds for the first world, and yet remain at more or less the same level for the third world. This mode of action is certainly by no means moral or right, but who controls the gold controls the power, and the first world controls the gold.

Works Cited
Edwards, Mike. “China’s Gold Coast” National Geographic vol. 191, no. 3
Mar. 1997: 2-31
Swerdlow, Joel. “Population and Resources map” National Geographic no. 4
Oct. 1998: n.